I have grown so much this year. I have grown with my own confidence as a teacher, and my ability to create lessons that all students can access. There are multiple ways I have grown this year, but one crucial way is by creating ways to assess my students through my different lessons.
Growing with Assessing students:
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- One way that that I grew throughout this year was my ability to assess my students. I found it difficult in the start of the program to find different ways for students to access the material, and find proper ways to check if they were meeting my learning goals for each lesson.
- My growth in assessing in Math:
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- At the start of the year I was unaware of how much I should expect my first graders to be able to do. I was just getting to know them as people, and I was growing to know them as math learners. I was hesitant to make worksheets that challenged but also pushed my students, and I always felt like I was giving away the answer.
- Now, I am able to work with my students and allow them to be independent math learners. I am able to push them to work hard and assess them from the work that we do. I am able to do formative assessments in small group stations, by asking them to do work on white boards and showing what they know through manipulatives.
- I just did a math lesson where all 13 of my students met my learning goals, which were to measure with cubes. I was able to properly model at the start of the lesson, so that the independent work time could go smoothly.
- Here are two examples from students in this math lesson I did in April where I had grown in my ability to assess my students accurately. I provided clear goals for the lesson and all students got every answer right. I was so proud.
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- My growth in assessing in ELA:
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- I grew with my ability to ask questions during read alouds. At the start, I was asking questions that did not challenge my students. The questions were obvious. In April, I was able to do read alouds that created meaningful discussions that students were disagreeing with each other. It is so important to be able to create a reading community where students are able to comprehend the text and bring it to the next level by creating their own opinion about the text.
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- My growth in assessing in Science:
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- In my sound and light unit, I was able to grow by providing ways for students to “show what they know”. One of the MA standards is to “create a device that makes sound or light”. I was able to create a lesson that we made kazoos, which students then could sing me a song where they talked about how sound made vibrations. I was able to think of creative ways for students to meet science learning goals, which is a skill I learned over the course of this year.
- Linked here is the video of my students showing me their science song with the kazoos we made as a class!
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