Ed 327 Reflection 5

December 4, 2012

The past few observations I have experienced with Mr. Pitcock’s class, two of the classes have been taking an exam, which has had me thinking about assessments a little bit. I know we haven’t really talked about assessments in this class, but I can’t help but think about it here because it is a definite part of what we do during the school day and year, and well we all have finals coming up soon too! 

Mr. Pitcock does two part exams, one part is a multiple choice section on the computer using the Acuity program (InTASC 6). Then, the second part is a free response section which he designs. In reading the exam, the questions seemed comprehensive and complete, and they certainly take the students the entire class period. I am wondering how effective it is to test a middle school student for an entire 90 minute period. Based on what we have discussed for the developmental needs of students this age, we know they need to move around during the day, they need physical activity (Developmental Need 5). Sitting in one place in focused attention for 90 minutes would be a lot for students this age and I certainly noticed it as I looked around the classroom throughout the period. Students were looking around every few minutes, moving their legs constantly under the table, or tapping pencils. I know in my personal philosophy of education I do believe in assessing students for their content knowledge, however, I am not sure that a 90 minute test is the most effective way to do this.

Our Marzano text really doesn’t delve into assessments all that much other than discussing assessing large scale projects (Marzano 96-102, 154). I can see how important it is to provide students with good feedback, but can you do that with tests in the same way you could with a large scale assignment? And how does allowing for resubmitting something play in to that? I think I would like to allow students to resubmit answers for mastery on exams in free response sections. I am not sure if this is a practice Mr. P uses, but I know I would like to offer my students this opportunity because I think something really important occurs when you allow student’s to think again about an answer, they actually look at what they did, how they could do it differently, and how they could do it better.

I know the Vatterott text discusses assessment quite a bit, and it discusses how teachers can assess three main things: product, process, and progress (Vattertott 348).  The text elucidates that student focused assessments go beyond low level learning and seeks to evaluate conceptual learning and higher order objects like those in Blooms taxonomy which include creating or evaluating. Vatterott also suggests for the middle level learning age group that exams are given more often instead over large amounts of material and infrequently, because these more frequent exams are often shorter and more manageable (Vatterott 352).

I think based on Mr. P’s practice and what I have observed the last two classes, I would like to give my future students exams more often over less material really focusing these tests on higher order thinking skills and allowing them to resubmit for mastery to demonstrate their learning. This will also allow me to maintain high expectations for student work because I can give significant feedback on how answers may not be as complete as they should be.

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