Post 1: January 10th 

Growth Mindset score, 23/30

Here are your responses for ECS 401 – Assessment of Assessment

1- What is your full name? (first, last): Jonah Neufeld
2- Hey Jonah Neufeld, at what level are you planning to teach?: Secondary
3- Jonah Neufeld, what do you think is your favorite subject to teach?: Math
4- How important do you believe ASSESSMENT is in education?: 10
5- : Yes
6- Describe what assessment and evaluation mean to you.: Assessment is very important to me as I believe that students need varied forms of assessment in order to help see personal growth and development in classes. Multiple forms of assessment also means that students will be able to show their knowledge in different ways.
7- At this point, how much are you enjoying this assessment?: Pretty good.
8- Why do you think assessment and evaluation are used within the education system?: In my opinion they are used to help guide a student through what they know and what they could learn more about. It is also good for us as educators to be able to see where a student is sitting in our class.
9- Describe a couple of good assessments, and not so good assessments, that you have experienced as a student. How did these assessments affect you?: I cannot think of any off the top of my head
10- If you want me to email your answers for your e-portfolio, please enter your email below:: jr1neufeld@sasktel.net

My assessment literacy,

my estimate and results: good

assessment speed: 80

where are we going:

curriculum knowledge – 60%

consideration of students – 60%

demonstration of learning – 60%

planning, writing & scaffolding criteria – 60%

engaging students in the assessment process – 80%

Post 2 January 17th 

personal learning plan, (For some reason I cannot get the link to my word document to paste on to here and work so i have copied and pasted it here.)

 

Personal learning plan

Jonah Neufeld

ECS 401

University of Regina

 

I want to start this by saying I have almost no experience with giving any form of assessment. the most I have ever done is marking a peer’s assignment in high school but that is all. Even throughout my first pre-internship I never had to do any form of assessment, I was teaching students lessons with no formal assessment at the end of class. The only informal assessment I was doing was checking for understanding and observation, in the end it work out because the students were taking in all the necessary information, but I wish I could have gotten a little more experience when it comes to actually giving them an assessment. Of course, I know some very basic information about assessment and what it is supposed to be like but that is really nothing in terms of where I want to be when it comes to assessment. I want to be at a point that I can give meaningful assessments that my students will be able to have fun with while also showing that they know the information at hand. I never want my student to feel bored in my classroom, I want them to look forward to coming to class each and every day so by having assessments that they can enjoy doing I feel that my goal can be accomplished.

By April 11^th I hope to have gained a clear understanding of the fundamental concepts of assessments, such as their purpose, different types, and the ethical considerations. I am going to try and take in as much information as I can prior to my 3-week internship and then apply my learnings to this in order to show my coop teacher and myself that I can create meaningful assessments for students to complete. Throughout my internship I will also be speaking with my coop teacher about assessment in order to learn some new ideas such as how they do it while also trying to find out what has worked and what has not.

shared responsibility assignment score

(105) — 91-110 = Good belief in shared responsibility between teachers and students.

i believe that both the educator and the students are responsible for allot of the questions that were asked on this assignment. there are things that the teacher will handle by themselves but there are also things that both the teacher and student can work on together to help the classroom environment flourish and be successful.

post 3 January 24th

We started our circle off with the question “what do I want my students to learn?” on page 25. Some points we decided to bring up were, where do we want to go; this is is a good poi t because it makes us think about where we want the information to lead our students, by setting our information up in certain ways we can help direct their learning and ensure they are getting all the necessary points. The start of a school year can sometimes be overwhelming because we may think, where do we start? but by understanding where we want to end it can help guide our hole teaching practice almost as if we were setting our teaching up in a backwards by design style.

Next we moved into our thoughts about tests as the exclusive assessment choice. Not all students can take this information in and then write it down on a piece of paper for an exam, students are going to remember doing meaningful projects, they are not going to remember what they wrote on a test. most of the time when a student writes a test, once they are finished all the information they just wrote down goes out the window because they are done with it. a point that was brought up in our discussion was that by not having these meaningful assessments and projects that will stick with students we are taking the fun out of learning.

the final two points we brought up were the importance of staying organized and sharing examples and criteria with students. first of all staying organized is very important, it helps us stay on track while also helping us hit everything we need to. if we do not stay organized as teachers we could potentially be missing important things that need to be brought up and with that we may not even realize we missed them until it is too late. from a personal standpoint sharing examples and criteria is important but it depends on what you are doing, for something like a presentation i may show some prior students work and explain how they did good and what i am going to be looking for. it may not be the most detailed explanation but its the fact that bringing it up in the first place can help guide students to their own success.

