Assessments

Why do assessments matter in your classroom?

It is important to use formative assessments through your lessons so you can gauge whether or not your students are understanding what is being taught. By using formative assessments you can adjust your lessons while you are teaching. For instance, if you notice your students are lost you might want to change the course of instruction and review some previous skills, or if your students seem to understand and are getting bored you might want to make the lesson more challenging because it might be too simple.

Some examples of formative assessments 

• Think-pair-share
• Discussions
• Journal entries
• Hand signals
• Kahoot!

Summative assessments are how you measure the students' learning. This type of assessment happens after the learning has taken place.

Some examples of summative assessments

• Tests
• Finals
• Projects
• Papers

While we seem to be moving away from paper assessment there are still several benefits that come from using paper assessments. One benefit is that the materials are easily accessible. Some schools are not one to one on devices and getting enough devices for all students to take an assessment might be difficult. Paper assessments do not always have to be tests and quizzes created by the teacher, you could have your students make peer quizzes, create graphic organizers, or 3-2-1.

Tools to use when assessing assessments

• Anecdotal notes
• Rubrics
• Checklists
• conversations

Fun and engaging ways to implement assessments in your classroom.


Kahoot! This app gives students the opportunity to play against their peers and show their knowledge through an online quiz format. You can either use premade quizzes or you can create your own and differentiate the quizzes based on the needs of your class as a whole.

Prodigy is a tool that uses game based learning. You can create assignments based off of the standards and skills you are currently working on.

Flipgrid is an app that students can use to record their thinking about a topic. You can ask the students a question and the students record themselves explaining their opinions and reasonings. THis is a great tool to use if you have shy students or ELLs in your classroom because they can be a part of the discussion but do not have to talk in front of the whole group.

Nearpod

Nearpod is an instructional platform that merges formative assessment and dynamic media for collaborative learning. It is more than just a presentation tool. When using Nearpod students get to interact with their learning and the teachers can assess student learning as it occurs.

Reasons to use Nearpod

• Positive impact on school culture
• Improves focus and reading comprehension skills
• Promotes being a good digital citizen
• 100% student participation
• Promotes 21st century skills such as collaboration, creativity, and communication
• Bridges the gap between curriculum and technology

Nearpod has a lesson library that has pre-prepared lessons that align with a variety of standards, subjects, and grade levels. Depending on the membership you or your school has some lessons are free, others you might have to pay for, but most of them do not cost more than five dollars.


Nearpod and Flocabulary
Nearpod worked in partnership with Flocabulary to create hip hip videos about vocabulary to better the level of engagement and comprehension. There are well over one hundred pre-made lessons that incorporate these Flocabulary videos.

Get connected
You can use your Google account to create slides and embed Nearpod activities directly into your slide presentations. By using this dynamic form of media you are ensuring that your students are engaged and participating in the lessons and activities. When using your Google account you can sync all presentations to Google classroom and will have the ability to assess the student growth with reports available in teh Nearpod portal.


Gaming and activities through Nearpod

Time to climb is a fun competition game that encourages positive student to students interactions and promotes a genuine social learning experience.





Using Virtual reality to go on a virtual field trip is easy with Nearpod. They offer so many different trips that many students would never have the opportunity to see without VR. Nearpod has over four hundred and fifty lessons ready to broaden the students' knowledge of the world we live in. The VR lessons are compatible with iPads, Chromebooks, Macs, and PCs. A VR headset is not required to achieve the goal of the lesson, but could enhance the experience.

Using Nearpod for assessments

Nearpod has several different tools that can be embedded into the presentations to work as assessments.

English Language Learners: Strategies for success

Being culturally responsive and building relationships with your ELL students


Know: Get to know your students. Find out what they are interested in, who their family is, and if they have any pets.

Appreciate: Bring their culture into the lessons whenever possible. Show them that their culture is important by having books and resources in their native language.

Comfortable: Make sure they feel safe.



