Our unit is complete and I am very pleased with how it turned out and how the collaboration process went. I was a bit apprehensive at the beginning of the collaboration process because I would be doing it mostly online with Mary. We were fortunate to have a few times over the course of the semester when we were able to work together in person and these times proved to be very valuable for our unit. We worked best when we were together in person or on the phone rather than through e-mail. I think this is because we could quickly bounce ideas off of each other and get immediate feedback about our different ideas. If this had been a real situation, I think making weekly meetings with the teacher would prove to be valuable rather than communicating completely or mostly through e-mail.
I think this was an excellent process to go through as a graduate student because I feel like I have now had a collaborative experience and my first one won't be at my first job. I feel as though I could use the wiki and unit we created as part of a portfolio for a job interview and it would help a lot. I do wish that I could help to implement the unit Mary and I created, but I know I will hear about it as she does it at the end of this school year. She did share it with the other third grade teacher at her school and she was very excited to teach it for the first time this year and see the changes that were made to improve it.
As the LMS partner in this collaboration, I feel as though I did my job to help Mary enhance her unit with different resources, technology ideas, and ways to communicate what is being taught in her classroom. I feel as though her students will have a greater understanding of folktales and also be able to gain some technology skills in the process. I'm looking forward to repeating this process with other teachers in the future.
I am eager to review in depth the units of the others in the class. I think that every collaboration experience will be different because every teacher and unit is unique. I am interested to see how others went about the process and what things they did to enhance a teacher's unit.
Friday, April 17, 2009
Friday, April 3, 2009
Assessment
Mary and I are done with our collaboration, so I want to tell a bit about a few sections that we added into the unit and talk about our assessment in more depth.
First, we added a section entitled "Higher Order Thinking Framework". This section lists some of the higher order thinking questions that frame the entire unit. Many of these questions come up in various places throughout the unit, but mainly in the worksheets that the students complete to receive their assessment for the unit. Each of these questions is meant to get students thinking instead of just copying information about their folktales. The questions are designed to have students create their own response.
We also added a section on "Ethnolinguistics Minorities". This section details what accommodations would be made for students from different cultures or who speak different languages. The school which Mary is teaching in is not the most diverse school, but we still felt that it was important to include information on this area in case other teachers/librarians would want to use this unit as their own. This also helps Mary out if she ever does have a student who would fall into this category, although they are few and far between in this school.
In regards to assessment, we made some big changes for Mary. In the past, she would look at what level the students completed the folktale worksheets and give them a grade based on that. She also had a reading and writing rubric that would be used for report cards, but did not specifically focus on just this unit. Essentially, she did not really have a concrete assessment tool that was used specifically for this unit.
To change this, we decided that rubrics would be the best form of assessment for this unit. We created one rubric for the overall unit. Since there is a requirement for the unit of reading a certain number of books and doing a certain number of worksheets, we wanted to make sure that these numbers were recorded along with the rubric. We made a checklist/rubric that would work for this unit. In order to produce the rubric, we used the existing reading/writing rubrics that she used for report cards and modified them to fit this unit. It was very helpful to have some sort of rubric in place already to work from and having them very close in topics will help Mary when she does her report cards in the future.
We also added a rating scale/rubric for the Folktale Recommendation project. This will ensure that the students are evaluated on their use of technology in the unit. Since this was not found on the unit rubric, we felt it was important to have a separate rubric for this aspect. This rubric will be completed by the librarian/computer teacher in conjunction with Mary.
The stakeholders for this unit are the student, parents, administration, and community. We detailed a few options for sharing the assessment information with these stakeholders.
Students and parents will receive copies of the rubric to see how they did in each area. These rubrics will also be presented at parent/teacher conferences and discussed. This will help the parents to understand exactly why their child was given the grade that they were and be able to ask questions regarding their child's work.
The administration will be shown the wiki to show exactly what the teacher and librarian did together and how technology can enhance the learning process. This wiki will be a good way to show how the librarian is adding to the learning of the students and how they are enhancing the classroom work of the teacher. Some student work and rubrics can also be shared with the administration to show how the students did in the unit and with technology.
