Activating prior background
knowledge is a key concept in learning. When teachers can scaffold their
lessons it helps the students learn more. When lessons are connected to each
other the students get a better understanding. PBL is a great approach to help
students build off what they learned one class and then apply it to the next. A
great warm-up activity to activate prior background knowledge is by having
every student complete a KWL chart. In this chart the students will list what
they know, what they want to know, and what they learned.
It’s important to establish
anchors for your students. Before you can assess your students you need to
learn about them. Every student is different so you have to plan ways to
differentiate instruction. It’s hard to grade every student to the same
standards because then you are not assessing them as individuals. By learning
prior to a lesson where your students are at you can create better results.
There are endless ways to assess
your students. You can assess your students based on their own improvements or
compare them to the entire class. Either way all assessments need to stay
private between the teacher, student, and parent. Portfolios are a great
assessing tool to watch your students improve over time. Formal assessments can
also be used. For example, an exam. PBL uses mainly rubrics for assessing. Many
times the teacher and students will create the rubrics together. This way the
students understand exactly what they need to accomplish.
This chapter directly relates to
what we are doing in class. It talks about how when working in teams you are
going to have students of different abilities. Its important to realize that
you know every student learns differently. PBL is a great for having students
use what works best for them.
Donovan, your reflection was very informative and well written. You had some really good thoughts in this reflection. I really enjoyed reading about activating background knowledge and also the assessment for students. As you said, using a K-W-L chart at the beginning of class is a great way to get students thinking about what they know about the topic they are going more in-depth about. Although it is simple, it’s a really effective way for students to think and organize their thoughts and it also allows for the teacher to know where each one of their students is, before teaching the lesson. Using a portfolio is a great way to assess your students and its fun for them. Portfolio’s allows students to pick their work that they want to include in their portfolio; it’s the work that they are proud of. Instead of the teacher picking their work, students are involved and have a say in it. With portfolios, the teacher, student and parent can see the growth in the student over the semester or year. Great Job!
ReplyDeleteI really liked where you said "all assessments need to stay private between the teacher, student, and parent." This is very important to gain students trust. Without the students trust it is very difficult to teach.
ReplyDeleteYou mentioned the importance of activating our students' background knowledge. It is important to get students thinking about the big ideas before they delve into a project, text, or unit. The chapter also mentioned how having students fill out permanent products like KWLs can help teachers better understand how much a student has grown academically from engaging in the project. Nice work on this reflection Donovan.
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