EDU 501 Colorado College Teacher Planning Performance Task Paper
Part 1 Assignment 1: Choose one CCR Standard in the CORE subject area of your choice. (Steps to access standards) 1. http://www.mdek12.org/ 2. Click on Educators 3. Click on Academic Standards 4. Select English, Science, Math, or Socials Studies CCRS standards. o Use the Resource “Unpacking the Standards” document to analyze your standard and gain in-depth knowledge about what you must teach to mastery to your students. Part 2 (chp 2) Dolly Davis is a fourth-grade teacher who has set up her social studies activities on a mastery learning basis. Students are allowed to work through most of their social studies assignments at their own speed. Much of the social studies program in Dolly’s class is based on reading assignments, so students can move at their own pace. When students believe they are ready to demonstrate mastery of the social studies skills and knowledge that Dolly has described in written documents distributed early in the school year, students set up an oral assessment. Dolly then spends 10 to 15 minutes presenting a series of short-answer items that students must answer orally. So that students do not discover from previously assessed students what the items on the assessment are, Dolly selects items at random from a pool of nearly 50 items for each of the 4 major social studies assessments during the year. Although most students seem to appreciate Dolly’s willingness to let them be assessed when they’re ready, several students have complained that they “got a harder test” than some of their classmates. The dissatisfied students have encouraged Dolly to retain her mastery learning model, but to assess all students at the same time. Dolly is deciding whether to maintain her on-call oral assessments or revert to her former practice of using written examinations administered to the entire class at the same time. If you were Dolly, what would your decision be? Read and respond to Decision Time in Chapter 2. Use text-based evidence (cited correctly) to aid you in your response. Part 3 (chp 4) Group-Influenced Grading A junior high school English teacher, Cecilia Celina, has recently installed cooperative learning groups in all five of her classes. The groups are organized so that, although there are individual grades earned by students based on each student’s specific accomplishments, there is also a group-based grade that is dependent on the average performance of a student’s group. Cecilia decides that 60 percent of a student’s grade will be based on the student’s individual effort and 40 percent of the student’s grade will be based on the collective efforts of the student’s group. She uses this 60–40 split when she grades students’ written examinations, as well as when she grades a group’s oral presentation to the rest of the class. Several of Cecilia’s fellow teachers have been interested in her use of cooperative learning because they are considering employing such an approach in their own classes. One of those teachers, Fred Florie, is uncomfortable about Cecilia’s 60–40 split of grading weights. Fred believes that Cecilia cannot arrive at a valid estimate of an individual student’s accomplishment when 40 percent of the student’s grade is based on the efforts of other students. Cecilia responds that this aggregated grading practice is one of the key features of cooperative learning, because it is the contribution of the group grade that motivates the students in a group to help each other learn. In most of her groups, for example, she finds that students willingly help other group members prepare for important examinations. As she considers Fred’s concerns, Cecilia concludes that he is most troubled about the validity of the inferences she makes about her students’ achievements. In her mind, however, she separates an estimate of a student’s accomplishments from the grade she gives a student. Cecilia believes she has three decision options facing her. As she sees it, she can (1) leave matters as they are, (2) delete all group-based contributions to an individual student’s grade, or (3) modify the 60–40 split. If you were Cecilia, what would your decision be? Part 4 Diagnostic Assessment - Now that you have unwrapped your chosen standard and reviewed the corresponding standard for the grades below and above, you need to create a diagnostic assessment. Think of this assessment as a pretest. Do your students have the foundation needed for you to begin teaching this standard? This assessment should contain questions addressing ALL of the prerequisites you identified on your unwrapping document. Include instructions for scoring and a plan for how you will integrate the results of this plan into your instructional lessons within the unit. Be sure to include a variety of question types and enough questions per prerequisite to ensure your students have mastery of the skill Part 5 Planning to provide for all students’ abilities is imperative. This can be trying and frustrating for teachers, especially inexperienced teachers. How will Scriptures from weeks 1 – 3 aid you in these trying times? Jeremiah 29:11 (New International Version) 11 For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. n 2 Corinthians 5:7 (NIV) 7 For we live by faith, not by sight. Titus 2:7 (NIV)In everything set them an example by doing what is good. In your teaching show integrity, seriousness n1 Peter 5:2 (NIV)Be shepherds of God’s flock that is under your care, watching over them—not because you must, but because you are willing, as God wants you to be; not pursuing dishonest gain, but eager to serve; nGalatians 6:9 (NIV)Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. Part 6 Summative Test Blueprint Now that you have practiced writing questions at various levels of rigor, create a blueprint (table) of how you will construct your summative test for your unit. You must have three levels of rigor. How many questions will you have at each level for your standard? This should be a good representation of each level. Level 1 questions should NOT be the majority of your test. Remember, you are not yet creating your questions. You are developing a plan as to how many questions you will have at each depth of knowledge. Your test should contain a minimum of 25 questions and should focus on higher-level questions. There is a blueprint example in your text. Part 7 Reread the “But What Does This Have to do with Teaching” segments in Chapters 6 and 7. Identify key ideas from each segment that resonated with you. What were these key ideas? Why did they resonate with you? What are your experiences with these ideas? Part 8 Summative Assessment- Using the blueprint you created in Unit 3, construct a summative assessment that you would give your students after you have fully taught your chosen standard. This test must be an appropriate length to fully assess your students’ mastery of your chosen standard. It should contain questions of at