The community will also get to experience some of what the students did for this project. The can characters that the students create can be displayed in the public library or some other community area particular to the area of the school. The information notecards that go along with the can characters will also be displayed. This will show the community what the students are capable of doing and will also get the name of the school in the public for the community to see. The Folktale Recommendation PowerPoint can also be displayed in the public library to encourage students and parents to read more folktales. Once again, this will be a great way to show that the school is using technology and perhaps get more people into the school. A local newspaper could even run a story with pictures of the can characters and the slideshow to show the unique things that the school is accomplishing.
Overall, I think the assessment for this unit will work and be worthwhile to the teacher, librarian, students, parents, administration, and community. The assessment has the possibility to bring all these different groups of people together for learning.
First, we added a section entitled "Higher Order Thinking Framework". This section lists some of the higher order thinking questions that frame the entire unit. Many of these questions come up in various places throughout the unit, but mainly in the worksheets that the students complete to receive their assessment for the unit. Each of these questions is meant to get students thinking instead of just copying information about their folktales. The questions are designed to have students create their own response.
We also added a section on "Ethnolinguistics Minorities". This section details what accommodations would be made for students from different cultures or who speak different languages. The school which Mary is teaching in is not the most diverse school, but we still felt that it was important to include information on this area in case other teachers/librarians would want to use this unit as their own. This also helps Mary out if she ever does have a student who would fall into this category, although they are few and far between in this school.
In regards to assessment, we made some big changes for Mary. In the past, she would look at what level the students completed the folktale worksheets and give them a grade based on that. She also had a reading and writing rubric that would be used for report cards, but did not specifically focus on just this unit. Essentially, she did not really have a concrete assessment tool that was used specifically for this unit.
To change this, we decided that rubrics would be the best form of assessment for this unit. We created one rubric for the overall unit. Since there is a requirement for the unit of reading a certain number of books and doing a certain number of worksheets, we wanted to make sure that these numbers were recorded along with the rubric. We made a checklist/rubric that would work for this unit. In order to produce the rubric, we used the existing reading/writing rubrics that she used for report cards and modified them to fit this unit. It was very helpful to have some sort of rubric in place already to work from and having them very close in topics will help Mary when she does her report cards in the future.
We also added a rating scale/rubric for the Folktale Recommendation project. This will ensure that the students are evaluated on their use of technology in the unit. Since this was not found on the unit rubric, we felt it was important to have a separate rubric for this aspect. This rubric will be completed by the librarian/computer teacher in conjunction with Mary.
The stakeholders for this unit are the student, parents, administration, and community. We detailed a few options for sharing the assessment information with these stakeholders.
Students and parents will receive copies of the rubric to see how they did in each area. These rubrics will also be presented at parent/teacher conferences and discussed. This will help the parents to understand exactly why their child was given the grade that they were and be able to ask questions regarding their child's work.
The administration will be shown the wiki to show exactly what the teacher and librarian did together and how technology can enhance the learning process. This wiki will be a good way to show how the librarian is adding to the learning of the students and how they are enhancing the classroom work of the teacher. Some student work and rubrics can also be shared with the administration to show how the students did in the unit and with technology.
The community will also get to experience some of what the students did for this project. The can characters that the students create can be displayed in the public library or some other community area particular to the area of the school. The information notecards that go along with the can characters will also be displayed. This will show the community what the students are capable of doing and will also get the name of the school in the public for the community to see. The Folktale Recommendation PowerPoint can also be displayed in the public library to encourage students and parents to read more folktales. Once again, this will be a great way to show that the school is using technology and perhaps get more people into the school. A local newspaper could even run a story with pictures of the can characters and the slideshow to show the unique things that the school is accomplishing.
Overall, I think the assessment for this unit will work and be worthwhile to the teacher, librarian, students, parents, administration, and community. The assessment has the possibility to bring all these different groups of people together for learning.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