overall i felt this was a very productive meeting for our group, i am very happy with how things turned out and it helped me see some things from different point of view.

post 4 January 31st

we started our circle with the main idea of getting students to connect to the material. we brought up the fact that ensuring students are fully understanding the topic can help them connect to the material on a deeper level however this is an on going process that never stops. one thing that was brought up was being able to set up a growth schedule with students is important; a point meagan brought up that at the start of a semester when doing a basketball lesson she may have students take free throw shots and have a mental note of what they got, each time they do that lesson and have students shoot free throws they can work towards a final goal of maybe being able to make 10 free throws instead of 3. with this we also need to give students the feedback that they need, by giving students positive feedback it helps them see that they can complete a task at hand; at the same time we are doing a form of assessment through observation, by going around and seeing how students are doing we are allowing ourselves to collect information about how much a student is growing from the start till the end.

although this was a much shorter learning circle discussion i still believe that the information was important. connecting to the material is very important, by setting up these learning goals for students it gives us a way to assess them over the course of a semester while also allowing them to have something to work towards that they have developed themselves. by allowing the students to have their own input on what they want to work towards with the information given to them it can allow them to have a much stronger connection to topic at hand.

cultural inclusion activity score

26 — 18-27 = Good practice of cultural inclusion in assessment

cultural inclusion is very important, we need to understand that there are many different views for things in the world and many people are going to have different opinions based on their culture, race etc. it is our job as educators to create a safe environment for everyone in order to ensure that we all get along and we can all cohabitate the classroom together in a safe and positive way.

post 5 February 7th

In our learning circle this week we spoke about our thought on chapter 7 and 8. To begin we found that these chapters displayed many characteristics to show that they were student centered; however our conversation took a turn from that topic and turned into a tangent about how having visual aspects in something you are reading can really help draw attention to the work and make you want to read more. Furthermore we continued our conversation by talking about how these chapters seemed to have something for everyone whether it be young students to high school or even university students which allows for a wider area of understanding for all levels of learning. I personally believe having something like this is very important as it allows us to dive in and see different perspectives in order to help grow our understanding of education as a whole.

The next section we spoke on how we were assessed throughout our educational journey. I brought up how at least 90% of my grades came from exams and other forms of testing. There were never assessments that went above and beyond to help us show our understanding in different ways which in my opinion ended up hurting allot of students who may not have been the best at taking tests but fully understood what was needed to know. Furthermore we spoke on how eventually in order to get into post secondary something like standardized testing was almost essential in order to help accumulate grades and show where you were sitting in terms of general understanding. In my eyes there could have been many different ways to show understanding and gain grades rather than memorizing and writing answers in a piece of paper. Educators could develop different ways to accumulate grades through hands on work or more observational grading rather than a test but that is just my opinion.

Further into our conversation we spoke about different experiences such as having educators allow for rewrites on exams if students did not do well. I personally have had experience with this and thought that it really allowed us to show what we knew. Sometimes people would have off days or other things that would come up in life causing bad exam marks so by having the opportunity to rewrite makes sure students have the chance to really show what they know just in case something ever did occur in their life that in turn caused bad test marks. We also spoke about how important student involvement is. We all found that it is so helpful to get ideas from students because classes always very and students never learn the same so by having input from students allows us as educators to develop assessment strategies that can relate to students in ways that would effect them best. In the future I really hope to bring in as much student involvement as possible because it can help create a better learning environment and in turn help students have a better time in the classroom while showing they understand what is going on and what they are learning.

post 6

Dialogue and connections final draft

Discussion 1

For my first discussion I spoke with an old educator of mine. He taught me physical education from grade 9 through 12 and because of this relationship we were able to have a fairly good conversation about what assessment looked like for him as a physical education teacher for high school students. Because it was on hand at the time, he decided to walk me through his assessment protocol for wellness 10. As he has taught this course for many years it was very easy for him to walk me through the step-by-step process of how he creates his entire year plan through various outcomes and how he breaks the assessment portion up through those outcomes.

Throughout wellness 10 there are 7 mandatory outcomes and 5 outcomes that are optional, to make it easy to lay out a semester he chooses 3 of the 5 optional outcomes in order to make an even 10 outcomes for the class. He then went on to tell me how in order to get the 100% he equally breaks up the outcomes into 10% chunks. Each outcome will then have its own assignments and other categories that will in turn add up to 10% of the overall grade for the class. Throughout this conversation he told me how there are times that he may have to combine outcomes for time reasons and will then add the percentages together to make a section weighted out of 20%.

