I Couldn't Attend The Online Class/ Portfolios

I am so sorry guys, I was completely unable to attend the online course last week because Tommy Hilfiger kept me hostage at his store board folding his cloths.. =/ Anyway, Just to catch up on a blog post I want to discuss some positive and some negative affects of having portfolios.

Personally I feel that portfolios are good to have in a classroom because I think that it can make the student feel so much better about themselves in a lot of ways. They can look back at things they did a long time ago and compare it to things that they have worked on recently and hopefully it shows how much they have progressed and what they still need to work on.
This is also a good thing for teachers because when a parent comes in to see the teacher they can take out the students portfolio and discuss everything that has been going on in the classroom and what there child has been working on. When you have a parent/teacher conference I think that it is important to make sure you have work to prove that the student is doing good or bad in the classroom. For example if a parent comes in and says "my son is telling me that he is doing very well in the class but he really doesn't bring home any school work to show me his progress". At this point the teacher can take out his portfolio and show how well the student is doing and how well he has progressed throughout the year. This is a great thing because attending a parent/teacher conference without having any back up is not good. Which makes portfolios so much better to have in a classroom.

I did a little bit of research, because I really did not feel that there was any negatives to having a portfolio for students, But this is what I found:

WHAT ARE THE DRAWBACKS? Good portfolio projects do not happen without considerable effort on the part of teachers, administrators, and policymakers. Research shows that portfolios place additional demands on teachers and students as well as on school resources. Teachers need not only a thorough understanding of their subject area and instructional skills, but also additional time for planning, conferring with other teachers, developing strategies and materials, meeting with individual students and small groups, and reviewing and commenting on student work. In addition, teachers may need extra space in their classrooms to store students' portfolios or expensive equipment such as video cameras.

http://www.adprima.com/student_portfolios.htm

I feel that this is a very touchy statement when they said that it places additional demands on teachers and students. I feel that because it is a teachers job to make sure that the students are progressing in class that they should take the extra time and effort to make portfolios for students. Making sure that children feel confident in there work, and making sure that a student can look back at there work previously and see that they did progress in class is very important. I don't feel that it should be any extra hassle, it should simply be apart of the education process where we make sure that every student can get ahead. The students at the same time have to do there part as well, and if it is a 50/50 effort, then that should make everything easier because in the end you helped a student succeed.

I hope you all enjoyed..=)

My Access

My access was an interesting experience for me because it had so many different features.  I really enjoyed it because of all the different tools that were available to me.  My favorite part of it was that I did not have to actually write the whole essay out. This program had a place for me to pre-write and then in the end, it included it into my essay.  Doing this gained me more points for a better grade.  I had to keep working on the essay to get a decent grade, and when my grade did go up I was really excited.  I was able to experience my access from a teachers point of view and from a students point of view.

From a teachers point of view it was very exciting because I was able to see my own progress when I was a student.  It came showed me exactly what I wrote and what I did wrong.  A really cool feature that my access had was it actually came with a note that the student can take home and show the parents how well they did on there essay and it showed there grade.  I thought this was amazing because it saves the teacher a lot of work.  (Not saying that for a teacher to be lazy, but it saves a lot of time).  

My experience as a student was great because I was able to edit everything that I worked on, and my favorite part as a student was when I handed in my essay, I got results right then and there.  I didn't have to wait for a teacher to check my essay and give me a grade.  Before I handed in the essay I was offered spell check and many other opportunities to make my essay better.  This gave me the confidence that I needed to get a better grade.  When I handed in my second essay and saw that I got a 4.2, I was very happy because the essay I previously handed in was a 2.5.  It made me happy to know that I actually progressed.  

I think that this program is a very positive program for both students and teachers.  Hopefully when I become a teacher this program will be used much more then it is being used now, because I truly enjoyed working with it.

I Passed My Exam

Since this week was a free topic, I thought that I would talk about how excited I was to know that I got a GREAT grade on my exam.. =) Specifically a 97 yay!  I really enjoyed taking this exam because we as the students made it ourselves so it really should not have been difficult to pass.  It was open book and open notes, there really was no opportunity for me to fail.  So I am very proud of myself and I will gladly keep my grades up just like this exam.  =) Once again:

YAYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! =)

Homework

Homework is a very touchy subject to talk about because everyone feels very different regarding homework and the amount that is given.  I have been through having way to much homework and way to little homework.  I personally feel that students should be given homework because it trains you to learn and understand everything that was going on in class that day.  But my question is, is there a limit? 

When I was in grammar school I used to come home with loads and loads of homework to do and honestly I do not know if I can say that I got anything out of it.  One of the homework assignments that I honestly never understood, and I am pretty sure that everyone went through it as a kid, was having to write vocabulary over and over and over and OVER AND OVER again in our notebooks.I mean honestly, I thought that those kinds of homework assignments were just ridiculous, considering the fact that there were around 50 words and writing them out would take me all night to do.  Now if the teacher simply would have said write it out once and then memorize them for a test then it would have made me less frustrated and saved me a lot of time. When I was in grammar school, I was absolutely one of those students that had to have one of those roll around book bags because the books that I had to take home were way to heavy to carry on my back (No laughing guys because some of you understand what I am talking about as well =/)  

When I was in High school I noticed that things started to change, my homework load definitely decreased.  I was coming home with little or no books at all.  Which I have come to find out, did not help me in a positive way.  By the time I got to college I was very overwhelmed with all the work that I had to do.  I did not feel prepared for anything and I blame my high school for that.  Im not saying that my high school was a bad school, Im saying that they could have challenged us in a way where I could have felt more prepared for college.  Of course it took me a while to get used to the challenge of college and the enormous amount of homework that I have, but I have trained myself to do what high school should have prepared me to do.

