Lesson Planning

Oh lesson planning. The wonderful world of lesson planning. I want to tell all of you that it has a breeze for me and that everything has come so easily for me, but that would be a lie. I would say as far as what is coming easy for me is coming up with random ideas for lesson plans that I think would be fun for a secondary education classroom. I always think about what I think is fun in junior high or high school and apply that to my lesson plans. But then here comes in my issue, applying this idea I have into a 4 to 7 page lesson plan. I have always been the type of person that has been pretty vague about my ideas, so it is super difficult for me to give every detail in a teacher's role and student's role, but I know that it is super important to include those two things. I know it is just going to take time and working at it though, so hopefully I can get better. Fingers crossed!

Pros and Cons to Different Assessments

PROS OF THE ASSESSMENTS 

SELECTED RESPONSE AND SHORT ANSWER

• Selected response options do a good job at assessing mastery of discrete elements of knowledge, such as important history facts, spelling words, foreign language vocabulary, and parts of plants.
• Efficient in that we can administer large numbers of questions per unit of testing time and so can cover a lot of material relatively quickly. 

EXTENDED WRITTEN RESPONSE

• They can get at deeper levels of knowledge.
• Extended written response is a good choice for assessing reasoning targets. 

PERFORMANCE ASSESSMENT

• This helps assess how well students are actually learning the material. 

PERSONAL COMMUNICATION 

• For some students, such as those with special needs, English language learners, or younger students, it is the best way to gather accurate information.

CONS OF THE ASSESSMENTS

SELECTED RESPONSE AND SHORT ANSWER 

• There are limits to this format when assessing reasoning.

EXTENDED WRITTEN RESPONSE

• Extended written response is useful for assessing blocks of knowledge rather than pieces of information detached from one another (causes of environmental disasters, the carbon cycle in the atmosphere, etc.) 
• Extended written response assessments are not as efficient as selected response assessments because responding to each takes longer.

PERFORMANCE ASSESSMENT

• We can’t know the reason for failure unless we follow up the performance assessment with one of the other assessment methods. 
•  It is inefficient to assess all content knowledge with a performance assessment. 
• It just isn’t practical (or safe) to conduct some performance assessments.

PERSONAL COMMUNCATION 

• Tends to be inefficient if a lot of knowledge is to be assessed for lots of students.
• The drawbacks with using personal communication to assess reasoning proficiency are, as always, the amount of time it takes and the record-keeping challenge it poses.

WHAT ROLES WILL ASSESSMENTS PLAY?

Assessments will play a big role in my English classroom. I will obviously have assessments in my classroom, but I do not want them to be the main driving factor in my classroom. Students freak out when they hear "assessment" so my plan is to try to make them not scary. For example, while there are cons to personal communication, I have always been one that likes to check in with others by simply asking how they're doing and what they need help with. I could add onto this by having my students write in a journal (or something similar) anything they are struggling with, doing well with, etc., so I can see how I can help them. 

Deriving a Learning Target

The most challenging part of deriving a learning target for me was definitely coming up with a learning target that would relate to every part of an assessment. When thinking of a learning target for something just in general, yeah it might not sound that hard, but then adding on that the learning target has to relate to every part of your lesson while still engaging to students, it making sense, etc. is a lot for me. Both teachers and students need to be able to understand and connect with the learning target and if they don't, the entire lesson and class period/time could suffer due to a poorly written learning target.

The learning target explains what the assessment of the lesson will be about. It sets the basis of what the student's will be learning (or at least what they should be learning). An assessment connects to this because after the learning target and lesson take place, a teacher will assess how well a student truly understands the material that was put out for them. If the learning target was clear and done correctly, the assessments should come back well, if not, well it won't end as well. 

Standards for Learning

1. On a personal level (for example, as a student - in my case, as a parent) how do you feel about standards?

I definitely go back and forth when it comes to the standards. As a student, I personally have kind of always been biased towards standards. This is because it has always been strange to me that each student has to learn the same thing as the year prior. On the other hand, I can see why they got implemented, because there are certain lessons that I believe each class should know by the end of the year. 

2. As a future teacher, how do you view content learning standards?

When looking at it from a teacher's standpoint, I can see standards a little different. I think from a teacher's perspective, standards will probably be a great thing. They can be something that I can use to make sure all of my students learn what they need to know by the end of the year. On the other hand, the standards are still general enough that I can make the assignments fun and add my own flare to connect with the students. 

3. What did you learn about deconstructing standards and how confident are you about being able to do so?

Honestly, at this point, I am not super confident in the ability to deconstruct standards. I did learn however that deconstructing standards is the ability to break up a standard into smaller learning targets to guide daily instruction. I obviously will need more help with teaching standards, but I think that by writing out the standard, then breaking it up into helpful daily lessons is the first step. 

Reflective Journal (1.11)

I have always been a.. different type of learner. I am one of the worst procrastinators according to many people that have seen my learning style. I love learning, don't get me wrong, I just struggle to pay/keep attention sometimes. This can make me an annoying learner. I am also very quiet in most classes in fear of sounding unintelligent. I have such a desire to learn something new everyday though so after I get past my procrastination, I will then become a perfectionist and want to learn everything about what I am throwing myself into.


I would say something huge that has impacted my life as a learner would be my previous schooling experiences. Throughout K-12, I never had homework or if I did, it was very minimal so I didn't really have to worry about doing it at a certain time. But when I got into college, I learned that there will almost always be homework, and you have to get it done quickly. It has been a struggle for me to try to change my ways of thinking, but I'm REALLY trying.

After taking the mindset quiz, I scored an 80% in the growth mindset range. When I began to read the chart from 1.10 about the difference between a fixed mindset and a growth mindset, I began to see the similarities between my mindset results and myself as a learner. My intelligence has developed over time, I wasn't one of those kids that was just born smart, I really have to work at doing well in school. Also, while I don't like challenges and setbacks, I would rather face them than just avoid them because I think that helps me learn more in the end.

I do still need to take steps to get closer to this growth mindset to help my students do the same one day. I really want to focus on not letting setbacks and challenges ever stop me (and the students) from giving up on the task. I want to show my students that setbacks are a part of life, and success will come to those that keep trying and don't give up.