Academic Standards - Good or Bad?

Learning standards require students to show what they know and how they are able to take what they have learned and use it. Standards are expectations and guide what is taught in class.

The standards movement began in 1989 when the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) developed math standards. Also in 1989, Congress adopted eight new national standards.

Schools need standards because students need to know there are expectations. Standards allow teachers to see how students are performing and helps the teacher to plan classroom activities. Standards also focus reform efforts.

In a standards-based classroom, a person should see high-level activity. In the classroom, questioning, reflecting, analyzing, discussing, writing and experiments should be taking place.

I believe there should be standards for all content areas. Students need to know that there is a certain level of expectation required by their teachers.

There is the issue of who should set standards and how high or low standards may be set. As of right now, I don't have a problem with there being national standards or state standards. This could of course change once I'm am actually teaching.

Assessment in the Classroom

There are different forms of assessment in classrooms. There is diagnostic, formative and summative.

Diagnostic is like pre-testing. You want to find out what students already know about a topic. The big two are formative and summative.

Formative assessments are continuous and can be done in a variety of ways through journals, peer reviews, observation, etc.

Summative assessments are usually done at the end of units or in some cases at the end of semesters. They are summing up what students learned.

The difference between these two assessments is what the student gets out of them.

Formative assessments should be used throughout units to guide students learning. Students should be able to take the results from their formative assessment and use it to determine what he or she needs to work on.

The biggest part of formative assessment is feedback. Students need to know why they received the score they did and how to correct the problem.

The issue with a summative assessment is that there is no room for useful feedback. By the time a student has taken a summative assessment it is too late. The course or unit is already over and they have lost the opportunity to fix whatever it was they did not understand.

While summative assessment is necessary for teachers to give, it should not be the only form of testing. Teachers must find other ways to see how students are doing and use formative assessments to help students before it's too late.

In the article "A Conceptual Framework for Classroom Assessment," there was a question asking which combination of words I prefer...assessment for learning, or assessment of learning.

I chose "Assessment FOR Learning." While assessments should be used to determine what students have learned, it should also be used as a way to assess how the students can continue to learn.

Everyone Learns Differently

In our last class, four groups presented different learning theories: Behaviorism, Cognitivism, Social Constructionism, and Brain Compatible Theory.

All of the groups presented in a clear way and delivered a lot of information.

Good job everyone!

For our Unit Plans, we need to include activities representing each of these theories.

Having been subbing in many classrooms I can say that teachers really have their work cut out for them when planning activities.

Everyone learns differently and as teachers we need to make sure that all students needs are accommodated.

Planning, Planning, and More Planning

In our last class we learned that our Unit Plans must be four weeks long. We also began to discuss planning.

First of all, a plan is a "forecast" of the goals of the teacher.

Planning is done in stages. The first being pre-planning. In pre-planning, you need to think about the topic, audience, standards, etc.

Next is the planning stage. In this stage you actually sit and write out your plan, whether it be a unit or just a lesson.

The last stage is post-planning. In this stage you need to reflect on what went well in the unit/lesson, as well as what went wrong, and what you would do differently.

We also had to do a reading on lesson planning procedures prior to class.

Lesson plans help teachers to organize and deliver daily lessons.

Lesson plans are not set in stone though. As a teacher, you need to be flexible. Things come up throughout the course of the day and you will need to change the way you were going to deliver a lesson.

Maybe something like the fire alarm going off and losing time that way, or if the students just are not getting into the lesson and it is not working. As a teacher, you need to be able to think of how to handle these situations before they happen.

Make sure you have a plan B!

Scope, Focus and Sequence For Unit Planning

There are three essential parts to designing a unit. They are scope, focus and sequence.

Scope refers to the range in content to be covered. Focus is what will be emphasized in the unit, and sequence is the order in which the content will be presented.

The range in content (scope) should be based on the age of your students and also around the abilities of your students.

The focus should lead to titles which will interest the learner and help them understand why they are learning this particular topic.

Sequence may be done chronologically or thematically (simple to complex).

For my unit plan, I have the scope and focus figured out for the most part. As for sequence, I'm still working on that. Since I'm creating a unit on war, it's probably best to go in a particular order. It will most likely be done chronologically.