Reflective Assessment

Reflective Assessment
Reflective assessments in classrooms can be so challenging.  Many students do not test well and sometimes tests are not a fair example of all the information the student has learned.  I find portfolios and performance assessment rubrics works well for most students that I have taught, it frees the students that have any fear or pressure from taking tests. Many students know the information but freeze when they try to get the inforamtion out onto a test but there are others who do really well on a test but have problems with other types of assessments, which is why it is a good thing to have various types of assessments.

Playing in the forest

This past week I spent the week in New Bern learning all about sustainable froestry, it was amazing.  I learned so much about the types of trees in NC, how they are taken care of, why they are cut down and how to measure them correctly and whether or not to cut them down, and how someone can make money off them.  Boy if I lonly knew then what I know now I would definately have bought land with lots of trees on them.  I never realized how much there is too forestry and nature.  I really look forward to using all the information I learned with my future students!

Trail Heads by Patrick Dougherty

Trail Heads by Patrick Dougherty located at http://ncmoa.org/artnc/artifact.php?artifactid=64 is a great start to my integrated unit on forests and sustainability.  While looking at this work of art a lot of ideas came flooding through my head as ideas for beginning my lesson on forests, and again for concluding the unit.

The student will look at Trail Head and write a short journal entry about their feelings about it, what they see and what they believe it means.  As a group we will read about the work of art and the artist and discuss the importance of North Carolina forests and wildlife.  We will look for the various symbols and themes throughout. 

TLW understand that there are many different types of creative arts.  Each type of creative arts allows a person to show individual styles and expressions.  For each discipline of the creative arts there are many techniques and elements.  An artist can create illusions, get their point across, or even show their vision by using different elements and principals of art.  Each type of creative art helps to stimulate the brain and get the viewer thinking. An artist plans different elements in their artwork.  These elements include texture, line, shape, and form.  The texture describes the way something feels when touched.  The artist can create the illusion of texture by applying more paint, adding different types of lines and changing the brush strokes.  Lines are added to artwork to help create texture and breaks in artwork, the lines can be added in various ways.  The artist can draw a curved, straight, wavy or other type of line.  The artist can also join the lines together to create shapes. Shapes can be added to artwork in different designs, a square, triangle, oval, etc.  The shapes can be irregular or organic.  Shapes are flat and can be created by joining two or more lines together.  Forms are another type of element.  Unlike a shape, forms are three-dimensional.  Forms show height, width and thickness.   Students will be able to break apart the work of art and break it into themes, ideas and subject matter that the artist may have been trying to get across to the viewer as well as their own opinions and thoughts.

Activities for Forestry Integrated Unit

One of the activities that I can apply to my integrated unit on forestry from Melber & Hunter's Integrating Language Arts and Social Studies is learning history through field trips.  I can convert this activity into a mini-activity for the students to do on the school campus.  As a class they can take a field trip around the school yard looking at the various trees and flowers and determine their type, age and growth.  The students will be able to take the knowledge they have learned throughout the entire unit in order to determine how old a tree is based on the growth, rings, etc.  Students will be able to formulate questions and record their observations throughout their entire walk.  TSW be able to take notes but also draw visual representations of what they see, and take photos to help build their journal pages.  I would like to have the students stop and write in their journal at each various tree they looked at and learned about.

Integrated unit on forestry

While reading Schell & Fisher's Teaching Social Studies: A Literacy-Based Approach I was excited about some of the concepts, ideas, themes, etc. presented.  I enjoyed reading this chapter and found it to be very helpful in creating my integrated unit.

My unit will be focused on forestry, not just trees, but about sustainability, economic and social impact.  After reading some of the big ideas and concepts I would like to focus on how forests are created, what the trees have been used for in the past and what they can mean for the future, and also discuss the importance of nature and the food cycle.  We will focus on what types of trees are native to their area, how they are grown and what to do to help sustain them.  Why are trees important?  We will discuss the social and economic impact of forestry, past, present and future.  Hopefully this will lead into more topics on recycling, food cycles, population growth, etc.

Graduation

My niece graduated from Oak Park school which is a school for handicapped students.  I was so impressed with the graduation ceremony!  The whole ceremony was so special and beautifully done!  Each student was given and opportunity to speak and each of the teachers had an opportunity to share something special about each student, it was amazing!  The superintendent of schools also attended the ceremony.  I was amazed at how special the school made each student feel, even though some of them had such severe handicaps that they cannot speak or move on their own.  I wonder if all schools and teachers would take this kind of time and consideration out for all their students??

Retesting Thoughts

This week has been focused on retesting and finally the time had come to retest.  However when the students originally took the tests they were given the tests in 2 seperate testing sessions but for retesting they had to do it all in one day.  My first thought was "Are you kidding me?", but then I thought maybe it is a good thing, get it done and over with today and the kids can start thinking about wrapping up the school year and start looking forward to moving onto the next grade.  This got me thinking that if we can do the retest in one day, then why are we seperating the original test into 2 days?  Is it an advantage or disadvantage?