I babysit for a cute, little 2 year old girl during the week, which I will name Sara, and I usually am at her house by 7 in the morning and leave around 3 in the afternoon. My favorite part of the day with this child is when I first arrive to her house, and I get to go in her room and get her up once I hear her start to talk on the baby monitor. She usually has wild woman hair when she wakes up, and she is always ready to get up and get ready for the day. Our morning routine consists of getting her out of the crib, then a diaper change, and then it's time for breakfast. What's always on the menu for breakfast? A big bowl of Cheerios! I put Sara in her so called "big girl"chair aka her highchair and then I go into the pantry to get the Cheerios. Once I have the box of Cheerios in hand,its is time to do the Cheerio dance in which I shake the box of Cheerios while I dance around the kitchen. Sara has enjoyed this dance since the first day I made it up when I was trying to make her stop crying after her parents left her in my care and went to work. On that first day, I thought for a couple of minutes that it was going to take a while for this little girl to warm up to me. However, after I cleverly made up the Cheerio dance, she started to explode with laughter and we have been friends ever since. Now, this past Thursday when I was babysitting her, I had assessment on the brain because of our exam, and I decided to practice my ability to plan a short assessment that would definitely involve Cheerios. I knew from knowing Sara and how smart she was that she could already count to ten; however, I wanted to see if she could understand the relationship between the number name and the quantity of objects is stood for. I knew this may be to challenging for her,but I wanted to give it a try. I engaged her in the lesson by asking her to count to ten with me, which she did very easily. Next put one Cheerio on my spoon and asked her how many Cheerios did I have on my spoon. She responded by saying two. I asked her to count with me the number of Cheerios I had on my spoon. We both said one , and then she kept counting to ten. From this pre-assessment I determined that she had no concept of number quantities. To Sara, numbers were just words that were to be repeated in a pattern. I went back to trying to teach her how to count the number of Cheerios I had but this time I put three Cheerios on the spoon and asked her to watch me as I pointed to each Cheerio and counted to three. I modeled the same thing again for her by putting two Cheerios on my spoon this time, which I pointed to as I counted to two. I asked her if she wanted to try it, which she did and I put my spoon in my bowl and pulled out a spoon filled with four Cheerios. Both she and I counted together and I noticed that she stopped counting once she got to four. I tried another spoonful with her, this time with five cheerios as she again stopped counting after we pointed to the 5th Cheerio. I asked her if she waned to pick some Cheerios out of her bowl this time and try counting them. She regained interest in the lesson when I changed it so that now the Cheerios were coming out of her bowl. She stuck her spoon in the bowl and came out with three Cheerios. I asked her how many were on her spoon and amazingly she pointed to each one and said one,two,three and stopped! I praised her for saying the right answer and asked if she wanted to do it again which she did. This time she pulled out a big spoonful of nine Cheerios. I told her that she could count the Cheerios as she stuck each of them in her mouth. She started out and ended at nine and stopped counting! I was amazed at her ability to pick up this concept so quickly. We didn't do this very much longer as it was a beautiful day outside and it was time to put on her play clothes and go outside. However, once outside I found three flowers and showed them to Sara. I asked her if she could count how many flowers I had and she did it perfectly! I was surprised to see that she understood the concept hours after we had done the Cheerio assessment!
I know I'm a nerd, but it was fun!
Saturday, May 1, 2010
Just a couple of thoughts:
I just wanted to blog about how just recently I really have been thinking a lot about assessment and the important role that the teacher plays in finding appropriate assessments to conduct with children in order to find out what their needs are. I guess I have heard that over and over again this past semester, however for some reason it really didn't hit me that the way to evaluate what kids needs are is to do an assessment. I know that may sound dumb that I really am thinking of it now, but it is so necessary for a teacher to be well informed about appropriate assessment methods to use with their students so that they can plan appropriate instruction to meet their students needs.
Another thought that I had was that assessment never stops, it is a continuous cycle in that once a teacher assesses a students in a particular skill, area of development, or disposition, the information that the teacher receives from that initial assessment lets the teacher know what areas the student needs further instruction in. After the teacher plans appropriate instruction for the student(s), then the teacher must plan another form of assessment to see if the students needs were met by the instruction the teacher provided them. Then the teacher must take the information she gathers from that assessment and formulate an effective plan of instruction to either help the student take the new found understanding that he received from the previous instruction and build upon it, or if the student did not do well on the assessment, then the teacher must modify their original plan of instruction so that the students needs are met. Then the teacher will reassess that student until he/she can attain the skills they need top pass the assessment.
Anyways, this is just a light bulb that went off in my head. I think that when I was originally thinking about planning assessments, I had the mentality that as a teacher, I would teach the students a skill and then assess their ability to complete it and then we would move on. Of course I knew that I would have to help any of my students who had trouble grasping the concept he first time I taught it, but I just feel like I connected the dots to a big puzzle and it really makes sense to me. I think that my original notion of using assessment was based on how in Field II we would go into the class and teach our Literacy, math, Social studies or Science lesson to the students, and then we would have a plan to assess their understanding of what we taught them at the end. However, since we were only with the students for one day during the week, we never got the opportunity to modify our instruction in order to suit the needs of kids who may have needed further instruction. I know that I will have the opportunity to do this when I am in clinical practice. Field II was such a great learning experience for me. I am glad that I finally made this connection , and hopefully I am not the only one who has ever had this A-ha moment. But anyways, I just wanted to blog about what I learned and how I connected everything together.
Another thought that I had was that assessment never stops, it is a continuous cycle in that once a teacher assesses a students in a particular skill, area of development, or disposition, the information that the teacher receives from that initial assessment lets the teacher know what areas the student needs further instruction in. After the teacher plans appropriate instruction for the student(s), then the teacher must plan another form of assessment to see if the students needs were met by the instruction the teacher provided them. Then the teacher must take the information she gathers from that assessment and formulate an effective plan of instruction to either help the student take the new found understanding that he received from the previous instruction and build upon it, or if the student did not do well on the assessment, then the teacher must modify their original plan of instruction so that the students needs are met. Then the teacher will reassess that student until he/she can attain the skills they need top pass the assessment.
Anyways, this is just a light bulb that went off in my head. I think that when I was originally thinking about planning assessments, I had the mentality that as a teacher, I would teach the students a skill and then assess their ability to complete it and then we would move on. Of course I knew that I would have to help any of my students who had trouble grasping the concept he first time I taught it, but I just feel like I connected the dots to a big puzzle and it really makes sense to me. I think that my original notion of using assessment was based on how in Field II we would go into the class and teach our Literacy, math, Social studies or Science lesson to the students, and then we would have a plan to assess their understanding of what we taught them at the end. However, since we were only with the students for one day during the week, we never got the opportunity to modify our instruction in order to suit the needs of kids who may have needed further instruction. I know that I will have the opportunity to do this when I am in clinical practice. Field II was such a great learning experience for me. I am glad that I finally made this connection , and hopefully I am not the only one who has ever had this A-ha moment. But anyways, I just wanted to blog about what I learned and how I connected everything together.
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