Phase 2 of Micro Lesson 1: Assessment Examples

   Assessment Examples: At least 2 digital artifacts that:

o    Demonstrate what you or your students (peers) have created as a result of your lesson

o    Are referred to as you answer #2 (Assessment of Learning)

I collected three different physical artifacts from my “students” that show me what they knew before had, and what I had taught them. Each artifact is a worksheet with a set of problems. For each set of problems, I planned on having students work alone at first, and then in groups before I give them any direct solutions to the problems. The fist set of problems were meant as a quick review for the class. When I was teaching this lesson to my peers, the review part of the lesson became the main bulk of the lesson. The second set of problems was were I planned on the "class" brainstorming ideas on how to solve the problem on their own, when I was actually teaching however, we used this set as more practice with exponents. The third was going to be practice, but we did not really get to work with the last set of problems the way I planned. Because we did not get to my assessment, I will use the problem sets as a way to assess the level of my "students" comprehension. 

Links to two artifacts that I collected:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxPrs7ZfWJCaMGZVRDdDQlVlZkE/edit?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxPrs7ZfWJCaLUQzZTdUN2hzX00/edit?usp=sharing 

Phase 2 of Micro Lesson 1: Assessment of Learning

1.   Assessment of Learning: Describe the evidence you have that indicates

o    Your students' level of success in achieving the lessons goals

o    The level of success you had in teaching the lesson

§  How do your individual reflections support this?

§  How do the comments from your classmates support this?

Achievement of my lesson was not what I had originally planned it to be. Looking at the worksheets and problems that we did together, my new goals became teaching the exponent rules needed to work with negative exponents. With the new goals set, I feel that achievement of learning was moderately successful. I feel that my "students" would still need more work on the "basics" of exponents if I were teaching them the same topic again. Based on some comments that my peers made, and some personal reflections I have thought of things that if I did differently would have made the lesson flow a little easier. I would make sure to have some notes for them to refer to, or once realizing what they didn't know, I should have written some notes out for them to look at. Another thing I would do differently is have a print out of my lesson plan, to have examples to refer to. I was having a hard time working with each girl individually, and at one point during the lesson I got mixed up and told two of them to do the problems wrong. I eventually figured out that this happened and corrected the problem, but I feel that if I had my lesson plan printed out with me I would have been able to organize my thoughts a little bit better. Another comment was that I the problems on my worksheet were hard to read, and I feel that I could have avoided that by having someone proof read them before coming to class. 
As far a success in teaching, I feel that I was successful. I had to make some modifications, and decisions based on where my student were in their knowledge of exponents. I feel that my "students" learned something from my lesson, it just was not what I had originally planned on them to learn. 

Phase 2 of Micro Lesson 1: Instructional Decisions/Teaching

1.   Instructional Decisions/Teaching: Discuss the implementation process and describe

o    What you did and learned from the teaching/facilitating process

o    How alignment to goals and objectives was maintained

o    Modifications made for individual needs

During our teaching, I learned that teachers need to be really careful of this estimations they make about their students. Going into the lesson, I assumed that exponent rules was something that was common knowledge, or at least knowledge that would just need to be recalled with a review. Once I started to review with my "students" I learned differently. This taught me that I need to be careful about the assumptions I make about students, over estimating can cause just as many problems as under estimating student ability. My goals and objectives were not aligned very well with the lesson that was given. My goals were that students would be able to show that they can work with negative exponents, but once I began teaching those goals changed into wanting them to be able to know the exponent rules. I ended up modifying my entire lesson for the needs of the "students". We worked a really long time on learning the "basics" of exponents before we got to the content that was originally planned for the lesson. I modified some of the problems on the worksheets to better work with learning  exponential rules, and to make them simpler than they were before. Overall, I really had to make major modifications to work with the level that my "students" were at. 

Phase 1 of Micro Lesson: Planning Assessment

         

This is a post explaining my assessment. I will demonstrate how my assessment will show the students understanding of the goals and objectives while engaging my students in higher order thinking and meeting their individual needs. 

        My assessment is one that allows students to self-assess while I am assessing them. Being able to correctly pick a group to join, having the ability to participate in discussions with their peers about the content, and being able to formulate questions to help them better understand are all ways that I am going to assess how well student comprehend what I am teaching. The group assessment that I want to use for this lesson allows for higher order thinking by providing them the chance to go deeper into the concept with their peers. Asking and answering each other’s questions is how I am going to encourage higher order thinking in my assessment. My assessment meets individual needs by allowing students to choose where they are as far as understanding the content, and being able to receive assistance based on that choice.

Phase 1 of Micro Lesson 1: Designing Instruction

In this post  I will be explaining the design of my lesson plan. How I have organized this lesson to use various instructional methods, ensured alignment researched based understanding of technology integration, and the in what ways I actual integrated technology into my lesson. 

https://w.taskstream.com/Lesson/View/7BA9BD74B8EC79993EF27E40637FD470

         My lesson plan is designed using NAU's 5 E lesson plan outline. Using this lesson plan helps to organize my lesson logically, and helps me to ensure that everything moves in an easy flow. Being able to use this lesson format, I am able to state my goals, objective, standards, and content in a detailed, and organized fashion. Something that I really like about this lesson format is that there is a section for me to state ways that I am going to incorporate methods for special needs students and ways to create high order thinking in my lesson. The lesson that I created for this project did not give me the opportunity to integrate technology in any significant way. Using calculators is as much technology as this lesson requires, however I can see how technology can be integrated into the class in later lessons. 

Phase 1 of Micro Lesson 1: Plans and Instruction

This post is discussing how I have clearly stated my goals and objectives, how my goals and objectives line up with the standard, and how these goals and objectives are appropriate for my students. 

         I used the state standards to create my goals and objectives for this lesson. Using the standards to form my original goals for my students helps me to ensure that they are learning material that is grade level appropriate, and that I am following what they standards are expecting me to teach. After setting a goal, and stating the standard's objective, I then modify the terminology to make them understandable for students. Using simple, clear, and short goals and objectives enables that students and any person in my classroom will be able to know exactly what we are aiming for today. Having clear goals and objectives is very important, and as a teacher I do everything in my power to make sure that I am very clear when stating them.

Phase 1 of MIcro Lesson 1: Assessing Prior Knowledge.

This post is about how I would assess the prior knowledge of my students if I were teaching this in an actual eighth grade math class. Along with how I would assess their prior knowledge, I will also discuss what I would expect to learn from their pre-assessment result, and how this information would prove useful with deciding how to proceed with my lesson.

          If I were teaching this to a real class, assessment of prior knowledge would be assessed through a review session. I would use review games and sheets along with class discussions over the material that we last covered, and skills they would need to be able to accomplish our new objective.

While assessing students' prior knowledge, I would expect to learn what they have learned and understood overall so far as a class. While doing a class review it would be hard to assess each individual students comprehension. However I would expect to learn the average level of the class. 

        Learning the average knowledge and comprehension of the class would be useful because I need to make sure they understand the previous lessons before I move on to new ones. If the class is behind as a whole, and does not have the understanding that I believe they need, I would not move onto my new lesson. We would review the old material until I feel that they have shown me that they understand it. Moving on without this information would just put students farther behind. As a teacher I need to make sure I do everything thing in my power to ensure student understanding.