Christmas and Goodbye

Today marked the last day in Exploring Teaching. We began the hour with our ornament swap and Secret Santa reveal. Students created ornaments either for themselves of their secret Santa yesterday in Exploring Teaching and got to give them to each other today. This was a fun craft project and helped students learn about managing materials, maintaining a safe environment, and incorporating holidays, arts and creativity into a classroom.

Students with their ornaments

 

Sadie Long and Lori Wilson presented an interesting Christmas activity today; where students were required to complete Christmas movements. Tyler was the winner, doing a fantastic impression of a snowflake falling, reindeer prancing, and twisting like a candy cane. Cassie, Madison and Jordan had students create party hats to ring in the New Year and students reflected on their favorite quote, project or memory in Exploring Teaching.

This has been a wonderful semester and I am excited to see what Teaching Internship and the future brings for everyone.

Exploring Teaching Last Class Picture

Santa’s Helpers

Yesterday and today students in Exploring Teaching served as Santa’s helpers. We partnered with Nike elementary to write back to students in Kindergarten who practiced writing by writing a letter to Santa.  Students in Exploring Teaching were able to get into the holiday spirit and see how teachers can use resources in the community and school to accomplish projects. We enjoyed creating a postcard template using publisher, coloring in many candy canes and using glitter glue to personalize everyone's letters. We had an assembly line and each student helped to ensure all students in Kindergarten will have a letter written back to them.  

 

            Students are also celebrating their second day of Secret Santa. On Thursday students received letters and today secret Santas' brought in everyone’s favorite drinks. The poor weather put a damper on our celebration and we hope everyone has a safe weekend.

You're the Teacher: Assessments

Students in Exploring Teaching have been busy at work completing their last major assignment, “You’re the Teacher: Assessments.” Students divided up into groups and had to become the expert on one type of summative assessment. For this project, students had to put together a lesson plan, design the lesson, activities and notes handout and teach the class. We took this lesson one step further and students had to create an assessment assessing the class over their assessment lesson that followed all the assessment guidelines (try saying that 10 times fast).

            For example, one of our groups taught about True False assessments. For their assessment, they had to come up with at least 5 test questions over True False that were written in True False format.

1.      True or False? One strength of true/false tests is that you cover a lot of content is short period of time.

2.      True or False? One weakness of true/false tests is that they’re hard to write because you can’t have any true evidence in a false statement.

3.      True or False? On a true/false test the statements should be complex and hard to read.

4.      True or False? On a true/false test you should keep the sentences short.

5.      True or false? One strength of true/false tests is that they’re easy and reliable to grade.

Yesterday Casey and Kaylee presented a lesson over Authentic Assessments, which assess students’ knowledge based on actually “real world” tasks. They created a rubric and had the class split up into two teams to create poster about Christmas that demonstrates helping and how you can incorporate holidays into your room decorations and character education. This was a great way to assess Teachers, because teachers are responsible for decorating their own classroom.

Check out what students created below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Students took the large assessment test today, having to write an essay, complete completion, short answer, true/false, matching, multiple Choice and High Order Thinking questions. Overall, I think everyone is glad to be done with assessments in Exploring Teaching.

Student Bulletin Designs Project Six

Happy Mini Series Monday!
            We wrapped up our sixth and last Monday Miniseries projects. Check out our newest door decoration and mini bulletin board below.

A frosty penguin created by Alexis and Tristan. Tristan and Alexis were inspired by a bulletin board on Pinterest and recreated their very own adorable penguin to grace my door.  

“Ms. Valvero’s” Reindeer” created by Jordan, Madison and Cassie by having students trace their hands and then creating reindeer antlers using their school photos.

“Just another School of Fish” created by Erikson and Catie. Catie and Erikson got the class involved by having everyone create their own unique sea creature.  

Stocking Fireplace created by Stefani, Shelby and Erika. The girls used wrapping paper and rolled traditional construction paper to create a 3-D fireplace. Each student has a stocking hanging.



Assessments

On Tuesday we began our Assessments unit. Assessments are a vital part of a teacher’s job whether it is preparing students for state and standardized assessments, creating assessments for a course, adjusting instructional strategies based on informal assessment feedback or interpreting data from assessments.  Assessment and Instruction are Inseparable!!

Students shared their feelings about assessment using the cell phones and PollEverywhere. Students also had many discussions about the purpose and necessity of grades, testing and assessments.

On Wednesday students took notes on the difference between formative and summative assessments. Formative assessments are thought of as the steps up a mountain and summative occur when you are on the top and finished.

Students participated in 11 formative assessments and received a “Making Assessments Fun” packet for future use.

Student Bulletin Designs Project Five

Happy Mini Series Monday!
                We wrapped up our fifth Monday Miniseries projects. Check out our newest door decoration and mini bulletin board below.

Tyler, Sabryna and Caitlin designed a mini bulletin board and had each student in the class contribute to their tree by making a present or ornament.

Jacklyn, Sierra and Sam created a fun wintery door decoration incorporating snowflake coffee filters.