Assessment TIPR + edTPA Prep

Current Teacher Behaviors

1. How does the teacher assess student learning? Identify specific instances of informal and formal, formative and summative assessment and explain the types of assessments (e.g., self-assessment, portfolio, project, performance, etc.) that are used. 

The teacher assesses student learning in almost every lesson. This is done in many multiple and different ways. The most popular that my cooperating teacher uses is informal assessments. For the majority of the class, the students are working either on their own, in smaller groups, or larger groups. The teacher will walk around and ensure that the students are on task, are completing the exercise safely and correctly, and are discussing on task. Formal assessments also occur almost every day. On a normal day, the students will play a sport for 45 minutes and then do a workout for the other 45 minutes. During the 45 minute workout portion, the students are required to wear their heart rate monitors. In order to receive full participation points for the day, the student must hit and maintain their heart rate for 80% of the workout. This is more of a formal assessment. An example of a formative assessment that he does is exit slips. Sometimes, he will have his students fill out a quick exit slip on paper responding to a question that he asked them. He also uses lots of peer teaching throughout his classes. 

How valid, reliable, biased, and practical are these assessments?

In my opinion, I think that he does a fantastic job at incorporating assessments into physical education. I think that sometimes it can be harder to incorporate these concepts into physical education, but he does a great job at doing this correctly. I am thankful that I have been able to observe his classes to see the various ways that these ideas can be used in physical education. 

edTPA Prep

Also answer the following questions:

1. How does the teacher use formative assessment to monitor learning throughout a lesson or unit?

He uses formative assessment to monitor learning throughout a lesson or unit in various ways. One way that he does this is by doing self-reflecting on his lessons. This is something that he discussed with me one day after class. He was telling me that he always reflects on his lessons at the end of the day. He will note things that he thought went well and ones that did not go well. He will then try to adjust the lesson the next day to change what went wrong or implement what went well. This is an example of reflecting on formative assessments. He also will have pre-planned formative assessments for the lesson each day. He will usually write questions down on white boards which the students will discuss in either groups or reflect on paper.

    

2. How does the teacher design or adapt assessments to allow students with specific needs to demonstrate their learning?

An example of when the cooperating teacher adapted an assessment for a student was when a student had a broken hand. He had a badly broken hand so he could not do a lot of the exercises that were planned for the day. After explaining the workout plan to the class, he pulled the disabled student aside and gave him alternate exercises. He had preplanned these alternate exercises for the student before hand so he was not just making something up on the fly. Another example was in his weights training class there was a student who had disabilities to where he was confined to a wheelchair. He adapted every single workout for the student to complete while he was in his wheelchair. I thought that this was absolutely amazing. He went above and beyond to make sure that these students felt welcomed. 

    3. How does the teacher (a) give feedback on these assessments, (b) help the students understand that feedback, and (c) encourage/give opportunities for students to use that feedback to improve?

The teacher gives feedback to the students I discussed above by following up with them after the day to make sure that they felt comfortable completing those exercises, but that it was still challenging and getting their heart rate up. He would constantly encourage all students, but especially his students that had these physical disabilities encouraging them to keep pushing and that they are doing great. He will also let students know if they are completing an exercise incorrectly. In this instance, he would remind them the proper way to complete the exercise correctly and safely, give them cues, and then have them demonstrate the skill while he is observing. 

Student Needs

2. What are these students' needs with regard to assessment in this class? What more could or should be done?

I think that the students should be assessed in more formal ways--quizzes, tests, exams, etc... I have yet to see the students receive or take any sort of formal assessment in this nature. I think that this could be a good way of making sure that the students are learning the specific rules of the various sports. 

Plan for your Lesson

3. How will you address these needs when you teach your mini-lesson in this class?

I will have my students take a short exit ticket quiz which will have them reflect on what we did in class that day. This will give me a good idea if the students are on task, if they learned the importance of the lesson, and if they liked it or not. I will give them open ended questions as well as a few multiple choice questions about the specifics of the lessons. I will also make sure to do other assessments such as checking up on students throughout the exercises to make sure that they are doing them correctly and safely.