Pam Callahan’s EDUC628 Blog
Online Education Course
How do I know my students are learning?
One way to assess students who are thinking like learners could be to give them projects to expand their knowledge of a particular concept. My textbook resources come with enrichment activities, and I have been able to squeeze in about one a month. Another way could be to have students do a presentation on an applied topic. The key is that there has to be communication between the learner and the teacher. There has to be that “proof” that the learning has taken place.
I get into a quandary when I am assessing student learning. I still do the traditional methods of grading homework, giving quizzes and tests, grading notebooks, and try to fit in the projects, but I still don’t feel like I am getting to the heart of the matter. Am I proving by giving a good grade that my students are learning? I think so, and then I will move onto a new topic, go back and ask a question I think they should remember, and most of them don’t. Did they really learn?
One student made a comment to me last week that when I teach something new, she just pushes out the stuff she had learned before. But if I keep going back and reteaching, then I don’t cover the content. It makes me feel like I am not an effective teacher for this student, and I don’t know how to turn this student into a learner. I think teachers who have a higher number of students during the day have the greatest challenge. If every kid has a different way of learning, how can you best address everyone? Does it mean teaching a topic eight different ways?
In summary, I have ideas about how to know if my students are learning, but none of them have proved true all of the time. Maybe I need to overhaul my ways of assessing. I have more questions than answers, and still feel like I am in the experimental stage of assessment.
October 28th, 2007 at 5:30 pm
I know what you mean. When I student taught, I would move on to something new and the students would completely forget what I just taught them. I wasn’t exactly sure how to change from students to learners either at the time. I need to reevaluate my instruction so that I can help my students become better learners.
October 28th, 2007 at 10:52 pm
I think your pain is common to all of us. How do we get it all done? And it is sooo frustrating to do a unit review of several chapters and your students sit there like they’ve never heard of what you are talking about!
November 4th, 2007 at 11:55 am
I have picked up some ideas during this week that I hope will help alleviate this problem to some extent. I have posted a blog entry that talks more about formative assessment. It is called “Inside the black box”. Also, at the meeting I attended, they modeled some math activities where we teach students conceptually, and that they will retain the knowledge better than if we just tell them what we want them to learn. I
The activity we did was measuring angles using wedges. The wedges were different sizes, so all of our answer were different, so we ended up making our own measuring scale. Then we took wax paper and folded it so that we all had the same size wedge to measure with. Then, a teacher can introduce the idea of protractors and measurement. Students are taught the concept of measuring by different scales, then are given a particular scale to use. They learn the concept of measuring by different means, then achieve learning the use of the protractor through this conceptual process.
I am beginning to see a light at the end of the tunnel of learning.