Final Paper
Deborah Smith
EDU 645 Learning and Assessment for the 21st Century
Instructor: Daisha Oshiro
December 19th, 2011
Final Paper
In developing a plan to assess learner performance the educator must use an instructional objective that should be clear and concise. It is a statement of the skill or skills that students will be expected to perform after a unit of instruction. A complete instructional objective includes:
1. An observable behavioral (action verbs specifying the learning outcome)
2. Any special conditions under which the behavior must be displayed.
3. The performance level considered sufficient to demonstrate mastery (Borich, 2010).
If an activity implies a specific product or result, it is considered an outcome. The instructional objective must include the end product of the instructional procedure. According to the (National Association for the Education of Young Children, 2000), knowing what to do and how to support children’s learning requires informed instructional decision making and a plan of action. This is the heart of assessment. The process of observing, recording, and otherwise documenting work that children do and how they do it is effective assessment. In working with the early childhood program (Head start) the teaching staff do just that. The teachers have a Learning Experience plan that they have to device once a month, with goals and objectives that the students have to achieve. This learning experience also includes vocabulary words that the children are exposed to and are encouraged to use. Teaching and assessment are complementary processes; one activity informs the other. Assessment should encourage children to observe and reflect on their own learning process. Asking for children’s input can be a key factor in helping them learn and take ownership of their successes. Children need to feel like insiders rather than outsiders, since teaching and learning are collaborative processes. The children really respond well when they are asked for their thoughts and ideas.
The purpose of the assessment plan that I will discuss is to expose the children to the world of “Recycling”. The outcome will be that the students will be able to identify and point out 5 recycling items. This assessment will take a week of activities in order for the students to master this concept. The following principles should be used in designing an assessment program.
1. Assessment should support children’s development and help to identify children’s strengthens, needs, and progress toward specific learning goals.
2. Assessment should take many different forms. Good assessment uses a variety of tools, including collections of children’s work (drawings, paintings), and records conversations and interviews with children. The core of assessment is daily observation (National Assessment for the Education of Young Children, 2000).
The first week will introduce the word recycle and discuss the things that we throw away, allowing the students to look around the room for items that can be recycled. The book, “Our Earth is a special planet will be read. Teacher will assist the students in wrapping a gift with newspaper and explain that newspaper can be used for many things. Teacher and children will set up a recycling bin. The second week will produce more recycling information and activities that the teacher will expose the students to. The teacher will display 3 different recycled items, such as tin foil, newspapers and cartons. Discussion will be about how these items can save the environment. The activity will be to make newspaper hats and decorate a milk carton with foil.
The third week will include discussions on garbage collectors and the importance of their work. The teacher will take the children out for a field trip walk to point out trash and what it is, while singing a cleanup song. The parents can assist the student in making a drum from recycled items. Children will be encouraged to clean up after meal time and sort out the recyclables.
This type of Teacher directed activities will go on for the rest of the week.
In developing the Assessment Context the students will go on a field trip to the Garbage Museum located in Connecticut. This museum provides hands-on activities for students to discover how to become recycling detectives. They are given magnifying lenses to locate recycling codes on a variety of items, and the students become skilled at curbside recycling “do’s and don’ts” in an educator-led game format. Each student makes choices of whether or not items belong in the recycling bin. This part of the learning outcome is related to Bloom’s Taxonomy which focuses on educational outcomes. It is taxonomy of educational objectives, and has six levels of cognitive complexity ranging from knowledge to evaluation. Knowledge requires the students to remember what they learned about recycling. Comprehension requires a level of understanding. Application requires the student to use previously acquired information in a setting other than that in which it was learned. (Garbage Museum). Analysis requires the student to identify logical errors- naming the wrong items to be recycled. Synthesis requires the student to produce something unique or original- Art projects. Evaluation requires the student to form judgments about the value of the products that have specific purpose- recycled items.
The Holistic Rubric are scoring standards composed of model answers that are used to score performance tests. They are samples of acceptable responses against which the rater compares a student’s performance. (p.203) the holistic rubric assesses work as a whole. The following is the Holistic Rubric for the scoring of the knowledge that the students have required for recycling. Students were asked to point out 5 recyclable items and demonstrate where they belong. The Oral Report and Demonstration were scored from 0-5.
5. Excellent- The student shows all 5 items and demonstrates where they should go.
4. Very Good- The student shows all 4 items and demonstrates where they should go.
3. Good- The student shows all 3 items and demonstrates where they should go.
2. Limited- The student shows all 3 items and demonstrates where they should go.
1. Poor- The student shows 1 item and demonstrates where it should go.
0. No oral report or demonstrated attempted. Retrieved from: www.ucdenver.edu/faculty_staff/faculty/center-for faculty.
The Testing Constraints that I will impose on the assessment is to use the Testing Blueprint that lets the teacher know the number of items to be considered per objective, their level of cognitive complexity in the taxonomy, and whether the test represents a balanced picture based on what was taught. A test blue print not only ensures that your test will sample all important content areas and processes but is also useful in planning and organizing instruction. The answers given by the students will let the teacher know each students level of cognitive skills, and how to plan for the next assessment. This will enable the teacher to focus on the students who weren’t able to grasp the recycling concept as well as others, and come up with strategies to use for the following assessment. One component of the blueprint is called the content outline is which lists the topic and the important objectives included under the topic. It is for these objectives that you will write test items. The educator must try to keep the total number of objectives to a manageable number. Categories serve as a reminder or a check on the “cognitive complexity” of the test. Many units that tested will contain objectives that do not go beyond the comprehension level. However, the outline can suggest that you try to incorporate higher level of learning into your instruction and evaluation. Using test blueprints requires some time and effort, but it will be time and effort worth spending (Borich, 2010).
References
Kubiszyn, T. Borich, G. (2010). Educational testing & measurement: Classroom application and practice (9th ed.). John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.
Learning to Read and Write: Developmentally Appropriate Practices for Young Children by Susan B. Newman, Carol Copple, and Sue Bredekamp (National Association for the Education of Young Children, 2000).
Retrieved from: Connecticut Resources Recovery Authority- CRRA. Org.
Retrived from: www.ucdenver.edu/faculty_staff/faculty/center-for faculty.....
