After analyzing student work at the Saturday class, we hope you are beginning to see the depth of analysis that National Board asks for in an entry - and how to write to the prompts. This month, please answer ONE of the following guiding questions:
1) What part does student work play in the planning and design of lessons in your classroom practice?
2) Based on the NBPTS Standards for your certificate area, what new things will you consider when analyzing student work?
Remember, responding to the blog, printing it out, and putting it in your binder are part of the homework requirements each month. You can go back to any month and respond if needed.
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6 comments:
2)While doing the February homework assignment (practice descriptive, analytical and reflective writing by answering selected questions for Entry 1) I was struck by how well the questions and guidelines helped me write. As I was analyzing one of my student's work samples I realized one possible reason why this highly able student doesn't write much. I hadn't even considered this as a reason before. The level of introspection that the NBPTS questions elicit is so much deeper than the questions we answer when writing the SPAR. I have to admit that I actually started to have fun doing some of the writing because of the insights I was gaining. I didn't have fun the whole time but there was a moment or two......
Kristi Hartmann
Blog
Due to an unexpected illness, I missed the actual meeting where we analyzed student work samples; however, I did have a chance to attend a make-up session offered by the Arizona k-12 organization where there were teachers much further along in the process. Many of the candidates had already submitted some of their entries and with these entries had student work samples. I had a chance to look at the student work samples that were being used and realized what an integral role that these samples play in the lesson plans. In order to successfully plan a lesson, a teacher needs to know the current level that their students are at. The student work samples are an artifact of this and clearly illustrate a student’s prior knowledge. The gathering of this prior knowledge is necessary in planning any lesson because a teacher needs to know what the students know in order to adequately teach the lesson and provide different learning opportunities for all students. The work samples also provide evidence on whether or not the students learned and mastered the skill set that was being taught. In the student work samples that I looked at, it was very obvious that the teachers had to put a lot of thought into what student samples were used. It was very interesting to see teachers analyze student work samples, and I think that this will definitely make me a better teacher. I know that I look at student work on a daily basis; however, I think that this process will encourage me to look beyond the obvious and truly pull out authentic information on each student to use when planning my lessons, so that every lesson is meaningful.
I have to admit that up to now, I hadn't given what I learned from analyzing student work much thought in terms of what to do next. Because our program spirals (we come back to the same concepts over and over) I tend to not spend too much time repeating instruction. This way students who have mastered the concept more on and those who need remediation will have another opportunity with the concept later. So, should I spend more time with remediation? How much mastery does the class/ student have to show before I more on? I always thought that I did okay with this but now I'm not so sure.
At the lower levels of French I can assume that most students know nothing going into the lesson. When planning instruction knowing my students is most important. Who understands right away, who memorizes well, needs enrichment, who needs more help/practice time.
I need to do a better job of differentiating instruction once I have analyzed my student's work. Right now this process makes me feel very scattered. What is John doing? What is Julie doing? How can I keep track of 130 student's needs. How can I manage the data that I get from analyzing student work? Where do I get help with this or am I just supposed to know?
So much of what I do has entailed intense continual observation of how the student responds, what circumstances will get that student to apply herself, applying what I know of the student’s abilities and disabilities,, and then what do I need to do and how do I need to structure the interaction to get this work, this in itself has kept my class moving forward into the functional world. All the student’s goals were so obvious, and the trick was to find out how this student would work to learn them. Now I have a number of students who are at a functional academic level approaching preschool level curriculum areas in reading, writing, and math that I realize that I need to immerse myself in these curriculum areas to get to the point that I have a sound understanding of where a student with scattered skills and specific, but limited interests should go next.
All of you bring up important points about learning to analyze student work as it pertains to the NB process. They certainly expect teachers to dig deeper to see what student work "says" in order to plan appropriate instruction. NB does expect teachers to look beyond the obvious and construct authentic meaning for instruction. My guess is that all of you already recognize quite a lot about students when you look at their work, but NB requires teachers to use knowledge of students to analyze student work, then reflect on the next step. I'm sure you can look at work and decide from it what skills and/or understandings students have or lack. Think about how that is illustrated in the Architecture of Teaching. Using the knowledge isn't alwasy easy, but it greatly impacts student learning.
Bobbie
I believe that any teacher who goes through the nat'l board process comes out with more questions than going in. We are pushed to examine areas of our teaching that we didn't even think of before. Every day presents new challenges, because now we have an uncomfortable feeling that we don't know it all. Dissonance results in growth. Without growth, how would we become better teachers?
Analyzing student work isn't an exact science. It might be as simple as noting a common spelling error and creating a mini lesson on doubling consonants before adding a suffix. If there isn't a point to an assignment, why give it? All work should be a window into our students' minds and worth our time to look at it.
It seems to me that it is an impossible job to differentiate for every student, especially on the high school level. I think that each of us makes decisions everyday with the goal to help as many students as we can. This may involve grouping students with similar needs or pairing a strong student with a weaker one. We are excellent teachers, but none of us wear the cape of Superteacher!
On the pre-candidacy assignments, as well as the full candidate entries, you should write in the same style as you teach. You are the expert in your classroom. That will be evident to the reader.
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