EDU 650 Week 5 Discussion 1
Pamela Roberts
In Chapter 8, Lopez sends a resounding message: “Assessment is not about you as a teacher; it is about your students” (p.97). He goes on to say that our reason for assessing students should be grounded in our commitment to use the information collected in a way that helps us generate greater success for our students. Share your perspective on Lopez’s quote and statement above
I agree with his statement about assessment being about the students and not the teachers. I think that a lot of times we get so caught up with worrying about what other teachers will think about us and judge us for what our students know, that we forget about the children and worry more about how the results will make us look.
Describe how your mindset has changed or been validated.
My mindset is validated because I believe that assessments are important tools that can help teacher to help their students. Milestones work as a guide to help us have an idea of what skills a child should be able to do at a certain point in their life. Having that set of guidelines will enable the teacher to help the students better because they will have an idea about how much the children know and how much they need to know.
Consider the 4 questions Lopez lists under “Defending our Assessment Practices” (p.98). How might you use these questions in your current or anticipated practice?
Why are you participating in the assessments that you use with students? I participate in the assessments because they help to give me and idea on what and how much my students know. Afterwards I can use the assessments to plan activities and to work with the children in areas that they may be weak in. Can you share in explicit detail the value that you find in each assessment? Each assessment is different but for the assessment that we use serve as a tool and can be used to help us gather information that can be used to help the parents to understand. Do you participate in assessments that you find no value in for students? No because I figure that each lesson rather good or bad can be helpful. No I am not using an assessment that I have no idea how to deliver and if I needed help, I would ask.
What value might it add to your practice by keeping these questions in mind? In what ways have you succeeded/failed to make students your partner in assessment?
This will help me to have a checklist in the back of my mine. I can ask myself these questions and keep all of this stuff in mine when I think of assessments. Working with Head Start children, they are younger so it is easy to get them excited. I call them to the area where they will be assessed and I let them know what I am going to being doing and why I am doing it. I tell them that I just want to know how smart they are so that I can do thing to make them smarter. We do high fives and if they miss something I do not make a big deal about, I just keep going. I also assess them during class time when the children are playing. I even ask them if there is something that they would like to learn how to do that they do not know how to do.
References
Lopez, D. (2013). No excuses university: No excuses university: How six exceptional systems are revolutionizing our schools (2nd ed.) Turnaround Schools Publications.