Let's take a look at my competencies for this section. Please see below an itemized list of each artifact or section that demonstrates mastery of each particular standard as published by iNacol.
Standard D: The online teacher promotes student success through clear expectations, prompt responses, and regular feedback. Each of these sections linked above specifically focus on the expectations as related to the standards, responses to the submitted work of the students, and consistent feedback on the different types of assessments. This is part of why I have successful students! Standard G: The online teacher demonstrates competencies in creating and implementing assessments in online learning environments in ways that ensure validity and reliability of the instruments and procedures.
Standard H: The online teacher develops and delivers assessments, projects, and assignments that meet standards-based learning goals and assesses learning progress by measuring student achievement of the learning goals.
Standard I: The online teacher demonstrates competency in using data from assessments and other data sources to modify content and to guide student learning. Students do not always perform as we predict, and it is important to take a look at all factors to decide why. The previously listed sections of this unit outline how I am able to look at the results and analyze the outcome. They also demonstrate how I can effectively change teaching strategies to increase learning when this data is properly used. Of all of the factors that affect education, effective instruction is the most powerful. We need to constantly look at what we are doing and how we can improve it to improve student achievement. These sections exemplify my ability to do just that, even if it means reflecting on my own methods and making changes toward improvement.
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I think one of the most commonly missed steps in education, yet one of the most important, is self-reflection. Reflection is something we cannot afford to miss out on. History classes teach us this! Reflection on the part of the student, on the part of the teacher, even as a parent introspection is a crucial step to improving. I know that as a teacher, there are many ways in which I can improve. There are many lessons that need tweeking, timing that needs readjusted, and skills that need honed. Do I believe I can do all of this? Absolutely! But it will take time and reflection to improve.
Evaluations Every teacher uses their observations by administration as a tool for reflection (or at least, they should!). Some times I need a negative comment on my evaluations to light a fire where motivation should have been.
When I receive feedback like this, I know immediately that I need to give the area attention. It does, however, take time to look back and decide how I will make those changes. For example, when I struggled to grade within the 72 hour grading period, I wasn't sure how it was happening. I was focused on finishing all the same types of assignments at once and would then move on to another area. For example, I would grade all dropbox assignments and then move on to the discussions. This is not effective because eventually I would run out of time. With a large class, it was obvious that those assignment categories would simply never be empty. I have to make a new policy for myself. I didn't like to arrange the assignments by the submission date, but I learned that I had to be successful in this area.
In the other area that needed attention, I was finding that I was not recording all communication with students in the Communication Log- not a good idea. I had to go back and transfer all communication from my email at once, which is a waste of time. Most of the time now I create the email in my GAVS email account, save it as a draft, copy and paste it to TheSIS, and then send it from there so that it is available for others to see. I have also come up with some other ways to motivate students by setting up weekly reflections (ta da!!) and scheduling them in advance. Now, I am not only asking students to do what I am doing (reflect) but also collecting information that the students give about the course content- GENIUS! All of that information goes out via TheSIS. This is especially helpful if there are accommodations that require a weekly email; offering it to everyone in the course is just an extra plus!
I'm not always a slacker, though, I promise! Those exceptional evaluations are what I like to use to motivate me in a different way!! Take a look at some positive feedback that I use to reflect:
When I receive this type of rating, it is also important that I reflect so that I take note of what I am doing that is working so that I can can continue in the same manner! Who doesn't want exceptional ratings on their evaluations?!
ePortfolio While the ePortfolio is difficult to keep up with at times, it does provide an excellent way to reflect on my teaching. Parts of ePortfolio are specifically used for Best Practices and Differentiation. Let's take a look at my introspection into these areas. Professional growth is important because I don't know everything about my content area or about teaching and learning. I need growth, as well. When I fill out this section of my ePortfolio, I reflect on what I have done and am able to decide if what I have done is enough or if I need improvement. It is also a good way for me to decipher if I am leaning in one direction and possibly need to explore others. Notice that TOOL is not on this list as completed... I needed to update my ePortfolio to make myself really consider that a priority... and now look! I'm almost done!
