Report

Personally I believe report cards are a good way of accessing students' overall achievement in each class or subject. I believe it shows a student how he/she did throughout the marking period and/or semester. There is a lot of factors that go into a report card grade such as the classwork, participation, homework, projects, tests etc... and this grade takes into calculation the average grades for each category adding it up to the final grade, which is shown on the report card. A report card is not just based on one test or one assignment it's fair in the sense that its really how well the student performed. Each student can have a good marking period or a bad one, but that always leaves room for improvement and success in the future.

As far back as I can remember I had good report cards, there were some times that I remember not having a good grade on report card, but it was because I was struggling in a certain area. Even, with those grades I was upset, because it's was frustrating not seeing the grade my parents or I wanted. However, it always pushed me to do a little better the next marking period to prove that I can be successful, maybe with just a little more practice and/or time in one subject more than the others.

Portfolios

I really like portfolios and think that they are a very successful tactic to use in the classroom. I can only recall making maybe one or two portfolios growing up, but I remember being really excited that I could decorate the pages anyway I wanted too! I also, remember my teacher had us pick our own schoolwork (test or essay) that we wanted to put in it and she also wanted us to put a couple of the tests and papers she thought were important for us to include. I was really excited to put my 'A' essays and tests in there that my teacher put stickers on, and I also liked the items she had us include that weren't necessarily my best work, but it showed me how I improved from the beginning of the year to the end of the year.

Therefore, I think portfolios should be used in the classroom, the same way that my teacher had my clas create them. I think it should be a mixture of what the students want in their portfolios and also the items I think are important for them to include to show their growth throughout the class. I think its really important for students to design their own portfolios any way they want, I want them to be as creative as they can be and use things that make them excited and want to use the portfolio.

Essay test or multiple choice

Honestly, some people are really good test takers and some are not. From elementary school to high school, I was a poor test taker, because I would get so nervous before the test, that I blanked out. Therefore, I liked multiple choice growing up, because it would gave me multiple opitions, that made me think and reminded me of what I really learned in class, thus taking out for the most part the incorrect answers. I always felt intimidated by essay test, because I had no assistance when I went blank, thus I wasn't very successful and I started to hate test a lot.

In college I started to like both essay test and multiple choice test, for different exams. Sometimes I really like to elaborate on my answers and get every point down. I also like multiple choice, because it created me to recall information from class, but also know the wrong answers too.

I think it's important to give students a mixture of test, depending on the different units being taught, so that every student gets a chance to succeed in one way or another. I think it would be important to see what students in your class mostly succeed in, whether its multiple choice, true false, or essay tests and try to give them those types of test more, but not just completely limited yourself to give just one of those test.

Quizzes and Test

Hey guys, I don't know how many of you will respond to this post, but in chapter 5 it says roughly how much time is needed for middle school and high school students to take a test or a quiz. How long should elementary school students have on a quiz or a test, should those times that are given for middle school and high school be doubled? I don't know if any of you noticed this on your field experience(s) yet.

Homework and Teacher Expectations

One statement that the text book says about homework it that, "it may be inappropriate to assign summative letter grades from the results." I would have to agree with this statement. I believe as teachers there are so many other ways to assess students through teacher-made tests and quizzes, projects, papers, etc... that homework may count towards the students' participation, but I think its harsh to give it a grade. To me homework is where a student should feel comfortable with the material that was taught that day in class and is a chance for the students to step outside of the classroom and outside of the teacher's guidance and support, and for the student to think on his/her own and either grasp the concept or question the concept if he/she does not understand it. If it's graded I believe students would be afraid to question the work and that they would feel more frustrated and pressured in trying to get the right answer(s) and trying not to make mistakes than actually thinking about what they are doing. I feel that as a teacher you can evaluate the pattern of errors or the pattern of successes in the students' homework and classwork, because there should be no pressure on them and they should feel at ease to make mistakes and try to apply the concept to other aspects of their work.
Teacher expectations I believe are to make a clear learning target, that the teacher clearly understands and can present/explain it to his/her class, so that it is clear to their students and also for their students to understand why they will need to know this information. I think that teacher expectations also form around assessment of the students. The reason being, the teacher has learning targets to reach and he/she cannot reach these targets until the students reach them, so through proper feedback, that is clear and specific, letting the students understand what they need to improve on and what they excelled at, helps them to reach these learning targets.

Rubrics

As a teacher, rubrics come in very useful in the classroom to access your students. You can either let your students see the rubric and let them see what you are grading them on if it is for a single subject or if it is used for other subjects you can use it yourself, so that the students work hard on every aspect in the assignment. The Rubistar website along with the Rubric Maker were awesome sights, especially being able to use these sights as a future educator is great! The websites have a lot of great ideas to build off of and are a wonderful reference. I really enjoyed working on the rubric and the websites actually make it really simple and easy to understand.

Fairness in Assessment & Learning Targets

Fairness in Assessment is teaching lessons so that every student no matter what background, race, ethnicity, gender, disability,  learning disability or not can understand the material being taught.  Therefore, everyone has a fair and equal chance of comprehending the lesson at hand.  That means making accommodations, spending extra time with a student(s)  or providing an environment that every student can learn equally in.

Through learning targets  there are several ways to access students.  There are general learning, specific learning and mastery learning targets that can be targets for the class or individual subjects.  What i really like about the learning targets are that they incorporate taxonomy to get the most out of the target.  Taxonomy helps me organize my thoughts, into  what I want my students to really get out of my lessons and what the should achieve after the lesson is taught.  Therefore, learning targets not only help me become better organize in my thoughts, but they also help the students understand what they should achieve at the end of the lesson.