To include observational assessments in your daily lessons remember you can't be setting the stage with lecturing...teachers should be talking 25% of the time and students talking the majority of the time. If the class norm is that all students must be active participants, then the teacher might be able to call on particular students to assess if they are understanding a particular skill...recording who is talking in the class. That being said, build in group work times or table work time. If the structure and norms of the classroom are built in to encourage the teacher circulating around through the students it is an excellent time to observe. Preparation with a class list and the standards focusing on listed in a checklist will allow the teacher to observe and record as they circulate around the room. During the walk around, teachers often use a method of diagnostic interviews. Making sure to be focused on what the skill or skills you are trying to see if the student understands is important. Building the norm that peer assisted learning is important to having time to observe and interact one on one with students. When students are engaged with their peers it is easy to observe. Using technology such as the Swivl which is a visual and audio recorder with multiple units in your classroom is a good way to observe what students are saying during the table talks without crowding them. The Swivl uses your iphone or ipad to record a visual of you and the audio of each of the tables in the room on different frequencies so that you can review them on your on time. The structure of the classroom and norms of the classroom are the drivers for allowing teachers to find the time for observing and interacting with students in a way that produces learning opportunities for students (and teachers).
I too was glad to read about suggested strategies, tools, and tricks for tracking observational assessments. Critical to all of these methods is the culture of the classroom. Students must develop the habit of (and I must establish the expectation for) sharing, writing, and listening. If students are not active participants in the classroom, there's nothing much to observe. In response, you end up crushing Greg's idea that the teacher should talk 25% of the time and student voices should fill the rest of the time. You fill the void that should be student engagement with a monologue of your own. Expectations and classroom culture are so important.
Anecdotal notes and check lists both seem doable if I am focused on just a handful of students each class period. For each lesson, and for any unit, I will need to develop benchmarks of proficiency which I would be looking for. Thus, developing learning targets for each lesson is important, as well as learning goals for the unit. While reading I kept thinking about Cris's daily agenda and her checklist of questions she plans to ask. I think I need to observe that in action to understand how that works, but it would appear that it creates an additional level of structure to any observational assessment. What's more, you can take a photo of it so record keeping isn't such an on-the-spot task, and the questions can be strategically targeted at specific students.
I was surprised by the way the book began its discussion about observations. "...several days to two weeks may be required to complete a single observation for each student on how they are progressing on a standard." I think it's impractical to expect to collect relevant information for every students every day, but if it takes weeks, then how are those observations being used to adjust your instruction in a timely way? One interpretation might be that you observe a handful of students each day. After the first day you observe a student struggling with a concept and you adjust your instruction the next day to address that trouble. In so doing, your goal is to support the one student you observed, but you realize this adjustment might help others in the class that you haven't observed? But if you have 22 students in a class, it takes four or five days to cycle through all of them just once (a handful each day). I feel badly for those on day 5 who might have been struggling from day 1 but my adjustments didn't address their challenges.
So, I like Katherine's idea of using entrance or exit tasks to identify those students to focus on for observational assessments and anecdotal notes.
Thinking back to my recent subbing experience, I was taken by surprise when a student who typically didn't have trouble with the concepts unexpectedly stumbled when trying to graph linear relationships with negative slope. Now, struggle is good and I was glad to see that this student didn't give up but buckled down to figure it our for herself. The situation reminded me, however, that even if you focus on a handful of students either through exit/entrance tasks or simply by cycling through the roster, any student might struggle with concepts at any time; I must not 'track' students and therefore miss something along the way.
I agree that the specific suggestions in the book were extremely helpful! The anecdotal notes seem very helpful in observing students but like Dean mentions, taking notes over several days to two weeks does not seem helpful when you have a student struggling from day 1. I think maybe combining different observational assessments together will help to decrease the possibility of a student falling behind without the teacher noticing. I think having students self-assess is a helpful tool to guide instruction if students are able to answer honestly that they are not understanding a concept.
Observations provide teachers with valuable insight that might otherwise go unnoticed and provide useful data for lesson planning, providing feedback, and determining grades. When considering the type of informations, data can be collected over a period of a day to several weeks for each student. With so much to take into account, daily observations can be easily incorporated into lessons. One of the simplest methods to use is anecdotal notes. These notes can be recorded either during the lesson or immediately after with a couple of sentences. The text suggests attaching cards with the students’ names to a clipboard and recording the data directly on the cards. With each lesson, it is appropriate to focus your attention on about 5 students. This approach appeals to me because it is simple, efficient, and organized. Another method involves creating checklists with specific process, mathematical skills, or content objectives.With the use of a checklist, it is easier to collect data for long-term objectives. I like this method because it is more focused and detailed than the anecdotal notes. On the other hand, I think it requires more time to create the checklist ahead of time and attention to thoroughly complete.
With my current position, I often take anecdotal notes on the students I work with and feel comfortable with this approach. I think it is a beneficial practice that can be used easily for any subject. While I have not formally used a checklist, the teachers I work with record observations using checklists and even use them to periodically confer with students. It seems to me that both methods are valuable in taking daily observations of students. I think as a teacher I will use anecdotal notes more informally and checklists with rubrics to collect data on more specific topics. For instance, using anecdotal notes in regards to a student thinking more flexibly or having a positive attitude and a checklist to record a student's ability to solve subtraction problems mentally.
