Over the course of the last few weeks, we have all been asked to submit various lesson plans. This started off really tricky and time consuming for me. However, like most things, as time goes on it has become less straining and more smooth. Contrary to probably almost anybody, I actually feel like the left hand column comes sort of naturally to me. I do not struggle very much with filling that area out, especially after I received clarification from Dr. Bedford about it. After taking some ESL courses over the last year, as well, I find the Language Support really simple to me. I was challenged in these classes to alter lessons and material for English language learners and their families, so due to this practice, I can quickly find the areas that may be overly challenging for an ELL. (Ignore the Super ELL part of this graphic. It's an advertisement. The other info is super interesting though!)
I am not very confident in my ability to decide which assessments should go where. By this, I mean that I have a hard time distinguishing what is a credible pre-assessment vs. formative assessment, or if I should categorize something as formative or summative. I think this may be caused by the flexibility in different professor's and school district's "taste". According to some of our professors, a summative assessment is necessary every time. To others, it should only take place at the end of a unit or topic. From my understandings, it is the same way among various schools, too. For this reason, it is a tough part of lesson planning for me.
Hi Emily,
ReplyDeleteI have to admit, the left side of the lesson plan is the most relieving for me. I find it to be the smoothest portion and the least complicated aspect to work through. Some parts stump me a little bit, but for the most part it's relatively quick. I think it's awesome that you had some extra practice with ELL and I can see how this would benefit your ability to make proper modifications and such. I have also recognized that different teachers have different outlooks on assessment. Some require all, some only require some. From what I have gathered (don't quote me though) pre-assessment is only necessary when you are teaching something that builds off content or a strategy that they already know. Formative is a more observational and formal aspect of assessment that doesn't require any written records. However, as a teacher you can keep your own notes. Lastly, I've seen summative assessment as the content that is collected at the end of the lesson to assess their understanding. Whether that be written, project based, orally, performance oriented, etc. I'm not sure if that helps, but as you said, it could simply only rely on the school district as well. For the time being, that's what I follow! Thank you for sharing!
Emily,
ReplyDeleteI think it was time consuming for all of us, you are not alone. I think they threw us into lesson planning to pre-assess us and our knowledge before diving into the intricate workings of a lesson plan. I think the more practice we get the better we will feel at lesson planning. I think you need to give yourself some more credit, you did a wonderful job with the assessment portion of our lesson plan we did together. I agree I think that we are learning a certain way for lesson planning, but your right we will have to learn a different templet once we have our own classroom, as schools have certain “taste” as you said.
I understand what you are saying when you talk about how assessment will vary between lessons and with expectations from the teacher. So far I have not had a teacher push the idea of all 4. I typically always use formative and self reflection. How I see self reflection is to tell the teacher where they need to be for future lessons and the students take the time to reflect what works best for them and how they can improve the education experience. Then I see formative assessment as the observations you are doing through out the lesson. Are you checking through out the lesson to see where the kids are at and how. Then you could be using the formative assessment to see if a students has met the target for the day. This method is a bit more time consuming but it is possible. Then I see summative assessment as a form of individual writing work or quiz that the students did. Then of course you have to rate what is proficient and what it looked like to be developing and exceeding for both the formative and summative. Then a pre-assessment is when you give the students an opportunity to test their prior knowledge that will be needed for this task you are about to teach. Typically you will be doing this a lot within a classroom. Making sure they understand the terms that you are about to use and went over in a previous class time. You will be assessing their prior knowledge so you know where to start your lesson. Sometimes students will not be ready for the lesson you had planned because of the feedback on their pre-assessment. This could be in a form of a writing response or quiz or discussion with the students. So I see what you are talking about because we do not have students to teach to. We have imaginary classrooms that are perfect when we are writing up out lesson plans. We are assuming all students are ready for that lesson when we give them the preassessment. Sometimes however a pre-assessment will just give you an idea of their knowledge but you can still teach that lesson.
ReplyDeleteHi Emily,
ReplyDeleteThe “left side” is weird for me because we have to do make-believe to fill it in. The process of creating a lesson plan is still very awkward for me to complete. Choosing what type of pre-assessment, formative-assessment, summative-assessment, and self-assessment, is very difficult. How do we make these a natural part of the lesson? I struggle with a lot of creating the lesson plan. I hope that with practice we will find a way to create a correct lesson plan.