As the semester goes by assignments start to appear throughout his course however each assignment or assessment will be graded equally in order to make grading fair. For example, one outcome that needs to be covered contains a section where you need to talk about the bone structure of a human in basic terms and also show the ways in which the muscles and bones work together to move the body. For this there would be sections of the outcome that require students to do movement activities and relate back to what sections of the body are moving, what muscles are being contracted and what bones are in that area as well. In this case there would also be a written quiz or 2 that allows students to visualize the bones and muscles in the body and write down answers about what it does and even its name. Other outcomes may have something like dance be the highlight for the class so the assignment he would present to the students would be to create a dance in a group that will in turn be presented to the rest of the class. One major idea he shared with me was that in order for good assessment in my eyes there needs to be variation so that students can show their knowledge across different forms of assessment, whether it is through presentation, written assignments, quizzes, hands on physical activity, exit slips etc. students will always have a way to show that they understand the course material and have fun doing it.

Finally, I asked him how important he believed assessment was; his answer, although simple, was very insightful to the way he thought about the topic. He stated that he thinks assessment is very important. Assessment can come in so many different ways so by being able to give students different ways to show their understanding through various assessments is important for us as teachers and also the student in order to see where they are and what they could work on to better themselves. Assessment is not only for us, it helps students think about topics in different ways and show how their own creativity can help them strive throughout their educational journey. After this final quote we just sat around a little longer and talked about how university has been for me.

Throughout this conversation I tried my best to allow him to control where it went, if I needed more information, I was able to ask a question so that we could further discuss the topic. I never had to ask many questions because it seemed that he had a full understanding of what I needed from him. In the end I do not believe that this conversation really changed the way I thought about assessment, I also find that it is very important to both students and educators and can eventually help them both; I found lots of good information throughout this conversation and even though I do not believe that it changed my opinions I do believe that it allowed me to see some things that I could add to my own assessment practices in the future. The way he laid out the year was very clear and easy to read which in turn allowed me to really see what was going to happen over the course of an entire semester in about 10 seconds of reading, I also loved the way he likes to incorporate many different forms of assessment throughout the class to add variation. I truly believe that both of these ideas will be used in my future if I am able to become a physical education teacher but even if I were not, I would like to find a way to add this in anywhere I can.

Discussion 2

For my second discussion I chose to speak with a retired teacher that used to work at my elementary school in Moose Jaw. Before retirement she used to teach grade 7 but now, she works as a sub and a speaker for Metis nation. Due to her having taught many different grades and subjects she gave me more of a general description of her opinions on assessment. Due to this much wider range of grades and subjects she was able to give me many different points of interest when it came to assessment. Since she has been teaching since the early 2000s, she has a very traditional mindset when it came to assessment. She likes the idea of having many small assignments that are straight to the point; throughout our discussion she did not indicate that she used many alternate forms of assessment but rather used the traditional way of assessing through assignments and exams. Although I am not particularly fond of this way of assessing students due to the fact that not all students are good with exams and assignments formed like small tests, I cannot take away the fact that they have been using this form of assessment for years and it obviously works.

Throughout our discussion she kept bringing up how she really stuck to the outcomes and tried to base all assessment off of said outcomes. This way she could make sure students were learning what was required in the course. She described to me that each class would be broken up into major units that used multiple outcomes, within each of these units there would be small assignments or tests that would be based off of the information learnt throughout the unit. She stated that by doing it this way she was able to assess students understanding of different topics and ideas. Before moving on to the next unit she would re cover information to make sure students would be able to have another way of taking in that information. Throughout our conversation she also spoke about the importance of making sure students had a good understanding of the topics in order to eventually use this knowledge in the future. “understanding is like scaffold, if you don’t set it up right it will not support its needs or use” she used this quote to describe the importance of setting students up for success; “if you do not have a solid understanding and are not able to use the info, your education or knowledge of the future outcomes will be much weaker”.

Overall, throughout our conversations she spoke very highly about the importance of assessment. She spoke about how by focusing on student understanding she could help set them up for their future classes and assignments. One thing I really respect about her is that she seems to really put the student needs first, if a student is struggling, she would do whatever she could to help them succeed often times reteaching sections to the entire class. She brought up the idea of re-teaching to the entire class rather than to just the student that asked the question because more times than not other students are wondering the same thing but just do not have the confidence to speak up and ask for themselves. The final thoughts she wanted to leave me with when we were finishing up our conversation was to be clear about your expectation when giving different assessments. By laying out specific guidelines and expectations students will have a better understanding of what you are looking for and will in turn do better. she said that she will even give students the assignment rubric if needed so that they can do personal checks and make sure they are hitting every point they need.

