Standard 6: Assessment

Through my time learning in the Alternative Routes to Certification program, I am beginning to feel more confident in my disposition as a teacher. I am building my teacher persona and becoming more comfortable in the classroom. As I grow more confident in my teaching persona, I am still developing strategies and learning a few of the 8 program standards, including assessment. While I can create assessments and even use informal assessment to adjust my own instruction, I am still working on giving students usable feedback in an organized way. 

SPU’s program standard 8 explains that a teacher can use both informal and formal assessment to inform his or her instruction, as well as evaluate student learning. It includes creating assessment around common core standards, assessing students daily using formative assessment to adjust teaching instruction. It also includes providing feedback to students about their progress as they learn, taking into consideration student voice. While I feel comfortable with planning assessment around standards, and even using informal assessment to inform my own lesson planning, I want to continue learning about giving students feedback through their work.

Recently, students read the book Night in class. During this week, students worked towards formulating themes by looking for the author’s message. For our exit slip, my mentor teacher and I asked students to respond to one instance where the character interacts with his father, God, or himself. We also asked students what the author’s message for readers was. In this informal assessment, many students could recall an occurrence where the main character interacts with himself or others; however, about half of the class did not put any answer for the author’s message. As a response to students who did not have a message, I simply wrote, “author’s message?” For students who did write a message, I gave them a mark (V+). At the beginning of the year, my mentor teacher and I explained to students what each informal assessment mark means (V, +, or -).

From these exit slips, I knew my mentor teacher and I should make sure that all students could identify a message from character interactions. Many students identified a message, but none of them were strong. Because of this, my mentor teacher and I created a follow up lesson to have students create messages in groups, rather than independently. By working in groups, almost all groups brainstormed one of the messages of the author. Some groups needed teacher support and guidance. From there, students worked in the same groups to change that message into a theme. But by the end of the lesson, all students had accomplished the objective in their exit task.

Through reflecting on this experience, I realized that I feel more comfortable in creating assessments around standards. With the help of my mentor teacher, I created a lesson that evaluated student’s ability to develop theme (R.L. 2). From student’s exit slips, I modified a lesson to meet students where they struggled. Through this lesson, students who were still confused about the authors message worked collectively to create a message and turn it into a theme. Students who had already created strong messages in their exit slips were able to modify them into strong themes with a group. By the end of the second day, all students had created a theme, which my mentor teacher and I used to create five themes summarizing the book. Although some themes were stronger than others, every student demonstrated their knowledge of identifying a message of the author and demonstrated their ability to create a theme from that message.

Although I felt satisfied with student learning, through the process of reflection I have some practical steps I can take to increase student feedback and even my ability to create meaningful exit slips. First, when I read student’s exit slips, I did not give any direct feedback to half the class. In the future, when assigning exit slips, I would like to give students a remind of what each of the scores mean. For example, with this exit slip, I could have shown students that receiving a – mark meant that the exit slip was incomplete, and that the student did not demonstrate the learning target. I could explain that receiving a V meant that student did not give an author’s message, and that receiving a + means that student demonstrated all components of the exit slip, and that the student fully understands the objective. This is something I could modify each time to remind students before the complete the exit slip what they are hoping to achieve (objective related tasks) and bring this information back when students exit slips are returned. I believe this method helps me to communicate clearly to students while not taking forever to grade, and it helps students identify if they reached the objective for the day.

Overall, implementing this strategy would increase the effectiveness of my exit task routine. It gives students a reminder of what they want to reach for. It will help me as I grade, and it will help students to receive clear feedback about what they still do not understand. Finally, it will help me to create differentiation in my future lessons, as I use student data to modify and create lessons.