How to incorporate your ELL students culture in the classroom community

There are several ways to incorporate your ELL students culture in the classroom. Depending on how well they speak English you and the other students can use Google Translate to make communication easier. To introduce the students to their new friends' culture you can use Youtube videos to show them some different things about their culture, just make sure to do your research. You want the videos to be appropriate and respectful of the student’s culture. Find books about the students' country, culture, and books in the students native language. You could also find photographs about where the students are from to help the students make connections.

Processing another language takes time so please be patient!

Ell students have to process what they are hearing in English, transfer what they have heard back to their native language, process what they have heard, come up with a response, and then transfer their response back to English. Give them time to process. Speak slowly and increase your wait time for expected responses. By doing this they will be more open in participation. Give them time to open up, do not force them to share because that could make them want to shut down.





QSSSA Strategy for ELL students

Question: Give the students a question to discuss.

Stem: Provide the students with a sentence stem to help them answer the question.

Signal: The students think individually, and signal when they are ready to share.

Share: Students get with a partner and share their answers.

Assess: Students can either share aloud or the teacher can walk around and listen.



Fair is NOT always equal

Your students are all different and all need to be supported in different ways. Support for ELL students might be different, but the need to be properly supported because we want all students in our classrooms to thrive.



Strive for equity not equality

Sensory integration, Orton-Gillingham, and Montessori

How do we support sensory sensitive students?

It is important to remember that all students might have different levels of sensory issues and we need to be sensitive to those sensitivities to make all students feel welcome in our classroom community. One way to begin sensory integration in the classroom is to give the students chances throughout the day move and explore their senses.



Setting up a sensory integrated classroom.

The layout of the room: Have a variety of spaces for students to learn. Some spaces for students to learn by themselves or in a group.

A Variety of activities: Give your students choices for how they want to show their learning with a variety of stimuli.

Lights: Some students are sensitive to fluorescent light so it is important to minimize the exposure if possible. One way to do this is by using light covers or natural light and lamps whenever possible.

Seating: Gives students different places to sit. Try to have different textures, heights, and levels of firmness.

Time for unstructured play: Think recess. Give students time to play and activate their imagination both indoors and outdoors.

Structured movement: Give the students time to move while learning. You can do this by incorporating yoga or dance.



Resources to help you use Orton-Gillingham

• Orton-Gillingham online academy: Resources for teachers and help for students
• ABC magic phonics: This app helps students by using multi-sensory methods
• Starfall: Kids can hear sounds and explore learning in a fun way
• Reading Eggs: This app helps children with dyslexia learn to spell by using interactive learning
• Special Words: Children can read words using pictures and sounds

Incorporating Montessori’s theories in your classroom by using technology

Traditionally when thinking about a Montessori many do not think about technology, but there are actually several apps that can be used to enhance learning and encourage self directed learning.

Stamp Game is an app that replicates the manipulatives created by Montessori to teach students addition and subtraction with four digit numbers. This app costs about $5.

Alpha Writer is an app that incorporates the moveable alphabet with helpful illustrations, and costs about $5.

Montessori Geometry is an app that teaches students to shapes by using global landmarks. This gives a real life connection to shapes and students can practice looking for shapes when they are anywhere. This app costs about $3. 

STEAM activities that are connected to Literature

There has been a big push in teaching STEAM and connecting the content areas of science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics. But what about language arts? Is language being overlooked?

Connecting STEAM and language arts does not have to be extremely complicated; it can be as simple as connecting a book to the lesson or having the students write about their learning experience in a journal. One way to do this is to base a STEAM lesson around a book, if you read the three little pigs to students you could challenge them to build a house. The students would be using the information they learned from the story about how a house needs to be stable, and use the given material to build a house. Once the students have built their house they can test to see if it stays standing in wind from a fan. If the house does not stand you can talk to the students about trial and error and have the students problem solve to see what they can do to improve the house. Depending on the grade level and abilities of the students completing the STEAM challenge, you could have the students begin to learn about recording their thoughts and ideas by drawing blueprints and using sentence stems to tell the process of how they built the house.


