EDU616: Week 6 Formative Assessment Paper

EDU616 Week 6 Formative Assessment Paper

Within my classroom I utilize many informal formal assessments. To be specific I utilize quick checks for understanding as well as confidence indications pretty much every day as we progress through projects. Confidence indications typically happen immediately after I brief my students on the work for the day and any next steps related to our projects, typically a nod or thumbs up or down. As for Checks for Understanding I utilize the chat function in our 3D modeling program to have students ask questions or for help related to their modeling work. This helps me uncover if I should reiterate anything to the whole class or form small groups for the next class. Observations I use frequently as I roam around the room to help students with their daily work, and I did a lot of observation this past week as I casually checked in with students as they modeled. I also do more formal desk critiques with my level 2 engineering class and senior capstone students, these are part student presentation and part observation on my part. In more rigorous units I do utilize quizzes to check and make sure students understand components or tools before they utilize them in a project. I also ask them to do some sort of concept map or diagram in each of our four units. I tend to keep quizzes to a minimum and try to integrate them as casually and collaboratively as possible using kahoot and other systems. My class is an elective and at the end of the day most major projects where I give a quiz are group projects. I tried using more exit slips this past week to guide what I would reinforce during my class briefings before independent work time. My hope going forward is that I can create some sort of system of entrance and exit tickets that can help better inform what I do in real time. The issue I have is them taking up too much time. I used the post-it system Mr. Thain uses in the youtube video posted to blackboard. What I may do is create a system that mimics what we do for our daily logs in my level 2 classes. The logs can be done at the beginning and end of class and when done digitally can be collected and analyzed at a faster rate. I’d like to get better at having my students utilize concept maps, and may try to have them analyze and visualize the procedures they’re undertaking using concept maps. Finally, I believe that I should make more time for discussion in my classes, students spend a lot of time designing on their own in our current unit. I am planning on having a show-and-tell session where students show eachother what they’re working on in CAD and move around the room checking out each others work prior to it being 3D printed and iterated on.