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EDUC 614 Designing and Assessing Teaching and Learning has taught me how
to make thinking more visible when working with K-12 learners. Richhardt, et al. (2011)
Brown Rice- EDUC 614 ASTL Portfolio Reflection Point 2
activity to promotes minds-on thinking (p. 8-10). In my teaching, I have grown from
solely being systematic in finding practice that satisfies Standards of Learning to finding
a systemic and efficacy balance. I have learned how to use student interest, guiding
questions, and the understanding of students peers to help all learners gain a self-
discovered sense of taught content and a deeper understanding of learned information via
making meaningful connections. In other words, more Aha moments are drawn out on
purpose. I teach with my students opposed to teaching to them or at them with is the
emptily of the following learning outcome: Teachers know the subjects they teach and
differentiate or scaffold the learning (by product, process, content, etc.). However, my
knowledge was only at the recall level. I could only recite the how and cite a go-to
example of having tiered (easy, medium, hard) student practice, as the big idea was too
large to encapsulate. After reading and discussing Tomlinsons (1999) work, I was able to
see a clear picture of what differentiation is and what it entails, the details. Differentiation
is Personalized instruction and the first (and hardest) step towards implementing it is
[Knowing] where we want to end up before we start out and plan to get there
responsive classroom that promotes student-centered learning, guidance from the teacher,
difference between my current and two previous third grade classes. For example, my
students this year are less literal and have started the school year off taking pride in
showing and sharing their solving strategies. In the past, this mindset shift would be
commonly seen towards the end of Quarter 2, beginning of Quarter 3. I have not only
learned from my experience, but have taken into account learning outcome six, where
Teachers account for the needs of culturally, linguistically, and cognitively diverse
learners.
assessing students as a temperature check or at the end of a unit, and possibly spiraling
back to a few previous concepts, learning over time is examined along with real-life
thinking. For example, when assessing students in world geography, a small group
interactive activity, called Find Hannah, was used as a task. Here, students not only had
to read maps and use their knowledge of cardinal points, scale increments along with
latitude and longitude, students also had to use their estimation skills, which is typically a
math concept. Specifically, students had to estimate given coordinate points if they
differed from the labeled increments on the vertical and/or horizontal map scale. In
addition, as each level increases, the number of dots multiply (i.e. level one has two
blinking dots, level two has four blinking dots, etc.), causing it to become more of a
challenge to achieve the goal of finding Hannah on the given map. Without any direct
teaching, the majority of students were able to make the math and social studies connect
failure from becoming chronic (Stiggins, 2007). Through the use of an authentic
assessment, technology, and an activity that peaked the interest of my students, my once
day-to-day assessment practices have evolved into a teaching and learning process that
strives to enhance, opposed merely monitor, student learning (Stiggins, 2007). It is here
that learning outcome eight has been addressed, in that Teachers use technology [,tools
that help students learn,] to facilitate student learning and their own professional
development.
Resources
Ritchhart, R., Church, M., & Morrison, K. (2011). Making thinking visible: How to
Brown Rice- EDUC 614 ASTL Portfolio Reflection Point 5
64(8), 22-26.