Reach 104 Assignment #3

In reading this chapter for the second time, the central message in this chapter is to think like an assessor and not like a teacher. How am I going to check/assess that the students have achieved the goals in Stage 1 of UbD? Yesterday when I was doing a lesson with the Tarheels about how to find one less and one more than a number, I had them all in a big circle on the carpet and using the sticks I had enough time to pick between 5-7 to demonstrate after I had modeled 1 time. They had to use the base ten blocks and ones blocks to create a given number that another students had chosen for them and demonstrate using the manipulatives how to construct that number. Then they had to show how to make one less (taking 1 away) and one more ( adding another one block). I was amazed at what I discovered through observation. Some students I thought would not be able to do the task because they were still struggling (or so I thought) with tens and ones and how to make them did a very solid job. One in particular when I pulled her stick out of the cup, I thought to myself, "she is going to struggle and make a lot of errors." Boy did she show me differently! She was not only able to make the number with the blocks, but she went a step further and showed me on the number line where one less and one more would be in relation to the given number. She connected the words before and after which were the concepts the day before to one less and one more. Amazing! What made this amazing for me is that I had thought that she was farther behind in her comprehension of this concept. Some of the other students were amazed, and even her cousin turned around to me and said,"look teacher, she knows." I was full of emotion. My point here is that this was a perfect activity to assess 5-7 children per class period. Could they make the number using the blocks? Could they tell me how many tens and ones? Can they count by 10's? Can they write the number? Can they say the number? Can they find the numbers on a number line? Do they know what to do when there is a number like 30 with no ones? How would they manipulate the blocks to show one less than 30 for example? What would they take away or add? In contrast, another student I called on in the last class simply went up to the board wrote the number the student had given him and filled in the blanks for the number one less than and one more than with no difficulty. Now I asked him to explain. I asked him to prove it and he breezed through the same process. He said, "I know because I have it in my head."

Thinking like an assessor goes beyond just the final paper test. It is a plan to put into place to put all the pieces together to come to a conclusion of what the student understands and is able to transfer over into new situations. Observations, dialogues, performance assessments, tests and quizzes all are assessments that help the teacher. All class period is an assessment from the moment they walk in and do Bellwork to the last activity that we do in Math Meeting. I have to constantly be watching, and it keeps me on my toes because with 81 students it is quite the job. I am pretty good at keeping my mental notes on this but it would be a goal of mine to create some method of being able to record these observations as I see them. I am actually excited about the idea of assessing because it includes so much more than just the paper test. It involves everything you see them do with your eyes and everything you hear them say with your ears!