Reading Reflection 9

 There are a few methods that s teacher can use to understand the students prior knowledge. Active learning is a hallmark of good projects, and students benefit by being actively involved even at the assessment stage. In a well-designed project, students know what they are taking on a particular task and how it leads them toward important learning goals. Students also know what “success” looks like, and they understand the various categories by which their performance will be measured. Assessing your students’ project work will require everything from what they created, to teamwork, to effort, and to creativity that went into the project. 

Using the K-W-L could develop in finding out about what your students prior knowledge is. Not all students were starting at the same place when finding out their prior knowledge. Also, the distance they travel during a project will not be the same for each student.  Establishing anchors will help you to find what the student’s prior knowledge is. By establishing anchors, you the teacher, can gain a sense of where students are starting and how far they are going as they work to meet learning goals. In a project-based classroom, you expand the opportunities to differentiate instruction and help all learners to be successful. In considering assessment, think about the quality of the learning experience. 

When you designed your project, you may have developed rubrics to assess progress toward key learning goals. Now comes the time to put your rubrics to work to generate meaningful feedback for students. One way in assessing what your students learned during a project is by giving them online grade books. The online grade book measures a student’s progress across several categories. Students, parents, and teachers all have access to this assessment data, creating opportunities for meaningful conversations about student achievement.  Another way is to ask the students to reflect on what they have learned. At the end of a project, you may elect to have students create something new that asks them to summarize or synthesize what they have learned. This can give you the opportunity to look for transfer of knowledge. Although project- based learning isn’t traditional teaching you may assess what your students have learned during a project by giving them a quiz or test on the material. 

These concepts relate to our project because in our lesson plans that we have developed we are providing our students with rubrics for the assignment and in the end assessing what our students have learned.  Throughout our whole project we are establishing anchors to gain a sense of where our students are starting and how far they are going as they work to meet learning goals. We are also assessing what our students have learned by having our students create something new that asks them to summarize what they have learned. No were in our project are we testing or quizzing our students on what they have learned. In our project we are staying away from traditional classroom assessing.