Group Post

Assessing Prior Knowledge: 


If you were teaching this with the targeted grade level students, how would you assess prior knowledge/experience:


In our lesson we assessed prior knowledge by having the class work together to determine what they think are facts and myths about worms and habitats. This will allow us to know what they already know about and what they may be confused about as true.

What would be the implications for instructional planning and assessment based on the activities you chose to do for assessing prior knowledge:


Since our prior knowledge is tested during the lesson we will look at their responses about what they think is fact and what they think is myth and focus more on things they are confused on.  So if every student seemed to understand that worms live in the dirt while some many students where focused on if worms had hearts or not we will emphasize more in the lesson on body parts of the worm especially if they have a heart.

Plans Instruction: 


Discuss how your goals, objectives, and outcomes are: 

Clearly stated:


They are clearly stated because we are stating exactly want we expect from our students.  For example, we expect our students to create a diagram of a worm and fill out the fact vs. myth sheet with 75% accuracy.  Anything below that is failing and the teacher will need to reassess how they will re-approach it.

Appropriate for students: 

This is appropriate for students because we are getting our students involved in their own learning.  The students are creating things such as a habitat with the dirt cup.  In addition this is appropriate for learning because we have instruction with our PowerPoint.  Another group we watched relied just on centers without any formal instruction.  Centers should support the students learning not be their only way of learning and we recognize this.  

Aligned to state standards: 

We used the state standards as a guide when creating our lesson plan.  We made sure that everything was covered in our lesson.  In this grade students are learning about habitats and worms and we feel we have a fun approach to this standard.

Designing Instruction: 


Discuss how your instructional design is contextually and logically organized: 


It is contextually and logically organized by starting off with a book to capture the student’s attention.  Afterwards we do a pre-assessment/prior knowledge activity by having the students state what is myth and what is fact about worms and myths.  After this the teacher is presenting a PowerPoint that cover the myths and facts we just tried to assess.  This is the time for the student to gain some insight and rethink about things they previously thought was true.  Afterwards we have the students do an assessment that is based on things we covered.  During this time we will be walking around the classroom and clarifying things to those students who have questions or are confused.

Discuss how it uses varied instructional methods that meet individual student needs and target higher order thinking skills:


We have a book and PowerPoint for the visual learners, our lecture and discussion over the PowerPoint meets the needs of our auditory learners, and our dirt cups and kid pix word diagram meets the needs of our hands on learners because they are “doing” what they just learned.  This lesson assesses their comprehension by making the students take their knowledge and apply to the same activity they did at the beginning of the class (the fact vs. myth sheet).  The lesson includes evaluating by having the students determine if the statement is a fact or a myth.

Discuss how it integrates technology from a constructivist perspective:


We included technology throughout the entire lesson.  We use technology to construct and create items like the worm diagram through the kid pix program.

Planning Assessment: 


How will your assessment tools demonstrate... 

The performance of linked goals and/or objectives: 


Our objective states the students will be able to determine facts about worms and myths so by giving the worksheet I am assessing if they truly learned information from the instruction I did with the PowerPoint.  In our instruction we are teaching students about the body parts of the worms and the importance of each part.  So at the end we assess the student by having them make the diagram in kid pix.  Our assessments are directly linked to our objectives.  We are not testing students on things we did not teach to them.

Student engagement in higher order thinking:


We are having the students compose and create their own diagrams and having them evaluate statements as either fact or myth.  We are not giving the students a boring multiple choice question.  We are getting the students involved and really seeing what they know by having them create something.  In a multiple choice test you don’t really know how much information your students actually know.  They might just be guessing.  This is a better choice is looking at what your students actually know. 

Meeting individual student needs: 


This will allow me to see if the student has mastered the concept or not.  If not I will be able to rework the way I did this and think of a new approach that meets their needs.  In addition it allows me to see where their confusion may be.  Maybe they are good with creating the diagram but are challenged by distinguishing facts from myths so I can take this information and focus next time more on facts about worms.  The assessment is also meeting individual student’s needs because the teacher is walking around the classroom and providing one-on-one assistance to those who need it.