Once we had concluded our discussion, I took time to let myself think about what we had spoke about and really take it in. When thinking back to this assignment I tried to focus on what parts of the discussion impacted my understanding of assessment. I truly believed that my opinions would not change very much because I already knew her teaching style and knew that I wanted to stay away from traditional ways of teaching as much as I could; however, by the end of our conversation I believe she may have changed my mind a little. I came into this conversation knowing that I personally did not like the traditional way of teaching because it seemed to be rinse and repeat for everything regardless of what was being learnt, my entire educational journey was built with small quizzes and tests with a final at the end. It was very rare for me to get an assignment that truly made me think in a different way which in turn made me feel as if this way of teaching would lose student attention and eventually die off completely. Although I came in with this mindset, I allowed myself to listen and take in as much as I could and by the end my mind was telling me that maybe It wasn’t that I didn’t like the style of teaching but rather the delivery of the information. The way she described teaching student to me was much different than what I had experienced, she put students first and made sure there was good understanding before moving onto the next section. Like stated earlier she spoke very highly about the importance of student understanding, and I truly feel this is what makes her ay of teaching miles ahead of what I was able to experience. In the end I do believe that this way of teaching could survive, but in order for this to be the case teachers need to be able to put students first and ensure that they are understanding the outcomes and are having success.

Just like the first discussion I had this conversation flowed very smoothly, it was almost as if she had everything on hand and ready for me without me really having to ask anything of her. She was able to lay out her opinions, what she does for assessment, and even the importance of different topics. I truly feel that this was a very successful discussion and I also feel that I was able to take allot away from it. Allowing her to control the conversation also allowed everything to flow very smoothly. Like I said earlier, this discussion went great, and I truly believe that she may have opened my eyes to teaching styles that I never thought I would have liked.

Finally, to relate this to my future as an educator I hope to add some parts of what I learned to my teaching and assessment practices in the future; of course not all things will transfer to my practices in the future. If I could speak on one major idea that I took away from this assignment it would be that I need to keep an open mind. I came into these discussions believing that I knew exactly what I wanted to be like however now that oi have completed this and have had discussions with two very different educators I am happy to say that I have learnt so many new ideas that I hope to hold onto in the future.

Post 7 February 28th

For class today there was no learning circle discussion to copy down onto here however today we went through culture and cultural inclusion for the main idea of the day. for this activity we were asked to break into groups in order to have discussions about whether we agreed or disagreed with a particular statement related to culture or cultural inclusion. This activity was very cool as it allowed us to see others perspectives on the topic.

Post 8 march 6th

Class was very simple today, we did a little breakdown of what the class was going to look like and then went right into grading each others dialogue papers. we had to do 7 of our peers paper as well as a self reflection for the assignment.

post 9 April 3rd

the main focus of the learning circles was to share about our pre internship experience and

what we had to do for assessment. in this weeks post i will be sharing my experience.

over the course of 3 weeks i got to teach 3 different classes, period 1 grade 9 Phys ed, period 2 wellness 10, period 4 wellness 10. although there was very little difference between these classes based on what i was teaching it was still very interesting to see how different classes reacted to the same lessons. my period 1 and 2 classes were much small then my period 4 class so teaching was much easier, i had to do so much less classroom management and i was able to keep students engaged much easier because of the small class size. over the course of the 3 weeks i got to teach one lesson in the classroom which was a mental health lesson, 3 different workout lessons in their workout room, and some lessons in the gym which consisted of various games and activities, i made sure to add some indigenous games in as well because it is always important to pass on the knowledge of the indigenous people that came before us. the worst part of this experience was the assessment portion, i made a goal for myself to try and incorporate as much assessment as possible in order to gain a better understanding and to practice my assessment skills; although this was a goal of mine i did not get to accomplish it. my coop teacher did not want me to do any of my own assessment and wanted me to use the grading system that has been used for a few years. this grading system is a daily self evaluation that students do not have to think about at all. i personally hate this type of assessment because it does not allow us to see if a students truly understands the skills that were being taught, they just come up to you give you a score out of 5 (usually a 5 for most students) and go on about their day. they do not need to think about anything or reflect on what they have learnt. in my opinion this is just lazy teaching and it honestly pained me to watch it take place. because i did not get to do any formal assessment with the students i made sure to ask them questions throughout the lessons to help me see that they were understanding what was being taught. sometimes i would do a fun little exit slip where students would need to tell me something before they left the class. for example on one of my workout lessons i put a lot of emphasis on form and technique so at the end of class i had students give me a reason why form and technique was important before they left the class, this allowed me to see if students had thought about what they were doing throughout the class and also helped me see if students took anything away from my lesson. teaching in the classroom was a little disappointing. even though my lesson went very well i would have liked to do a little more on the assessment front; students are only graded on a few in class assignments that they do throughout the semester and that is all so i tried to sneak in my own little assessment to ensure students were taking in some information. i had the students do a show what you know activity to start the class, since this was their fist time doing a mental health lesson i did not expect much. for the rest of class student were supposed to write down any points that i bring up that correlate with the questions on the sheet i gave them. this was i could see if they were listening by the information they were writing down. at the end of class i did a kind of think pair share activity where students got into groups and shred what they had written down with each other. next they were tasked with writing down one interesting thing they each learnt on the back of the page. finally i had 1 person from each group come up to the board and write down on the of the new things they learnt onto the board and we went over them as a class.

