Reading Reflection #9

1) Description of a method of understanding prior-knowledge of students.

At the beginning of the project teachers can use activities to find out more about their students' prior understanding. A K-W-L chart is a good example. Teachers can create this chart with students by asking them what they know and what they want to know at the beginning of the project. They can then ask students what they learned at the end of the project. Activities like this help teachers see where their students are before they begin the project because not all students will be starting at the same place.

2) Discussion on the importance of establishing anchors for a project.

Establishing anchors for a project allows teachers to gain a sense of where their students are starting and and how far they are going as they work to meet their learning goals. These anchors also help teachers expand the opportunities to differentiate instruction and help all learners be successful.

3) Description of several ways to assess what students learned during the project.

If teachers developed rubrics when they designed their project that can use them to assess progress toward learning goals. Rubrics are most meaningful to students when they help develop them and understand the criteria by which their work will be evaluated. If they do, rubrics can provide meaningful feedback for students. Teachers can also use online grade books to assess what their students learned during a project. Online grade books allow students to receive feedback across multiple categories for one class. Some examples for categories might be: how well a students knows the content, written communication, critical thinking, and work ethic. Online grade books allow students, parents, and teachers to have access to the same assessment data and that creates opportunities for conversations about student achievement. Finally, project tests allow teachers to see what students really learned over the course of a unit. These tests don't test facts, they test how well students have mastered key content by forcing them to look at things in a different way.

4) Discussion on how concepts in this chapter relate to your topic/project.

I think assessing students in different ways will be very important for our project. I also think having our students create their own rubric at the beginning would be very helpful. It would allow them to see not only where the project is going but also what they will be graded on once it's over. If students create their own rubrics, they don't question what is expected of them and they work hard to reach the learning goals they created for themselves. Using an online gradebook would also be helpful for a long project like ours because students would be able to see their individual grades as the project went on. Students would obviously be graded on different aspects of the project and seeing detailed descriptions of their individual grades would help them know what they need to improve before the end of the project. For example, our students would be  graded on their research, their written recipe, their cookbook, and their partcipation in the class dinner. They would also be graded on smaller assignments within these things so an online gradebook would really help the teachers, students, and parents see how each child is doing over the course of the entire project.