To include observational assessments in your daily lessons remember you can't be setting the stage with lecturing...teachers should be talking 25% of the time and students talking the majority of the time. If the class norm is that all students must be active participants, then the teacher might be able to call on particular students to assess if they are understanding a particular skill...recording who is talking in the class. That being said, build in group work times or table work time. If the structure and norms of the classroom are built in to encourage the teacher circulating around through the students it is an excellent time to observe. Preparation with a class list and the standards focusing on listed in a checklist will allow the teacher to observe and record as they circulate around the room. During the walk around, teachers often use a method of diagnostic interviews. Making sure to be focused on what the skill or skills you are trying to see if the student understands is important. Building the norm that peer assisted learning is important to having time to observe and interact one on one with students. When students are engaged with their peers it is easy to observe. Using technology such as the Swivl which is a visual and audio recorder with multiple units in your classroom is a good way to observe what students are saying during the table talks without crowding them. The Swivl uses your iphone or ipad to record a visual of you and the audio of each of the tables in the room on different frequencies so that you can review them on your on time. The structure of the classroom and norms of the classroom are the drivers for allowing teachers to find the time for observing and interacting with students in a way that produces learning opportunities for students (and teachers).
ReplyDeleteI too was glad to read about suggested strategies, tools, and tricks for tracking observational assessments. Critical to all of these methods is the culture of the classroom. Students must develop the habit of (and I must establish the expectation for) sharing, writing, and listening. If students are not active participants in the classroom, there's nothing much to observe. In response, you end up crushing Greg's idea that the teacher should talk 25% of the time and student voices should fill the rest of the time. You fill the void that should be student engagement with a monologue of your own. Expectations and classroom culture are so important.
ReplyDeleteAnecdotal notes and check lists both seem doable if I am focused on just a handful of students each class period. For each lesson, and for any unit, I will need to develop benchmarks of proficiency which I would be looking for. Thus, developing learning targets for each lesson is important, as well as learning goals for the unit. While reading I kept thinking about Cris's daily agenda and her checklist of questions she plans to ask. I think I need to observe that in action to understand how that works, but it would appear that it creates an additional level of structure to any observational assessment. What's more, you can take a photo of it so record keeping isn't such an on-the-spot task, and the questions can be strategically targeted at specific students.
I was surprised by the way the book began its discussion about observations. "...several days to two weeks may be required to complete a single observation for each student on how they are progressing on a standard." I think it's impractical to expect to collect relevant information for every students every day, but if it takes weeks, then how are those observations being used to adjust your instruction in a timely way? One interpretation might be that you observe a handful of students each day. After the first day you observe a student struggling with a concept and you adjust your instruction the next day to address that trouble. In so doing, your goal is to support the one student you observed, but you realize this adjustment might help others in the class that you haven't observed? But if you have 22 students in a class, it takes four or five days to cycle through all of them just once (a handful each day). I feel badly for those on day 5 who might have been struggling from day 1 but my adjustments didn't address their challenges.
So, I like Katherine's idea of using entrance or exit tasks to identify those students to focus on for observational assessments and anecdotal notes.
Thinking back to my recent subbing experience, I was taken by surprise when a student who typically didn't have trouble with the concepts unexpectedly stumbled when trying to graph linear relationships with negative slope. Now, struggle is good and I was glad to see that this student didn't give up but buckled down to figure it our for herself. The situation reminded me, however, that even if you focus on a handful of students either through exit/entrance tasks or simply by cycling through the roster, any student might struggle with concepts at any time; I must not 'track' students and therefore miss something along the way.
I agree that the specific suggestions in the book were extremely helpful! The anecdotal notes seem very helpful in observing students but like Dean mentions, taking notes over several days to two weeks does not seem helpful when you have a student struggling from day 1. I think maybe combining different observational assessments together will help to decrease the possibility of a student falling behind without the teacher noticing. I think having students self-assess is a helpful tool to guide instruction if students are able to answer honestly that they are not understanding a concept.
ReplyDeleteObservations provide teachers with valuable insight that might otherwise go unnoticed and provide useful data for lesson planning, providing feedback, and determining grades. When considering the type of informations, data can be collected over a period of a day to several weeks for each student. With so much to take into account, daily observations can be easily incorporated into lessons. One of the simplest methods to use is anecdotal notes. These notes can be recorded either during the lesson or immediately after with a couple of sentences. The text suggests attaching cards with the students’ names to a clipboard and recording the data directly on the cards. With each lesson, it is appropriate to focus your attention on about 5 students. This approach appeals to me because it is simple, efficient, and organized. Another method involves creating checklists with specific process, mathematical skills, or content objectives.With the use of a checklist, it is easier to collect data for long-term objectives. I like this method because it is more focused and detailed than the anecdotal notes. On the other hand, I think it requires more time to create the checklist ahead of time and attention to thoroughly complete.
ReplyDeleteWith my current position, I often take anecdotal notes on the students I work with and feel comfortable with this approach. I think it is a beneficial practice that can be used easily for any subject. While I have not formally used a checklist, the teachers I work with record observations using checklists and even use them to periodically confer with students. It seems to me that both methods are valuable in taking daily observations of students. I think as a teacher I will use anecdotal notes more informally and checklists with rubrics to collect data on more specific topics. For instance, using anecdotal notes in regards to a student thinking more flexibly or having a positive attitude and a checklist to record a student's ability to solve subtraction problems mentally.