Assessment Interview

I didn't have a formal interview with the teacher that I'm observing, but we did discuss how she assesses her students. She was currently in the process of preparing her classes for a state examination. That is the main assessment that she is pressed to prepare the students for every year. There are minor informal assessments that are administered daily, or semi-daily, but the main target is the state examination.

The main point that the teacher stressed was how much she disliked all of the emphasis on state examination prep. It handcuffed her in terms of what she wanted to accomplish and how to go about it. I've found this to be a common complaint with every teacher that I've observed so far. There needs to be less of an emphasis on state testing and prep. The teachers aren't being given enough freedom in the classroom.

Observation: Day 1

2/23/2010
This was my first day of observation for the semester. The students were identifying the sequence of events in stories. The students had to identify the terms that indicated sequence. The teacher then had the students use these same terms to identify the sequence of events to their morning. I thought that it was a very effective strategy. The kids seemed to really take to it with great enthusiasm.

The students were broken into groups and made to read different portions of the same story. Each group was responsible for explaining the sequence of events in their portion of the story to the other groups in the class.

The class also utilized vocabulary cards. The teacher had the children spell words aloud as they wrote them down on their vocabulary cards. There was a particular emphasis placed on tense, prefixes, and suffixes. Each student had to write a definition or draw a symbol for the word on the index card that they felt would best help them remember it.