Differentiation
I use this area of the ePortfolio to consider forms of differentiation used during the course and to decide if I need to improve. Take a look at things I have been doing:
Best Practices
Looking over my best practices section of my ePortfolio, I realize that either I need to improve my strategies for using best practices, or I need to update my ePortfolio. Either way, I have noted that it needs improvement. You can take a look using this link if you would like! No one is harder on myself than me; I am my biggest fan, but also my strongest critic. There are times when I have to pat myself on the back, but also times when I need to kick myself in the backside and pay attention to areas of neglect. I believe I have demonstrated both extremes above. Artifact: Sample data from student results in Spanish IIAB Looking at the data provided above, it comes from one particular unit in a course that has an exceptional amount of zeros. The assignment Escuchar 5 lacks submissions. I think the first way to personalize instruction would be to offer feedback toward the beginning of the unit (Vocabulary Project) that provides remediation strategies. A video of digital feedback would be a good way to ensure that students receive a strong base within in the unit, which is important since the zeros progressively increase. My next step would be to check to see if other Escuchar assignments (from other chapters) have such a high amount of zeros; this would indicate that students are struggling with listening exercises and probably need differentiated material to be successful. Perhaps a different Escuchar assignment for this particular chapter is all that is necessary. As the teacher, I could provide another option and allow students to choose which they would complete. This would allow each student a more personalized route. The data provided by the LMS could look at the particular types of assignments to see if this pattern exists across the course; if this is the case, finding or creating assessments that take the material step by step would be another option. Providing more speaking feedback would be another way to ensure that students have more access to the spoken language so that they do better when listening to others speak Spanish. Meeting the students where they are is an important part of education and if we have to scaffold these lessons to a higher degree for some, we can create two different groups (or more) to ensure that students are in the most comfortable zone of proximal development as they work. For example, we would want the students with lower capabilities to use a discussion forum so that the language is accessible input and they can grow. We would also want to students with higher capabilities to be challenged, so they would be in a separate discussion forum for their assignment so that the language and grammatical constructs are more challenging for them. Noticing where more students are failing could also lead to remediation opportunities; it could be that students just need a chance to see what they did wrong and then an opportunity to try a similar activity to improve.
It is clear that more than just a snapshot of a gradebook is necessary to make these decisions, but with an open course, many other reports are accessible and can provide that information so that personalized teaching and learning become possible for each individual student.
Modern and Classical Languages is an animal all its own when one is considering state and national standards, district competencies and even classroom curriculum. Our standards are very vague, leaving a lot of room for interpretation of the teacher. For example, one standard for Spanish III particularly is "Express needs and desires." It does not specify which tense one should use to express their needs, what vocabulary to use specifically; the options are left wide open. Having a set curriculum across the school or district is very important for this reason. Working for GAVS, the curriculum is all laid out and tied to state standards, which are then used as our competencies. Each of the competencies can be visited and re-visited throughout the course on a journey toward mastery.
One competency that is similarly vague but that can be visited repetitively and in different ways is the standard INT1B which states that students will understand culturally authentic materials and information. In a course and across a semester or year, this competency could be visited in many ways. I will give several examples of how I would go about allowing students to show mastery of this standard.
Competency Mastery
A student's ability to complete one of these activities is technically demonstration of the competency; however, I would not rate them as exceeding the standard. The course/curriculum developers would need to decide as a team what each level of achievement looks like. For example, if I can complete one of these activities but I cannot complete the others, what does that mean? What are the indicators? I might use the following indicators as an example:
In reviewing the artifacts on student enrollment and progress in the course, it seems that there are several students enrolled that are not keeping up with their assignments. You can see this in the color-coded grid. I am wondering if the teacher is looking at which assignments are missing to see if there are connections. For example, is there one assignment that the majority of the students didn't turn in? Since there are several, the teacher should take a look at the instructions and the assignment to ensure that it is a fair assessment according to what is taught in the Coursent Content. The teacher should also make sure that the assignment is reflected sufficiently on the Course Pacing Guide. This data could also serve to review if particular students are having trouble with the majority of their assignments. This would be an issue to discuss with the student, the parents, and the facilitator to make sure that there are not environmental factors that need attention.
According to the Communication Log, the teacher is reaching out to students and parents about this problem and others. The Communication Log also shows consistent communication regarding positive behaviors in the course in effort to motivate students and increase performance and participation. Once sufficient contact has been made and environmental factors are eliminated, it is time to take a look at the analysis of student performance and adjust instruction as necessary. For example, if it is found that 50% of the students failed an assessment, the test should be reviews to ensure that the answers are taught in the course content. If they are, the teacher should look for differentiation methods to help the students understand the material when receiving it using a different instructional strategy. The collection of data is not enough; even analysis is not the final step. We must act on what the data tells us. Perhaps the majority of students are failing one particular assignment. The teacher could choose a different assessment that applies the same content but that allows the students to demonstrate mastery in a different way. The data must be analyzed from every different direction and steps must be taken to improve as follow through. Summative assessments are tricky. When building an assessment, we can't just put together some questions that deal with the same material taught; much more goes into building a summative assessment than just throwing together some questions and hoping for the best. I have made an example assessment, and rather than include a document here, I made this assessment online to make it more secure. It is password protected, the order of the questions is randomized and the answer choices are randomized- all of this to help with the security of the exam. Now, since I made it specifically for this course, it is not a real assessment that will be given. For this reason, I can tell you that the password is iloveSpanish (all one work, capital S) so that you can access it and take a go with your knowledge on the Spanish conditional tense and vocabulary from a unit entitled "De Viaje". Click here to access the test.
