Last week of class and I feel like I have learned some great new strategies! However, let me first talk about what we talked about in week 6 before wrapping it all up! This week we looked at assessment and the different kinds of assessments and how to use these assessments.

In-class Discussion

Let's start with a classic video shown off by Brock Education since year one, and it never gets old!




Assessment is something that should be taken seriously and is the way educators collect data on their students. This week we talked about how assessment's primary focus is on student learning - we track student progress. Discussing the three forms of assessment: For, As, and Of. I believe that some still do not have a complete understanding of how these forms of assessments work. This can lead to more confusion when talking about diagnostic, formative and summative assessments.

This video really helped me in my first year to understand how the assessment works and how it is seen in the classroom:



Assessment is something that is changing and educators need to learn how to differentiate our assessment for our students. There are many documents and videos that can help educators expand on their assessment portfolios.

Online Discussion:

The last math mindset module we looked at was making math real for students. The video showing how animals and insects use math to create patterns is something that can be shown to students to help improve engagement. I personally have used the sport of basketball in my previous placement while discussing angel - as this was a huge interest for my students. I love this video and want to use it in my upcoming placement:




Webinar
This last week's webinar focused on report cards. Tom and I facilitated this webinar. For me I personally felt unequipped teaching is webinar - I have no experience while developing report cards. I was comfortable talking about assessment. I think overall this was a good webinar but felt like the faculty needs to teach future Teacher Canadiates how to write report comments.

Reflection:

Six weeks have come and gone pretty quick. I had a good understanding of math and felt that my math pedagogy was pretty solid prior to this class from the help of last year's course and through my last two associate teachers. However, with that being said I feel like I picked up a few things that I will be trying to implement in my third placement.

1. SAMR 
This was the first time I was exposed to this model and is something I will be trying in my placement and future classrooms! I am not afraid of using technology, however, I do not want to use technology just because it is convenient. Week 5 blog post is something I will be going back to read for resources and understanding about the SAMR model.

2. Rich Tasks
This is something I have seen in my past placements and is something I was unable to implement in my teachings. It is now something I want to do as a minds-on to help my students all join in the conversation.

3. Open-ended and Parallel Tasks
I knew about open-ended questions prior to this class. However, I feel like I did not implement these types of questions in a good manner. Parallel tasks are new to me and I want to give it a try next placement with my students! I will be utilizing the website provided by this course while developing questions going forward.

These were the big three things I pulled from this class! However, everything else was a good refresher or helped me better understand the concept even more! My favourite takeaway from the class was the idea behind knowledge vs understanding. That topic helped me reflect on my teachings and challenged me to think about ways to help students get a better understanding on both knowledge and understanding of the questions.