least three (3) varying levels of rigor and contain multiple question types. You should have a student copy that is ready for the student to complete and a teacher copy that contains an answer key and identifies what level of rigor each question represents. As you construct your assessment, you may realize that you need to add additional questions or increase/decrease rigor levels. If this happens, be sure to adjust your blueprint. Part 9 Read and respond to Decision Time in Chapter 8. Use text-based evidence (cited correctly) to aid you in your response. Grow, Plants, Grow! Francine Floden is a third-year biology teacher in Kennedy High School. Because she has been convinced by several of her colleagues that traditional paper-and-pencil examinations fail to capture the richness of the scientific experience, Francine has decided to base most of her students’ grades on a semester-long performance test. As Francine contemplates her new assessment plan, she decides that 90 percent of the students’ grades will stem from the quality of their responses to the performance test’s task; 10 percent of the grades will be linked to classroom participation and to a few short true–false quizzes administered throughout the semester. The task embodied in Francine’s performance test requires each student to design and conduct a 2-month experiment to study the growth of three identical plants under different conditions, and then prepare a formal scientific report describing the experiment. Although most of Francine’s students carry out their experiments at home, several students use the shelves at the rear of the classroom for their experimental plants. A number of students vary the amount of light or the kind of light received by the different plants, but most students modify the nutrients given to their plants. After a few weeks of the 2-month experimental period, all of Francine’s students seem to be satisfactorily under way with their experiments. Several of the more experienced teachers in the school, however, have expressed their reservations to Francine about what they regard as “overbooking on a single assessment experience.” The teachers suggested to Francine that she will be unable to draw defensible inferences about her students’ true mastery of biological skills and knowledge on the basis of a single performance test. They urged her to reduce dramatically the grading weight for the performance test so that, instead, additional grade-contributing exams can also be given to the students. Other colleagues, however, believe Francine’s performance-test approach is precisely what is needed in courses such as biology. They recommended that she “stay the course” and alter “not one whit” of her new assessment strategy. (Francine was obliged to look up the technical meaning of “whit.”) If you were Francine, what would your decision be? Part 10 Performance Assessment- Students demonstrate their abilities in a multitude of ways. Some will demonstrate mastery on written assessments while others will shine during projects, presentations, or artistic expression. How can students prove their mastery of your chosen standard in an alternative form? Create a performance assessment for your students. This will consist of three (3) parts: teacher copy (GRASPS and planning), interesting student copy (should grab students’ attention and make them excited to complete the assignment), and a rubric (used for scoring and explaining various levels of completion). As you begin to plan, remember that not all students are the same. Work to incorporate choice into the assignment. This will also help the student create ownership of the assignment. In Appendix B, see “Teacher Planning: Performance Task Template” and “Example of Teacher GRASPS” for part 1, “Extra NEWS Paper” for part 2, and “Rubric Template Example” for part 3 Part 11 How do you feel about assessing affective variables? Will you assess them in your class, and how will you use the results? Which ones do you feel should be assessed at school? Part 12 Formative Assessments - You will have your students for approximately 90 minutes a day per subject area that you teach. How will you fill that time? You will create and administer multiple formative assessments each day. These assessments will give you the feedback you need to know if your students are making progress towards mastering your standard. Some of these assessments will be in written format while others may not. Some will be graded while others will not. Each assessment is meaningful and gives you, the teacher, imperative information that you will use to modify or plan upcoming lessons. Create a minimum of three (3) graded and three (3) ungraded assessments for your chosen standard. Each assessment must contain a student copy that is ready for the student to complete and a teacher copy that includes the assignment, a key, grading information and a plan as to how you will use the results to direct future instruction. Since there are lots of great resources for teachers, you may use additional resources to assist you in completing this assignment. At least four (4) of your minimum six (6) assessments must be original to you. The remaining two (2) may be from another source; you must appropriately cite your source and ensure those resources can be duplicated for educational purposes. Part 13 Read and analyze “Decision Time – Which Test to Believe” from Chapter 13. How would you respond to Wanda’s parents? Each spring in the Big Valley Unified School District, students in grades 5, 8, 10, and 12 complete nationally standardized achievement tests in reading and mathematics, as well as a nationally standardized test described by its publishers as “a test of the student’s cognitive aptitude.” Because William White teaches eighth-grade students in his English classes, he is given the task of answering any questions raised by his eighth-graders’ parents about the test results. He is faced with one fairly persistent question from most parents, particularly those parents whose children scored higher on the aptitude test than on the achievement test. For example, Mr. and Mrs. Wilkins (Wanda’s parents) put the question like this: “If Wanda scored at the 90th percentile on the aptitude test and only at the 65th percentile on the achievement test, does that mean she’s not logging enough study time? Putting it another way,” they continued, “should we really believe the aptitude test’s results or the achievement test’s results? Which is Wanda’s ‘true’ test performance?” If you were William and had to decide how to answer the questions posed by Wanda’s parents, what would your answer be? Part 14Upload your final Unit Plan. Include each of the following in your plan. Your final plan is to be uploaded as one document with your elements arranged in this order Unwrapping and test blueprints, Diagnostic Assessment, Summative Assessment, Performance Assessment, Formative Assessment. See Appendix B for scoring rubric.