So by using my own personal experiences I have shown you some positive ways that homework was good and negative ways that homework is bad.  I believe that we should have homework and challenges, BUT i think that teachers need to be wise on WHAT they are giving us for homework, because if teachers assign us useless homework we as the students are not going to be motivated to do it and it will not have a positive affect on us for the future.

Rubrics

Rubrics are a great way to assess students for many different reasons.  Some are:

-It shows the students how they are going to be graded and what standards they need to follow in order for them to get an excellent grade.

-It makes it easier for the teacher to grade them because all they need to do is make sure that they have followed everything in the rubric that the students were given.

In my personal experience with rubrics, I have always managed to get a great grade for myself because I knew what the teachers were expecting of me.  Most of the rubrics that I have worked with have been numbered from 1-5.  Starting from one which basically shows that the student has barely given any effort to the project or essay.  Then to the highest grade that we could have possibly received was a five.  This shows that the student has given a great effort to the project or essay and deserves a great grade.  Every other grade that is in between just shows what the student needs to improve on, and this is what I like the most about it.  The rubric shows specific details and elaborated on what you really need to improve on to get a better grade then what you have received. 

It is also good for whenever a parent wants to come and talk about their child's paper or project. They can show the parent how they are grading their student.  The teacher can look at the rubric and say this is where your child went wrong and needs to improve.  Hopefully after they review the rubric, they can see some improvements in the students work.

Fairness in Assessment

This blog will talk about what ways that I feel is fair to assess children.  I think that there are many different ways that students can be assessed without having to deal with all the excess stress. But it is something that we all have to go through as students and it will be something that we have to face as teacher ourselves, how do we assess our students?  Do we consider how we felt when we were in school and we were given unfair assessments?  I feel that these are tough questions and hopefully we can deal with them in a proper manner and hopefully we can find good and fair ways to assess our students.

I have had teachers assess me very unfairly.  My most recent was a professor who told us that we were going to have a test on all of the poems that we have studied and went over so far.  He basically said to study all of the vocabulary and review all of the poems.  So this is what i had done.  When I walked into the class the day of the test, I felt confident enough to believe that I would be able to pass this test with flying colors.  I sat down and awaited for my test to be handed out to me, when I finally received my test I turned it over and realized that he wanted us to MEMORIZE lines out of the poems.  I started getting really nervous because there was about 10 poems that we had to go over and I did not memorize any of the lines from them because I thought he simply told us to REVIEW and KNOW what the poems were about.  Now of course I still passed the test but not to my full expectations.  I would have liked to get a better grade.  Now for the next test I will know exactly what he means and hopefully I feel more at ease and comfortable enough to actually live up to the grade that I want.

One of the ways that I have been fairly assessed is for example in Dr. Luongo's class.  It was clearly stated what was going to be on the midterm exam and clearly stated how we were going to be assessed.  We were each to have a chapter and make up ONE multiple choice question and ONE essay question, post it and she will use them on the exam.  The one reason that makes this fair is because it is made clear what is going to happen on the day of the exam.  Another example that I have is, in my philosophy class my professor clearly stated that his finals and exams were essays.  This is a fair way to assess students as well because it proves to him that we have been doing the assigned readings throughout the semester and that we have been paying attention to his lectures well enough to write a paper on what we have learned.

Another problem that we have to consider is, making sure that we as teachers grade the students tests fairly and that we do not treat one student better then another.  I am a big believer that all students should get the grade that they earn.  Personally if I were a student who had an answer wrong and it was marked right, I would be very upset, because that is not helping me improve, that will not help me learn and be able to fix a mistake that was made.  So I feel that making sure a teacher grades all the students fairly and giving them the grade that they deserve is very important because if you don't it can affect them in the future.

I hope you all enjoyed my blog on fairness in assessment. =)

Assessment

ASSESSMENT:

the act of assessing; appraisal; evaluation.

This blog will talk about different types of assessments and how I personally feel about them.

As it states up top, assessment is a form of evaluation.  In school I feel that it is a way to give a student a grade to show how well that they are progressing in the class.  This can show whether or not a student needs help with his or her work.  This is honestly the only way I feel that assessment is good.  My next paragraph will talk about how and why I feel assessment is bad. 

I personally do not feel the way we use assessment today is a fair way to grade a student.  I have had a lot of different types of assessment done on me, such as projects that count for a big portion of our grade or tests that just determine "a lot" such as the GEPA or the HSPA.  When I took the HSPA my teachers reminded me everyday and made sure we were aware that this test determined if we could get into a good college or not.  How is it fair that we should let one test determine what kind of college we should go to or what college we could get accepted to?  So if a student were to fail, what is that supposed to mean?  I agree with the video that we watched, I believe on tuesday, We need to go beyond pencils and bubble sheets.  We need to find a different way to assess children and students because this is an extreme amount of unnecessary pressure to put on a student who is still very young.  

To this day even I get surprised when I get tested and evaluated, I guess I can say that I learned to handle the pressure and if I do not understand something, I just speak up and say it.  I just feel putting pressure on someone who is still in grammar school and high school is just wrong.  Telling them that a test is going to determine how smart they are or what college they attend is just wrong.  We want students to be able to handle pressure, not run away from it. =)