AER Reflection

1.      Assessment Page During First Teaching Block

  As I am going into my first teaching block I am looking for resources that can help me along the way.  For assessment I will be using my digital portfolio on assessment to help guide me.  The first thing that I would use to help guide me would be the AER Strategy Form.  This form will be a constant reference for how I will use assessment to tackle a variety of challenges such as ELL learners, special needs learners, or report cards.  I have included two resources for every section from the Ministry document Growing Success to help guide me in future uses of assessment.  

  I would also like to use my assessment page from my digital portfolio to continue to blog about my continuing experiences and challenges with assessment.  I believe I have already started off quite well with my first two posts on my past experiences with assessment and my recent experiences with assessment.  I would like to continue this blog by detailing how I am dealing with assessment during my first teaching block and how I am adjusting to assess my placement class.  I believe that this will help with my self-reflection as a teacher and allow me to refine my assessment strategies.  

3. Professional Learning Goal for Job Interview

  If I were to highlight one of my professional learning goals from my AER Strategy Form I would want to highlight my goal to better facilitate support learning for students who are form an Aboriginal, Metis, or Inuit background.  In my AER Strategy Form I have highlighted the need to research the need to study the social and economic conditions these students come from as well as talking to experts and advisors from these communities.  This will be done to help better understand the context that these students learn in and what challenges they might have to learning.  I have highlighted two Ministry of Education documents to help me develop this learning goal.  These resources can be found here and here.  Both of these documents help inform teachers about the learning styles these students might have based on the communities they are from while also providing practical strategies and tools for the successful instruction of Aboriginal, Metis, and Inuit students.  I believe that teachers in Ontario are under-equipped and to help with the effective education of these students.  I therefore believe that highlighting my knowledge and willingness to learn and develop this knowledge would be a desirable asset during a job interview.   

AER Strategy Form

 

 

 

 

Assessment Blog Post 2

  The Ontario Ministry of Education document Growing Success for me has changed the ways I view assessment.  For me the sections on The Achievement Chart and Assessment for and as learning have offered the greatest change in perspectives.  Each subject's curriculum (Math, Language Arts, Social Studies, etc.) has a section detailing the achievement chart categories and what they mean for the specific subjects.  In Growing Success though it details what these categories mean more generally such as Knowledge and Understand, Thinking, Communication and Application.  The document goes on to explain what the grade levels for these categories entails relating to the provincial standards.  To me this is very important as the Achievement Chart helps to form my assessment of learning.  The language used in the Achievement Chart is what I would use to create rubrics.  To me a standard like this is really helpful for informing how to do assessment of learning in my placement.

  All of this being said there are different ways of assessment detailed in Growing Success, namely assessment for and as learning.  This is something I still feel I am grappling with to understand better.  I understand assessment as learning, it involves different forms of self and peer assessment so that students can better assess their own learning.  However, I am not sure when this form of assessment is most appropriate and if it is appropriate for all students at all grade levels.  I believe that self-assessment is something a teacher has to model, but I am unsure how.  This is something that I would like to look into more, how to model self-assessment of work to students and teach them how to do it.  Assessment for learning to me is a bit more confusing.  I know it involves diagnostic and formative assessment: diagnostic being assessment of student knowledge before instruction, and formative being assessment during instruction.  The problem is that I am unsure how assessment for learning looks like outside of exit cards, anecdotal notes, observations and conversations with students.

  Clearly my learning about assessment is not done as I still have many questions left to be answered and explored.  I can only try to move forward with an open mind and the ability to adapt to new knowledge and experience when it comes to assessment.  

Assesment Blog Post 1

  Over the years of your education you are constantly faced with assessment, either from your teacher, peers, or yourself.  Growing up in the public school system in Ontario from grades K-8 I do not remember receiving a very diverse means of assessment.  Most of my experiences with assessment from grades K-8 were test oriented, or based on the teacher's evaluation based on a rubric.  I don't feel like this form of assessment was incorrect, far from I think it is necessary, but it was the only form of assessment I remember from those grades.  It wasn't until high school that I had the chance to experience student self-assessment on our work.  However, this form of assessment was rare possibly due to a lack of trust the teachers had in honest student assessment.  It was not until university where it was common to self-assess your performance in seminars and give yourself a grade.  It was also not until university where I felt like peer evaluation actually mattered, mostly for seminar facilitation.  That being said teacher or professor led assessment and evaluation through papers and tests has been the dominant form for assessing my academic performance.  This is not to say that I disliked this method of assessment, I love tests and papers with rubrics but as a student teacher and as someone who has interacted with teachers from many different backgrounds I realize it has not worked for everyone.  

  I still believe that the current methods of assessment still strongly involve the use of tests and rubrics for projects that are evaluated exclusively by the teacher.  However, I also think that we are shifting away from that as the main focus.  I think there is more methods of assessment out there then there was when I was growing up in the elementary school system.  I think that there is more room being made for student self-assessment and peer evaluation.  I also think that anecdotal observations are playing a stronger role in how teachers evaluate a student's performance.   In most Ontario public schools there is likely more diversity in how students are assessed than I can currently think of.  Just based on my own classroom observations I can say that homework worksheets for subjects like math and geography are still common and larger culminating projects for classes like language arts and geography are still used.  Rubrics are things that, based on my observations, are noticeably absent.  Meaning that students are not provided rubrics for how their assignments will be assessed by the teacher.  This may be just due to that fact that I have yet to see them being used, or that perhaps there is a less rigid means of assessment being exercised.  Worksheets are reviewed and graded by the teacher and given back to the students, likely with some feedback and writing on where the student did well or needs improvement. 

  I know that assessment has largely moved past the use of tests and rubrics exclusively, and there are more diverse means of assessment being used by Ontario teachers.  Currently though I just feel ignorant of what kind of advancements have been made since my time in the Ontario public school system.  I look forward to growing my knowledge on this topic and later writing about how my readings on assessment have changed my beliefs and maybe helped enlighten me to methods that I have never considered before.