Teaching 5 (March 20, 2007)

Our final lesson was a combination of a review lesson and our post-assessment test (since we lost a day on Monday). Though our main goal of reviewing was accomplished in the lesson, there was a lot of room for improvement. The lesson ended too early. We were worried about giving students enough time to take the test, so cut the review activity short. In the end, we had more than enough time to finish the review and give the test. It was a mistake in our judgement. The review activity consisted of a game with three teams answering review questions for team points. We tried to put structure into the activity because of our past experiences. Each child was given the number of their designated team. Though we tried to structure the format of the game, there were some mishaps. Students were chatting as Linda read the question to each student, there was a lot of restless movement, and a lot of crowding (which led to the mixing of the teams). Despite this, the review lesson was a great opportunity to infuse differentiation. Linda told each student their question ahead of time before addressing the class. This allowed for lower ability students to have enough time to think and work out their answer. She also had control over which question to ask the students.

The post-assessment test ended earlier than we thought, as addressed above. Ms. M suggested that establishing a after-test activity before handing out the actual test is a great solution to prevent students from moving around and distracting other students. In terms of the actual test, two test formats were created. One was for the average to high-achieving students, and a second was for lower-ability students. These students were taken aside to have the questions read to them. After grading the tests, it seems that the format change worked out well. However, I cannot imagine making separate format tests when I am in my own classroom. Crreating a test takes time, to make two tests costs double the amount of limited time a teacher has for classroom planning. The only problem I found with the administration of the test was that the fill-in-the-blank portion of the post-assessment did not state that words from the word bank were not to be used more than once. Though it was announced verbally, it would have been much better for students to have those directions clearly written out for them to read and re-read.