Another literacy and STEAM activity that you could do that is also connected to history is learning about the underground railroad. There are several books about the underground railroad that you could choose from to use as a read-aloud. After reading the book you could talk with your students about freedom quilts and they could create their own quilt design, you could review the maps and go over distances and have the students choose which route they think is the safest and write about their reasoning.

There are so many ways to connect literacy to STEAM activities. Start small. Start by picking out a book for a read-aloud and have the activity connected to the read-aloud be STEAM related. It does not have to be some elaborate project. Here is an Amazon Wishlist that has some great resources and books to use when creating a STEAM lesson that incorporates literacy.

Active Learning Strategies

Why is it important to use active learning strategies in your classroom?

Active learning strategies promote student learning and problem solving. After two weeks we tend to remember only ten percent of what we read, twenty percent of what we hear, and thirty percent of what we see. Those numbers are extremely low, but the good news is when you combine what you see and hear the number increases to fifty percent. Furthermore, if you say something there is a seventy percent chance you will remember it after two weeks, and when you combine saying something with doing something you will remember ninety percent of it. These statistics prove that if we want our students to learn and remember what they have learned we have to do more than merely tell them about it. We need to be providing active and hands on ways for students to explore learning new concepts and skills.

Here are some simple ways to start using active learning in your classroom.

Word splash is a collection of key terms or concepts connected to a topic. This is a great activity to use to gauge your students prior knowledge. Prior to learning about a topic have your students create a word splash to see what personal and academic connections they have to the topic. Students could also create another word splash after learning about the topic, by doing this it would create a cool visual that shows all things the student learned about the topic and how much they expanded their knowledge.
Walking Tour is an activity where the students are able to walk around stations and learn about a topic. The students are given a tour guide to help them. This guide has questions and activities for the students to complete at each station to provoke higher order thinking. Make sure the stations are diverse in their activities, but all still connected to the learning objective.

Interactive notebooks is one way that students can take notes in a more creative and engaging way than just writing one notebook paper. The purpose is for the students to organize and to take ownership of their work. This is a great place for the student to keep their foldables and important information they might need to help them study for a text or collect information for a project.

Social and Emotional Learning

What is Social and Emotional learning (SEL)?

Social and emotional learning is something that should be incorporated in all classrooms and grade levels. Students need to have their social and emotional needs met before they can thrive in learning academic content. If a student is struggling with something emotionally it can be difficult for them to put their thoughts into words. This is something that students need to be taught, they need to learn how to process their feelings. One way to teach students to communicate their feelings and learn to regulate their emotions is through conscious discipline. 


What does social and emotional learning look like in a classroom?

It looks like students working together, sharing their thoughts and feelings. Teachers checking in on their students and supporting them through whatever they are going through.







Ways to use social and emotional learning

• Calm Down corners
• Sensory bottles
• Allowing students to reflect through art and writing
• Building a community of learners who care about each others’ wellbeing
• Daily student teacher check ins

How to apply this to academic learning?

The best way to apply social and emotional learning to academic learning is by teaching the students how to be responsible for their actions and learning. Set goals for your students to strive for. Make sure these goals are high but still attainable, and don’t forget to celebrate the small victories. If a student is having a struggle day give them some space to feel their feelings; be warm and comforting. You should also be encouraging responsible and positive behaviors.

The time machine method

1. We all make mistakes and sometimes a redo would be nice. The time machine method gives students a chance to go back, reflect, and solve the problem that they might not have dealt with in the best way.
2. Have students turn back time by using a hand motion.
3. Wish each other well. Have the students encourage each other to be creative problem solvers and solution finders.
4. Identify a goal and create some sort of class chant or mantra such as “1.2.3. Let’s do It!”
5. Have the students take a deep breath and relax.
6. Give the students sentence starters to aid them in using their words to express their feelings.

Apps to help you set a a social and emotional learning area

Superbetter: players set goals, uses video game-like progression to reward healthy behavior

Smiling mind: guided meditation, great for students who have trouble concentrating

Peakapak: 4-week curriculum with 2-3 lessons per week, stories and interactive games to build self-regulation and empathy

Avokiddo: dress up and take care of silly characters while learning essential emotional skills