Blog Post #4

How does this teacher manage assessment?

Working in the classroom towards the end of the school year I was able to witness a few times Mrs. C assess her students.

There was one day she assessed her class in math, where she was testing them on shapes and also counting by 5's and 10's. The way she assessed her class with math is she had four math stations set up in the room, one was computers set up to play math games, one had a worksheet involving counting by 5's and 10's front and back using pictures and words, the third station she had students working on a fun addition worksheet and then the last work station was a table with her and no more than 3 students. At this station Mrs. C built blocks of 5's and 10's having each student give her an answer as to how many blocks where there individually by counting off. She also used small baskets with small fuzz balls some with 5, some with 10 in them. This activity she would have the students count off baskets and individual balls to give her an amount. Having the group in such a small number she was able to see more of a personal response and also how the students worked with each other closely to achieve the answers.  

Another chance I saw her assess her students was one on one reading. She had the class in the computer lab for this assessment working on reading and language art games. She would call each student up individually where she had a set of two books. She would have the student read one book, I saw her marking on a sheet of paper, I did notice though that if the student finished that book with ease the student was released back to their computer, if the student struggled too much with the first book, they were asked to read a second book which was an "easier" read, again marking a sheet of paper with comments and what looked like possible times the student stumbled on the book.

I liked that she took the time with each student to hear them read, she never sat and corrected them, but let the child read on his or her own. She would later talk to the child about their reading after they had finished with encouraging words. I liked that. I liked seeing every child walking away happy and not walking away feeling defeated.