Journal #12

I really liked the articles about performance-based assessment.  Each really helped weigh the pros and cons of using that type of assessment.  In the end I feel it would be beneficial to my future students to use performance-based assessments along with standardized assessments to give the students a sense of change.  No student wants to always be sitting at their desk doing work sheets and bubbling in letters.  Through performance-based assessment we can give our student more exciting activities to do.  The students will be able to perform plays or create projects together.  One of the websites linked had GREAT assessment tools that could be manipulated to fit any classroom and any subject.  I really liked the rubric creator at rubistar.  This is a website I have used before to make my rubrics for assessments and will continue to visit when I am an educator.  I also really liked the flashcard creator website.  I tested it out to see how it worked.  This would and will be a great tool to introduce to my students one day in my classroom.  All of these tools merge nicely with performance-based assessment.  Teachers can visit these sites to build their assessment tools, as well as study aids to help increase their student’s success.  

Journal #11

This week we talked about the six different thinking hats.  I really enjoyed looking at thinking this way because it makes us all think about how we approach situations.  It also made me think about how others around me approach situations/ what hat they wear.  I personally would say that I wear the blue hat most of the time.  I am always thinking about what is needed and how we can best go about it.  I also want to keep the group as organized as possible.  I guess this is seen as the leader in the group.  I do not necessarily want to be the leader but I want to be that backbone that can support a group through anything.  With that said I think another hat that I may wear is the yellow one.  When doing a group project I always want to keep everyone’s feelings in consideration.  By being positive about others ideas I can hope to keep the morale of the group up beat.  Another great aspect about the yellow hat is that by making everyone’s ideas appear useful, we may be able to expand and create even better ideas.  Whatever the group situation I am happy to switch between my two hats to help us achieve our goal. 

Reflective Summary of Talents Lesson

Reflective Summary of Talents Lesson

SPE 382

Kirsten Fredlund

Productive Thinking: Physical Education

Academic Content:

I described the Academic Context as “Physical Education: Engaging in physical activities that will increase heart rate and heavy breathing.”  As I reflect on my lesson I realize that I can narrow this topic to just being “physical activities”.  I think my “Teacher Talk” and extension are both concise and to the point.  For this Teacher Self-Rating, I would rate myself with a 5 out of 6 points in this area.

Thinking Process Warm-Up:

For this lesson I assumed that my children had already been briefed before on the Talents and their steps/skills.  This put me in the position for my first step to be reviewing the four Productive Thinking skills. I had the poster Mrs. Coleman printed out for me handy so I held it up for my students to follow along with me as I read them aloud with them.  I think this helped refresh their memory of what skills they were expected to draw on for Productive Thinking.  For the Teacher Self-Rating, I would rate myself with a 6 out of 6 points in this area.

Teacher Talk:

Above in the Academic Content section I mention that I was very concise in my “Teacher Talk.”  I gave each student a piece of paper.  On this piece of paper they were to come up with many different, varied, and unusual physical activities that they could do that would increase their heart rate and produce heavy breathing.  I think I communicated in a very straight forward way so that they knew what they were to be doing.

A mistake I think I made was that I did not follow all the way through with my extension.  In my mind it was to be another lesson all together.  So when the students finished I told them, “Tomorrow we will discuss which of these activities are appropriate and inappropriate to increase heart rate or breathing”.  I should have just addressed misunderstanding then and there.

For the Teacher Self-Rating, I would rate myself with a 4 out of 6 points in this area.

Student Response:

My students and I were all sitting at the same table.  As they wrote responses down I observed some of the things they were writing.  The majority of them had great responses.  When they were all finished I went around the table and had them all share the list they wrote down.  This went very well because they all had a varied list of ideas (just like I had asked them to come up with).  For the Teacher Self-Rating, I would rate myself with a 6 out of 6 points in this area.

Reinforcement:

As each student shared their list of varied and unusual ideas I gave praise for the ideas that were appropriate and tried to stay silent or gave minimal praise for the ones we would discuss later. Once each student was completely finished with their list I would praise them for their great list and tell them that tomorrow we were going to discuss the different between the appropriate and inappropriate ways to increase heart rate and breathing. 

For the Teacher Self-Rating, I would rate myself with a 5 out of 6 points in this area.