As in any summative assessment, one must check for validity, reliability, and security. I have given you the information on the security of the document. I didn't use any test that I would give in the classroom- either online or face to face- because that would defeat the purpose of attempting to have a secure test, right? Even if the test was password protected and randomized, once information is on the web, it's always on the web. And people that know me might be able to find it... even though it seems impossible, I would not compromise test security in that way. When looking at the validity of a summative assessment, we must consider if the material on the test matches what was taught in the course content and is aligned with the state and national standards for that course. We also need to consider if enough questions assessing the same topic were given to ensure that the grade will represent what the student knows and not what they do not know. This can be tricky, but consider giving a vocabulary test over 6 words when you taught 54. How fair would that be to base a student's summative grade on such a small percentage of the material? When it comes to reliability, we have to make sure our questions are fair. This means that we need to test it over time, as well as look at the test data that shows statistics about questions that are often missed. This will help us determine the reliability of the test. It also answers helps answer the questions about if the course content sufficiently covers the material in the assessment. The assessment that is included has not been tested for reliability because no one has ever taken the test. I can already say that the validity is low due to lack of questions. There really aren't enough questions on the test to consider it valid because it is over grammar as well as vocabulary; how can 10 questions accurately measure student knowledge over that much content?! I have done a considerable amount of research on feedback, especially since becoming an online teacher and realizing that feedback is likely at least 50% of the communication that students read and take seriously... if not more. Instructors must always consider three elements of effective feedback: timing, target, and nature. If all three of these elements are considered, feedback can be motivational, it can increase cognitive understanding of the material, and it can expand understanding of expectations of effort and time, as well. These are important qualities in education, whether it is online or face to face. It is also crucial to take feedback past the level of observation to something instructional. If we leave feedback at simply an observational level, students will know that they made errors, but how will they know exactly what it was that they did incorrectly? How will they know how to correct the errors? The following is an example of how we take feedback beyond the observational level and make it an instructional centerpiece for growth! Student work descriptionStudent work sampleFeedback OptionsFor feedback on discussion postings, I keep several scripts that are both descriptive and useful, explaining why the student received the grade that they got. At the end of the descriptive feedback, I list suggestions of improvement and sometimes links if the issue that the student had deals with some of the course content that can be practiced. The feedback for this particular "student sample" would be the following: You are required to respond to a classmate in the discussion assignments with a post of no less than three substantive sentences. Please read the requirements of the assignment again; you are not to leave comments of "good job" or "I like your work". You have not completed this essential part of the task. Remember this in the future to avoid this type of deduction. The highest grade you can earn without those posts is a 70%. Please look at the rubric for additional information specific to your grade. For more review on the conditional tense, you can use this link. I love teaching in the online world, but I am also still a face to face teacher at heart. I still love forming relationships, giving direct instruction, and seeing that light bulb come on over someone's head as they finally understand a concept! In the online classroom, we can do all of these things, but we have to be creative about how to get it done. One of my favorite methods for formative assessments is in the Synchronous Sessions because that is an opportunity to find out immediately what we know and what we struggle with! One example of formative assessment that I use in the Synchronous Sessions is a very simple activity that I call a Verb Race. I have an animated PowerPoint where infinitive verbs will appear and disappear in 30 second increments of time so that students have the opportunity to see the verb, think about conjugation, and then write down what they think the proper response is. I do 8 verbs at a time and then we discuss our answers. Usually I do this with the preterite tense because it is a difficult tense and there are like a million (says the students) irregulars. This gives me a measure of where the students are. It tells me several things: 1. Have they spent time memorizing the endings? Even though memorization is a dirty word in the sense that it is at the bottom of Bloom's Taxonomy, it is still necessary to grasp some concepts, especially in language learning. 2. Can they figure out the steps of the conjugation? Sometimes the concept of verb conjugation is one that students that have never learned a second language have a hard time grasping. English has conjugations but with this being their native language it happens quickly, without even understanding why or what they are doing. 3. How comfortable are they with the material? It is not necessary to marry our course content, but how comfortable students are with certain material will give me an idea of where to differentiate within the course. Some will simply need the basics because they just aren't comfortable going beyond that, but those that are gifted and talented also need the opportunity to be challenged! This is when I learn about my students, which is exactly what formative assessment is all about. You will find the verb race below. Keep in mind, it is nothing beautiful or outstanding... it doesn't have bells and whistles. The beauty of this assignment is in the speed and the production of the students. |