Reflection 3 (Assessment):
Scrunch it! Stretch It! Assess it?
Describe: During all 6 of the lessons I taught, I used a range of formative assessment
strategies throughout the lessons to gauge where students were at with the learning of
physical changes. I used class discussions at the beginning and end of every lesson which
included questions and statements from myself and the students. I also used these techniques
during the investigation with small groups of students to help guide their learning and keep
them on task. Due placement limitations, I was unable to perform any diagnostic or
summative assessments.
Feelings: I felt confident going into my lessons using my assessment strategies as they were
ones that I had used before. I was nervous however about how well they would go with grade
1's as I had only ever had upper-grade levels.
Evaluation: The range of questions I used for formative assessment worked well. Students
were engaged and were able to think about the scientific concepts and their learning. During
the lessons, I felt that I used my questioning strategy well. However, the wording I used for
some of my questions may have been too advanced and I found myself having to rephrase the
questions for the students to understand and answer them.
I also felt that during my time roaming the classroom I was able to assess the learning needs
of the groups of students. In the class discussions, I was able to gauge where the class was at
and with their learning and where they needed to go (Skamp & Preston, 2015). However, it
was during this one on one time with teams that I was able to assess how each team was
going to be able to achieve their learning goals (Skamp & Preston, 2015).
Analysis: I believe my discussion worked well as a formative strategy because I was able to
determine students' initial understanding and concepts on the topic (Skamp & Preston, 2015).
I was then also able to see their ideas developing through the discussion mainly student
student discussion using the teacher feedback strategy called re-directs to allow students
emerging knowledge to help one another (Skamp & Preston, 2015). The redirect strategy also
allowed for students to share their ideas particularly in the final discussions where students
had a range of theories regarding their investigations (Skamp & Preston, 2015). I also used
formative feedback to ensure students remained on task and progressed through the activity
successfully (Brookhart, 2008). This ensured students maintained their motivation and
prevented any students from misunderstanding the task.
I believe I was too ambitious with my initial questioning of the grade 1 class. Having Bloom's
Revised Taxonomy in mind, I tried to ensure I asked higher order thinking questions to
promote student learning (Churches, 2008). I did begin low on the sale, asking students to
remember but my questioning became too complicated for them too soon and therefore I had
to step back into lower order questioning so students could catch up (Churches, 2008).
Conclusion: During the experience I learnt that formative assessment is a vital part of the
teaching and learning process (Skamp & Preston, 2015). I learnt that I need to be more
conscious of this strategy when planning my lessons to try and incorporate other formative
strategies rather than just using the ones I had become comfortable with.
Action plan:
To continue my learning and grow as a teacher I will research other strategies and other forms
of student questioning to ensure that I am not confusing the students with questions that are
too complex for them to answer.
