Student Teaching: Week 6!

Throughout my experience I had known that assessments, formal and summative, we’re not going to be my strong suits. This week I found out why. With the 9 snow days we have had the units have been pushed back a week and a half and the unit I did finish was a project. So my first test was this week. I told the students two days prior to and we reviewed the day before.

I do understand that my expectations are very high.

However, I was do not believe that they are impossible to meet.

I am beginning to think that the educational system is doing a great disservice to the students! They believe that education is all about memorization and grades nothing to do with the journey but only the destination!

So I told the students to take time to look over their notes and study their fish “knowbook.” Students choose not to utilize the time for studying. So I asked if they were sure they wanted to begin and if they had any questions and they said nope we’re ready. I said okay then. I knew that there were questions that we went over quickly in class and I knew it wasn’t fair to ask them to identify 17 fish. So on the test I told them they had to identify only 6 fish! And I had all intentions of giving them 3 minutes at the end to utilize their “knowbook” and an article to check answers on their test. I didn’t give tell them at the beginning because I didn’t want them to just wait until this time was given to answer questions. To make a long story short, I had one very disgruntled student that acted very inappropriately. For the first time my patience was tested. I explained that if she had a problem she should approach me individually and not disrupt the other students! I do take partial blame to the assessment because I may not have been entirely prepared as far as giving the students enough time in advance to know and prepare for the test and being prepared with the test that period.

I also had students turn in a final manuscript for their speech. This was my leadership class and I was very upset and disappointed with the students. They had 30 instructional days to complete their speech prior to my arrival, and after receiving a grade for the first manuscript they had a week for making revisions. I graded the first speech very hard to light a fire under their behind! After receiving their speech grade and manuscript grade I had them write a reflection on what they thought of their speech and what they thought could be improved, students did so. After receiving all speeches, reflections and final manuscripts I graded them taking into consideration: the first manuscript, reflection, and final manuscript. Students still did not score high on their manuscripts, the grade they received on the final manuscripts ended up dropping some students grade very, very low. They were very upset with me but for the most part I thought that they deserved the grade they received for their effort. However, knowing that they thought I had failed them wasn’t something I could live with so I gave them the option to grade themselves and write a reflection telling me why they deserved that grade! I told them this was their chance to fight for their grade.

From these experiences with assessments I’ve realized it’s very important for me to clearly explain my expectations! It’s also very important to give students time to prepare for exams and give them something such as a vocab list, or questions, or anything really to be able to say if you know this and are comfortable with this information you’ll do fine on the assessment. I also realized that it’s good to ease their mind before the exam. Talk to them explain what’s on the test, explain that it’s not hard they’ll be fine; basically anything to ease their mind and relax them.