jennifer wallace

  Chapter 13: Assessing Student Learning Before you assess your students, you must set a guide for how students will get there. It is very important to look at the standards while planning and step by step figure out how to make your students master the standards. The big picture must always be in the back of your mind as you plan your lessons week by week. As you plan you must break the objective down into three pieces: performance, condition, and criterion. Many schools have teachers place their objectives or learning goals in the classroom. The condition states how students will be assessed, the performance is generally the verb, i.e. will write, will answer 100 multiplication problems, etc. Lastly the objective states how the teacher will know that the student has successfully learned the material. As you are planning, teachers should take into consideration all of the skills students will need in order to learn the material or complete the assignment. These objectives and less...

Learning Environments should be designed so that students and the teacher are comfortable and organized so that the class runs efficiently. Time is always an issue in the classroom. As teachers we feel as though there aren’t enough hours for everything we need to teach and get done. If a classroom is organized and efficiently ran, a teacher can reduce the amount of time that students are off task or dealing with other issues and give students the time that is desperately needed. How can teachers ensure that they are creating a positive learning environment? First of all you need to make sure that you are not wasting your instructional time. As soon as your students are in the classroom and ready to learn, you should begin instruction promptly. This helps students recognize that learning is important. One philosophy that I try to instill in my brain is to keep students wanting to come back. I like to  keep them wondering, “What is my crazy teacher going to do tomorrow?”  What c...

What is direct instruction? Direct instruction is where you, the teacher, teach the lesson. Students then practice the skill with help. Then, students are expected to complete the task independently where the teacher gives immediate feedback and can offer more support if needed which will then lead to an assessment. Teachers control much of this type of instruction.  When we go to teach we should first give students a reason why we are learning whatever new skill it is that we are learning. I like to find ways to relate the skills to “real life” scenarios. This helps students understand the importance of the lessons and hopefully instill intrinsic motivation. I find students take more accountability in their learning when they can understand why we are learning something and how we will apply it in the real world. As I was reading the text stated, “it must not be assumed”. This really stood out to me. As we are preparing our students for assessments, we also need to prepare them fo...