Another week down, and countless learning opportunities to reflect upon. This week consisted of unit wrap ups and summative assessments for each of my three courses. While I strive to gauge student learning during each lesson through formative assessments such as embedded questions and surveys in powerpoint lessons, checking student work throughout the period in lab, and ticket out the door activities, at the end of a unit there is a need to assess student learning through a summative assessment. While these assessments are generally more formal in nature, they can still take multiple different forms. Read on to see how I implemented assessments this week.
Ag Mechanics:
Over the past few weeks, Ag Mech 1 students have been working through their Residential Electrical Wiring unit. During their online (theory) day they dove into vocabulary, wiring code rules, electrical generation and Ohm's law. During their in person (Lab) days we practiced diagramming and wiring different circuits. In order to get a full view of their understanding from the unit I created a unit assessment that included matching vocabulary terms, solving Ohm's law problems, diagramming a circuit and a hands-on component where they had to wire a circuit to demonstrate their knowledge of wiring code. Check out my assessment here. Please let me know if you have any suggestions to improve!
Ag Mech students also jumped into the Welding unit this week! I started off the unit with a short video and some needed safety and theory notes. Check out the links below for some resources I created!
I was so proud when each student in my first group eagerly and confidently walked into their booths. I was expecting to have at least one student show more reservations about striking an arc. Check back next week to see how group 2 does!!
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| Before students could practice on their own, I demonstrated how to set up their welder and strike an arc. Students had to then show me how to correctly set up their own welder before turning it on and explain how they would begin striking an arc. As always, I believe the best way to learn is to jump right in and try, so the rest of the period was practice time!!! |
Small Gas Engines:
This week was my final week teaching Small Gas. Over the past few weeks, this class has become one of my favorites. I have learned so much right alongside my students, and now I feel much more confident in my abilities to teach this course in my own program one day!! As we wrapped up the Systems Theory/ Engine Overhaul unit, I created a google form assessment for the students to take during their online days. For review, I created two Kahoot games that the students could play as many times as they wanted.
With in person time so limited due to the hybrid schedule, I had to adjust and give this assessment online. In order to try to avoid cheating and get a real snapshot of student learning from the past unit, I was able to lock the browser tab when students open the google form. They had to be on their school issued and managed chrome books in order to do this. All of their theory notes where done through online, digital notebooks, so hopefully by locking their tab while taking the exam was able to stop them from looking through their notes while taking it. Either way, if they were able to look up the answers in order to cheat I hope they learned something new along the way!
Ag Business and Management:
As I said before, sometimes summative assessments do not look like your formal exams. Over the past week, I had my Ag Business and Management class create a Marketing Plan which forced them to work through and apply their marking unit knowledge to a real world scenario. This week, they presented their project! I utilized a slightly revised version of the Marketing CDE rubric to grade their work. So far, I am very happy with group 1's work and I think they actually learned something!!
At times, assessments can be difficult to create. We have to remember to align them with the level of understanding we outlined in our unit objectives and the level at which we actual instructed our students throughout the lesson. And as always, we need to be thinking about variability and clarity. Overall, it is important to remember that the purpose of assessments is to gather information about our student's learning and progress so that we can identify and the address the possible gaps in understanding that have occurred. One area in this process that I need to work on is taking this information about student progress and actually apply it to fill those gaps. Moving forward, I want to take the time to review commonly missed questions with students and be sure that we have reached the level of understanding I wanted before moving to the next unit.
#psuaged21 What are some examples of assessments that you have utilized during student teaching???
Hi Elise - These are some great assessments and reflections on each! I especially like how your electrical wiring assessment includes hands-on components and traditional test questions. This reminds me a lot of the NOCTI exam, I bet your students are prepared and don't even know it!
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