EdTech542 Reflection: Key Principles of Effective Assessment

Discuss how your planned assessments meet the key requirements for effective assessments. Reflect on how you might adjust your teaching during your project to allow more student input in the evaluation process.

Throughout the project there are times for students to reflect on their learning and see real-life application with what they are completing in class. Through a daily journal, to relevant readings, to peer assessment, students get to their end goal of creating a master plan for a subdivision and then work to hypothetically sell off the houses within it. I created rubrics for a majority of the pieces so that students can see ahead of time (and throughout the process) how they will be evaluated and can choose which level they would like to achieve. Through these rubrics I tried to keep some criteria open-ended so as not to limit the students creativity and exploration of the topic.

I am not opposed to the idea of student input, but in all honesty I do not know how that could be implemented well with the project. The final piece of the project is the accumulation of the pieces they create throughout their time. One idea is that I could add in collaboration times, if they suggest them, to check for mathematical accuracy and design flaws. I realize I could lead the students to the ultimate criteria through leading questions, but with all the pieces becoming the whole I don’t think they would understand what final outcome should look like. I guess another idea would be to give them the rubric that I created and we have a brainstorming time of how to change it, clarify it, and get it in words that they would fully understand and agree upon.

 

Project Choice Reflections

I had a hard time fully deciding on a project. Towards the end of this week I realized I just needed to make a decision, so I have and so far this has been the hardest part. I learned this week about Driving Questions and how they are like a thesis for the entire project. They need to be open-ended to avoid simple answers, but be something that the student wants to learn about and something that piques their interests. I worked to be open ended, but direct so as not to make a driving question that is too vague and misleads the students. Through each of the examples and videos that we read through and watched this week and last week, I noticed the amount of planning time that it takes to create an effective project and the amount of collaboration time are vital.

In the past I have tried to collaborate with the science department when they did science fair projects. I thought it would be a great way to incorporate their experiments with math. The science teacher said no and that he would just do it in his class and the department head said he doesn’t like to collaborate because the other departments do it wrong (like English does not write reports correctly and math does not present the information correctly or accurately enough). This is all to say that I think a PBL project would be a great way to work with other departments and has encouraged me to try again at implementing a project, in conjunction with other teachers, that can cover multiple disciplines.

To get back to the questions for this reflection, currently I am not using many tools to create my project, but I think I will implement some technology tools such as Excel, Word, and maybe a 2-D drawing program if I can find a free user-friendly one online. Students can create an advertisement and/or flyer using Word, Publisher, or even PowerPoint. This allows for choice on their part and a way to show their skills in a way that is comfortable to them.

Project Search Reflections

As I was looking this week for project ideas I found that many labeled as being math related were not, some were very specific to the school it was created for, and others were way beyond my students’ abilities. Overall though, there were some good projects. Some of them seemed short and more of a problem based approach. I did find too that the Algebra projects versus the middle school projects are not as good. It looks like there are quite a few good middle school projects available on the BIE website.

There were a few projects that looked like they could be pretty good. Here is one of them:

Yourville by Sheila Ruddle

I would probably not be able to take it as advanced as she created it, but I could still use the same ideas. I would probably include a component of a subdivision as a whole and allow the students to create the layout for it off of the plans of two or three houses.

A complete offshoot of this would be to have them build something like a small planter that they could look at perimeter and area and determine the most efficient use of the space. It could even introduce volume when you look at the depth of the planter. Then, if it worked out…we could plant something. 🙂

It is honestly overwhelming to see all of the projects out there especially when there are multiple that seem to fit well with what I teach. I think PBL will fit well into my classroom, but I need to start small and then continually add more in to my classroom or else nothing will happen. 🙂