 

although i did not get the experience that i wanted in regards to using assessment in my teaching i am still happy with how my internship went and in the end i was able to pass and move on to my full internship!

Post 10 April 10th

5 key ideas paper

The start of the semester felt like it was going to be a walk in the park, I felt that I knew everything I needed to about assessment and that this class was going to teach me some new ideas but mainly be a review. After the first week I was still eager however I was a bit confused about assessments after looking into some information we were about to go through this semester. I have always known that assessments were important for us as teachers although I was not certain why they were so necessary. I had always believed assessments to be tests, quizzes, or other written assignments that we got throughout our classes; I soon realized that they are so much more than that. When I wrote a smart goal for myself, I wanted to be able to have a better understanding of what assessments were all about, different types of assessments, and why they matter. Although I do not feel that I fully reached my goal, I do feel that I have gained a much deeper understanding of the subject as a whole.

As I found my way through this class I tried my best to ick u on 5 key ideas that could help guide my knowledge of assessment for the future. As of right now these are my 5 key ideas however, we never stop learning so these key ideas of assessment may change with time, but I look forward to seeing what the future brings for me. My first thoughts were to find the purpose of assessment; after going through the class and talking with other teachers I have found that assessments are not just about testing what students know or what they have learnt. They serve many purposes such as helping teachers understand what our students are actually taking away from our lessons, this will help us identify what needs more focus in future lessons in order to get the key ideas through. Finding out that assessments do not only allow students to get a grade back but also help us guide our lessons was a major eye opener, I never knew how much educators relied on assessments to help their class thrive.

After finding the purpose of assessments I was able to start picking my 5 big ideas for assessment. My first big idea was formative assessment, I have learned so much about the importance of ongoing, formative assessment as a tool for continuous improvement. Rather than viewing assessment solely as a means of evaluation at the end of a learning period, I discovered its value in providing timely feedback that informs my learning process. Embracing formative assessment has enabled me to identify areas of strength and weakness early on, allowing for me to focus on areas of improvement and foster growth. My second key idea was types of assessments, throughout the semester I learned that assessments come in various forms, not just tests and quizzes. There are formative assessments, like class discussions and exit tickets, that help teachers gauge student understanding on the fly. Summative assessments, such as final exams, measure overall learning. Understanding these different types helped me see how assessments can be tailored to different learning needs. My third key idea was ethical considerations; a major idea that continued occurring was that assessments must be fair and unbiased. Learning about ethical considerations made me realize the importance of designing assessments that don’t disadvantage any group of students. It’s about ensuring equity and fairness for all learners. My fourth key idea is feedback and improvement, assessments aren’t just about grading; they’re also about providing feedback that helps students grow. Constructive feedback, whether written or verbal, can guide students on their learning journey. This idea really resonated with me because I realized the power of feedback in fostering student growth. My final key idea  was collaboration and reflection, assessment isn’t a solitary endeavor. It involves collaboration between teachers, students, and sometimes even parents. Reflecting on assessment practices and discussing them with colleagues can lead to valuable insights and improvements in teaching and learning.

Apart from doing this to support my learning goal I feel that I have gained so much additional information that is going to help me in my future as an educator. One key takeaway was the importance of flexibility in assessment. Not all students learn the same way, it is very important to be able to adapt assessments to help meet the diverse needs of any student. Lots of the time this adaptation needs to be done on the fly however when you are able to gain better relationships with your students you will know how they learn much better so you will know the best assessment strategies for them. In conclusion, my adventure in discovering everything there is to know about assessment has been a very enlightening experience. I have gained a much deeper appreciation for the role assessments play in education and have learned valuable insights that will guide my future teaching practices. As I continue on my path to becoming an educator, I am excited to apply what I have learned to create meaningful assessments that not only support student learning but also student growth.

my assessment plan video link