Assessment & Objective Formulas

Assessment

What can be assessed?

• Readiness. Do students already know some concepts? What prior knowledge do they have? What skills do they have? This is why pre-assessment is important. 
• Students' Interest. What students like outside of class. Knowing their interests will help us engage them. 
• Learning Profile. Areas of strength and weakness, work preferences, and self-awareness. 

What is an assessment? Measuring students' knowledge and keeping track of it.

3 Types of Assessment

• Diagnostic: Finding out. Belongs in the introduction of the unit. (KWL chart, pre-assessment).
• Formative Assessment: Keeping track and checking up. Occurs throughout the lesson. (exit ticket, conference, quiz, journal entry, check for understanding)
• Summative Assessment: Making sure, at the end of the lesson, independent practice. (unit test, post-assessment, performance task)

Building Blocks & Components of Objectives

Condition: the setting. (given task or materials. only one setting)

Behavior: action expressed by a verb. (only one verb)

Criterion: expected performance level (no percentages. only one)
*Objective is written in the independent practice part of the lesson plan (the end). When students work alone they show that they really learned something.

Objective Formula: Given (a task or materials) the student will (a verb from Bloom's Taxonomy) with (an expected level of performance). 

*the materials in the objective are not the teacher's materials, they are the student's materials.

*the objective is singular; one student.

*you must create a rubric for the objective.

Objective example: Given a task to work in a group of 4 and the resources on the American Revolution, the student will create a poster, following the criteria of the rubric and scoring at 3/4.

How We Learn

How do people learn? What is learning?

Metacognition is thinking about thinking and thinking about learning as well as reflecting on it. Facts are fleeting. This blog is an example of metacognition. It is the highest level of thinking and sharing. 

Bloom's Taxonomy

We must teach to from the lowest level to the highest level. This diagram was created to help teachers.

Educational Philosophies:

Perennialism

Progressivism

Existentialism

Reconstructivist

Models, Strategies, and Methods:

Model- approaches to teaching (there are 4).

• Behavioral Model: stimuli and response. Developing desired skills, knowledge and behaviors. It involves a lot of repetition. Teacher has authority. 
• Information Processing: thinking and processing; explaining. To equip students with the skills of accessing, processing, organizing, and reflecting on information. 
• Social-Interactive Model: students are interacting to develop their social skills and democratic values.
• Personal Model: students are working independently to develop students' identity, self esteem.

Strategy: a set of steps in order to reflect a particular model.

• Strategy for behavioral model is direct instruction.
• Strategy for information processing is indirect/cognitive (inquiry). 
• Strategy for social-interactive model is indirect/ interactive.
• Strategy for personal mode is indirect/individual.

Methods: the way you deliver the strategy and model.

• Behavioral: lectures, powerpoint presentation, demonstration. Anything controlled  by the teacher.
• Information Processing: inquiry lesson. 
• Social-interactive: cooperative learning.
• Personal: independent projects.

Origins & Elements of Social Studies

What is Social Studies?

Teaching and learning history is primarily done through discussion and lecture. Occasional audio visual aids and field trips are used, but unfortunately there is not a lot of funding to use these tools constantly. Most homework and assignments come straight from a textbook. Elementary students learn Social Studies through small group and independent work, manipulatives, films, TV, computers, and integrated approaches.
Social Studies is a body of integrative knowledge, concepts, skills, generalizations and theories in the SS fields (history, geography, economics, citizenship, etc.) 
Each aspect should be taught equally. Because there are different aspects, there are so many different ways to teach SS.

The most powerful elements of Social Studies....

Social Studies is meaningful- engaging students with real-world situations.
Social Studies is integrative- draws on more than one discipline, subject, or skill set.
Social Studies is value-based- Strengthens students' sense of democratic values and social responsibility.
Social Studies is challenging- incorporates different perspectives and draws on students' critical-thinking skills.
Social Studies is active- Participatory, makes use of manipulatives or physical environment. Real learning occurs when students are engaged; they apply different skills.