This assessment notebook demonstrates how students in my placement learned. I organized the notebook into sections for each student, and whole class assessments are featured at the end of the notebook. The questions that I used to gather this data include:
·What do students understand?
·Are the assessments aligned with students’ needs? Are students able to demonstrate their understandings in appropriate ways?
·Based on the data collected, what are the next steps for that student?
·Who frequently participates during class discussion?
·How are students working in collaboration which each other?
·Are students’ major takeaways aligned with the lesson goals?
Some of the data included in this notebook are entrance and exit tickets, word clouds, turn-and-talk notes, stop-and-jots, anecdotal observations, conference notes, and summative math test results. These artifacts informed future instructional planning, grouping strategies, small group re-teach plans, and homework assignments.
There are five main artifacts included in this assessment notebook that inform my unit plan, and these places are marked with red Post-It Tabs.
1.Poetry Word Cloud – I used students’ poetry pre-assessments to create a word cloud using their responses. As a class, we discussed our collective knowledge and poetry experience. At the conclusion of our poetry study, we discussed how we grew as poetry readers. This word cloud was an excellent way to visualize our prior knowledge as a whole community, and I use a similar “graffiti wall” participation structure as a pre-assessment in my unit plan.
2.Post-It Stop and Jots – These Post-Its help to capture student work and partnership discussion when I am unable to check in with all partnerships. In my unit plan, I include the stop-and-jots as an assessment tool for students in their partnership work and reading work.
3.Exit Ticket: Major Takeaway – I asked students to write one major takeaway that they had after an investigation of sugar. Many students explained that their major takeaway was to never eat sugar, which was not the essential learning understanding or goal of this lesson! I used these exit tickets to revisit the idea of eating sugary foods in moderation. In my unit, I include major takeaway exit tickets so that I can make sure that my essential understandings and learning goals – the “big pictures” are being conveyed by the lesson design.
4.Song Choices for Yearbook Video – This was a rather unconventional assessment, but it was very interesting. Students were asked to choose a song that captured their fifth grade year and their interests. I would have liked to use this list to create a playlist for students to listen to during choice or mellow work times. In my unit plan, I include multiple opportunities to share their interests and integrate those interests in the whole-class learning environment.
5.Entrance Tickets – This was one of my most successful learning assessments. Students were asked to decide between two experiments to determine which one was controlled and explain how they knew. I taught the mini-lesson and sent students off to work, but then I quickly analyzed their tickets. Students who were either somewhat unclear or wrong were called to the rug for a brief small-group lesson and a pre-teach about the homework assignment for that evening. Students were all-around successful with the homework assignment on designing your own controlled experiment! I will use this strategy in my unit-plan to help keep students on track and to address any gaps in their learning quickly and effectively so that they may not develop any misconceptions.