This was me rambling on Saturday night after spending 12 or more hours a day for 5 days straight in my classroom working. Again, not having Internet access is no fun. And when I do have time, trust me, I'd like to sleep! So here I am talking about pre-assessing in an easy and reliable way, and me talking about last week so far.
Pre-Assessments.
I think it is so crucial to do pre-assessments at the beginning of the school year of students’ skills and concepts regarding various subjects. When I went to our district’s DI conference, I attended a session by Dr. Bertie Kilgore. She gave me lots of new ideas for assessing students’ learning, many of which are so simple and effective!
I will be trying this next week as my students have their first official full week of school. To assess students on any concept, have them come up with a list of words associated with a particular concept. Then have them develop 4 categories, again closely related to that concept. Using the list of words they came up with, they have to put them into the specific categories.
So if my explanations made zero sense (most likely), here’s a more concrete example. Say I want to assess my students on their current knowledge (remember, I’m pre-assessing) of space. I will have students come up with a list of any words they associate with space.
List:
Mars, Jupiter, asteroids, astronauts, gravity, black hole, stars, Big Dipper, the sun, Earth, moon, dwarf planets, telescope, NASA, moon, ...
Then, students will look at these words carefully and come up with 4 categories to divide their paper into. Like this:
| Planets:
| Stars: |
| Studying space: | Other:
|
Using the word list they developed, students have to write a sentence about each word and put it into an appropriate category. They will do this using a particular colored pen. Why a pen? 1) Students cannot erase what they write. 2) After the concept has been taught at a later time, I can have students go back to this activity and write what they now know (post-assessment) using a different colored pen.
All that may have sounded confusing, but it’s not really! What a brilliant idea! It’s also more interactive and fun than the regular pre-assessments. Plus, students get to look back at what they thought they knew about a concept, then check their understanding after being taught.
I’m writing this blog post at 9pm on a Saturday night, with complete exhaustion. I have literally come home every night to do 3 things: 1) Eat dinner between 8 and 9pm, 2) Shower, and 3) Sleep. I am so thankful for this week though. I never knew how much work it truly takes to make a classroom look nice on the outside, as well as making plans and procedures that make the classroom environment look nice on the inside.
Things I’ve learned this week:
· My sleeping-in time is now 8:40a.m.
· Unless deemed absolutely necessary, don’t go to Wal-Mart on a Friday afternoon of a tax-free weekend to get 80 notebooks. Insanity.
· I’m working with amazing & incredibly hard-working teachers every day.
· When I accomplish 10 things on my mental to-do list, 20 more things pop up.
· Double-sided tape is my friend. Sharp adult scissors are not when you’re looking the wrong direction.
· There’s a difference between legal size and letter size hanging folders. Legal size ones do not fit in my file cabinet.
· Your classroom cannot and should not look exactly the same as everyone else’s. Make it your own. It’s your classroom. It should work for you and your students.
· Progress is a process. And I’ve made a lot of progress.
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