Today I gave my first assessment in the fifth grade! It was a big moment so I thought I should share while I had it fresh on my mind. I remember reading that teachers should try to make as much feedback as possible positive. Because of this, I made sure I commented at least one good thing that a student did on every single paper. Instead of saying "This is wrong", I decided to ask questions about their answer so I could better understand it, rather than just saying "No, ____is the answer". I hope my students will receive this in a positive way so they know that I want to help them learn rather than just expecting them to regurgitate answers.
The assessment was for chapter four in our science unit about ecosystems, population, and communities which included biomes as well as the food chains/webs. I decided to include part of my assessment from the text since students are so used to textbook assessments. This part of the "test" was all vocabulary based. It did include a picture where students had to identify three nonliving things within the ecosystems. Most students chose things like the sun, dirt, rocks, water, etc. while others wanted to include the plant life that was in the picture. I wonder if I misled them when talking about living and non-living things within an ecosystem. Maybe I wasn't clear enough that although plants do not have "body" parts, they are considered living things.
The second page I created myself. Eight of my students needed modifications made to their test. All students were given a word bank, which I was debating over. All of the words were only used once and only the words on the sheet were given. I expected students, especially those without special needs to easily match these terms. If students missed a majority of the problems, they typically missed the matching vocabulary. I wonder what I could do differently so my students do know and own the vocabulary. This is part of what I want to work on in my action research during literacy stations.
For my eight students, they had two open-ended questions relating to a map, where as the general education students had 3 open ended questions that asked not only to give an answer, but to explain why or how they know that. Many students wrote one part but did not answer why or how. I think this may be because students are often not asked to explain why they think what they think, but it is such a critical part of the learning process. This is definitely an aspect that I would like to continue with during my assessment techniques.
I did have multiple 100's on the test and 9 that scored 90 or above and 8 that scored in the 80s. The lowest score was an 27%. For those students who did poorly, I contemplated giving their tests back and letting them fix their own mistakes. I wonder if students who do get the opportunity to fix mistakes would remember it more than those who do not get the opportunity. Is it fair to those students who did study? Some students misinterpreted the graph (i.e. they gave me the months where the temperatures were the same for each city). I definitely want to make sure I'm following all IEP regulations that are given for my students, and I know that means if certain students score below a set score they may retake it.
Ideally, I would like to have more authentic assessments that students do throughout the chapter. However, I feel like with this group it is such a struggle just to read the text that it's almost impossible to then further divide a set amount of time into projects during each chapter. Perhaps I need to work on finding a balance...until next time...
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