FWE

During this course, I taught a sixth grade class two lessons: a direct instruction lesson and an inquiry-based lesson. I used diagnostic, formative, and summative assessments for each lesson. The diagnostic assessments from each lesson consisted of questions that pre-assessed what the students already knew. For example, in the direct lesson, there was a word cloud on the first slide that the students looked at and shared some of the words that they recognized. During the inquiry-based lesson, The first slide contained five questions pertaining to metamorphic rocks and the rock cycle that they had learned about during the previous class. The formative assessments for both lessons was more observation based; I walked around throughout the lesson to see how the students were doing and if there were any confusions. I had to go over to some students’ desks and help them get back on track, but they were all good for the most part. Another formative assessment I used during the direct lesson was having review slides where the students had to answer questions. I would call on one student and the rest of the class would hold up either a green or red stoplight to say whether they agreed or disagreed. The summative assessment for the direct lesson was a sheet titled “Let’s Review!” that consisted of 6 fill-in-the-blank and short answer questions. There were a few students who didn’t seem to understand what the questions were asking because they answered the questions with other words that they learned that day. One questions asks what the two types of metamorphic rocks are, which would be foliated and nonfoliated, but one student put gneiss and quartzite. Those were the rocks that were passed around for the students to look at, but the student just didn’t understand exactly what the question was asking. The summative assessment for the inquiry-based lesson was for the students to write a rock story, which they were given the rubric for. They had to pretend they were a rock and explain what happened to them as they went through the rock cycle. Below is one example of each of the summative assessments:










We discussed the three different forms of assessments in the beginning of the semester during class and we were required to read about it in our textbook. I learned from this class and my Social Studies Methods class that diagnostic assessment is basically just a pre-test or a series of questions that you can ask to determine what the students already know. For both classes, we also created a pre-test that the students took before we started so we could have an idea of what they already know. Formative assessments are informal assessments that are conducted throughout the lesson without the students even noticing, which is typically done through observations or possibly even asking the students questions again. Summative assessments are given at the end of the lesson to inform you whether or not the students learned anything from the lesson. I think that all of the ones that I chose for my lessons were extremely important and followed the guidelines of what we discussed in class, as well as what we read in our textbook. After grading the summative assessments, I was able to tell where each individual student was. The formative and diagnostic assessments showed me that I didn’t spend enough time explaining the rock cycle because many students were still very confused by it. If I had the opportunity to spend another day with this class, I would definitely ask if they had any more questions and review the rock cycle in a much slower and more detailed way.

Some of the students have severe disabilities that effect their learning, so those students had some accommodations. One student has a one-on-one aide that stayed with him at all times to help him with each assignment. There was another student that typically had a teacher by her because she struggles with things such as writing and panics easily. An adult stayed close by to make sure she stayed calm and got everything done in a timely manner. There weren’t any other areas of concern that I was notified of and the students all completed their work during each lesson. The students all loved the inquiry lesson and were able to comprehend the rock cycle much more after the activity, but there was still some confusion. The inquiry lesson required the students to go through the rock cycle using crayons, so they further developed their understanding of what actually occurs during the rock cycle. The students were able to make connections between what they were doing with the crayons and the actual rock cycle, so they were able to apply it to real-life scenarios.

Collaboration and cooperation within the classroom is absolutely crucial. I believe that students should have the opportunity to work in groups more often than not because it allows them to bounce ideas off of each other and explain things in a way that the teacher may not be able to. The students worked together during the guided practice activities in the direct instruction lesson, but for the inquiry-based lesson, they were actually put into groups. One of the guided practice activities required the students to figure out where the index cards their group had belonged on the rock cycle chart. Each group had to discuss it and problem solve, then everyone got a chance to come up to the board and place their card where the group agreed it would go. The groups for the inquiry lesson had to go to each station together and figure out what was happening at each one as a group. The students were actively engaged in each lesson and seemed to genuinely enjoy it.