While reading the NCTM assessment PDF I thought the documentation of observations was interesting. Most of the time I think of recording and documenting observations with other subjects like literacy and social studies. However, I think it can be very helpful in math as well. It gives teachers the opportunity to take quick notes while interacting with students and then allows them to look back at their observations later and make interpretations. This goes along with our project 3 lesson study which allows us to see just how important observations are. While it is unrealistic to think as teachers we would be able to do extensive observations like this, it is still possible to conduct small and informal observations while walking around and helping students during a task or activty.
Another thing that I found interesting in this article were the vaious types of rubrics. While I mostly use or refer to a holistic rubric, I think the other types will be helpful depending on the type of task or even subject. For example, I think the general analytic rubric would be very useful in math tasks for both the teacher and the student. It breaks the problem down to categories like understanding, planning and getting the correct answer so it allows the teacher and the student to see where the problem lies, if there is one.
As for my thoughts on performance assessments, I have not had much opportunity to see any in math. My teacher focuses on literacy so I see a ton of pencil/paper tests and assessments and very few performance based. However, I have seen and conducted a few running record assessments and I think those are very benefical but time consuming as well. They have to be done individually so it takes up a lot of time. So I guess what I would like to know from you two is if you see any of these types of assessment with math and how that works?
I also was really intrigued by the discussion of documenting observation presented in the NCTM pdf file. It was interesting to really consider the many different levels a teacher can take in approaching documenting their observations, and really, how important it is to document to justify and support your interpretations of where a child stands in their development. Observations are incredibly important, but in order to validate them, various forms of documentation may be necessary. In the next article, I feel my most important gain was in truly realizing why explanation of answers is necessary. It is easy to “shrug it off” and assume explanations just create “more work” for both students and teachers- but this is incredibly far from the reality of the situation. Without student explanations, how does a teacher know how a student reasoned to reach their answer? As the article demonstrated, a variety of answers can result from one problem- in which many answers may seem “outlandish” until the reasoning is presented.
ReplyDeleteI was glad to read about rubrics as this is something I tend to “get confused about” in regards to the specific labels etc. You never realize the level of “investment” behind something until you work with it yourself- which is how I feel about rubrics. It doesn’t seem like creating a rubric should be a difficult task, but after reading this article, I recognize there are certainly distinct situations that call for specific rubrics. While I don’t have any specific questions, I feel this article is a great “reference” or “how-to-guide” in regards to clearly and succinctly explaining what different types of rubrics are and when/ how they are typically used.
As for assessments, my teacher uses observation quite heavily. She deliberately moves around the room during most activities and works one on one with students and I have also witnessed her documenting who she has worked with etc. However, I have also seen the traditional assessments that must be conducted prior to report cards to have documented “proof” of the students’ progress in key areas. As for my own project 2 lesson, I had come up with an “assessment” in which students drew their original towers (number of cubes, thus assessing their 1-1 cardinality), drew their “change” of towers (whether cubes were added, taken away, or remained-thus assessing their conceptuality of moving from less than, more than, equal etc), and finally, a picture of their final tower, acting as an “overall” assessment of the entire activity.
The readings this week really helped me realize the value of creating a specific, detailed rubric. The sample rubrics in the toy task listed out exactly what the teacher was looking for when the problem was created. Having a document, or multiple documents, with this much detail would be extremely beneficial when it came time to grade the students work and clearly identify which lesson objectives they understood. I never would have thought to create more than one rubric for the same task, but after seeing how it was done in the article, I actually believe it makes a lot of sense. Like Jessie said, it may initially seem like "more work" for the teacher, but will probably prove to be really helpful when looking at the end results.
ReplyDeleteI really liked the idea of tying concept maps and connection-making into the math field. This is something that is probably rarely done, as these things are generally more connected to literacy and other subject areas. However, when explicitly explained to students, they could be very powerful tools in math instruction. It was also interesting to think of concept maps as a type of assessment. We have become so accustomed to thinking of assessments as quizzes or tests that ask students to answer a series of questions about what they know. This is definitely what I see most often in my current placement- much of the assessment is pencil/paper-based. But stepping outside of the box and using a wide variety of assessment tools like observations, discussions, and creating physical representations could offer students much greater opportunities to display what they know.