Chapter 4 - Digital Blog Post I

Plan Ahead:

Chapter 4 brings up a good point in the reading when discussing the formation of lesson plans: “There is too much information in every curriculum area that students need to learn” (Maloy, et al, 2014, p. 81). Teachers have to consider various details when creating a lesson plan. Keeping in mind how much time a day you will have, what materials will be at your disposal, what age group you will be working with, and what key pieces of information will ultimately better the student are all key factors to consider when putting together a lesson plan. Through considering these factors we will, time and time again, have to exclude and include certain details to a plan until we are left with the best possible plan that fits our criteria.

Within a section of the reading, there was one small topic that caught my attention. When teachers consider how to assess students three factors strongly influence their choices, but the first stood out to me: Personal experience. This section explains how teachers are likely to teach and assess students the way they themselves were taught and assessed i.e. lectures, quizzes, worksheets, discussions, etc. Although these all can be linked to classrooms, just one by itself is not enough to evaluate a student or his/her progress. Even though there may have been assessments a teacher went through that stuck out to them or aided their learning, sticking to those methods alone will not benefit the variety of students that teacher will come to educate. Because each students learns so differently, and repetition of the same thing is not always helpful, teachers will need to incorporate and present different forms of assessment to better evaluate their students and offer diverse opportunities for students to show their progress.

I believe that electronic grading is a great way to share grades. It allows students to look over their assignments as if they were on one spreadsheet. This grading system allows schools to “manage grades, keep track of attendance, support lesson planning, manage teacher correspondence, and perform other administrative and class management functions” (Maloy, et al, 2014, p. 86). Another feature about electronic grading I like is, depending on the system, it allows parents to have access and see how their child is performing as well as having communication access to teachers. This makes parents feel more involved and lets them see the progress their child is making; they can also see how material is graded and can help their child focus on building those skill sets.

In conclusion, this was a very powerful and necessary chapter to cover in the field of education. As educators we can come up with as many ideas and approaches as we want for the classroom, but without a game plan and goal for our class we would run in circles. By planning out and establishing lesson plans, teachers are able to follow strong and relevant strategies to walk them through the school year/semester.

Resources

Goshay, N. (2015, November 1). Lesson Planning. Created with bubbl.us https://bubbl.us/?h=2d76fc/5d68a5/290aic3WToL5k&r=986949415

Maloy, R., O'Loughlin, R., Edwards, S., & Woolf, B. (2014). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education Inc.

UW (University of Washington) (2013, June 14). ‪Introducing Canvas: Grading tools‬. Retrieved November 1, 2015, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqXFqBQ9q1o