Saturday, February 13, 2010
Evaluations and personal values
When it comes to making my evaluations, I so badly want for every student to be successful. There is no better feeling in the world than to see a child who considers himself "dumb" succeed in an evaluation. I have so many different learning styles and learning levels in my class that I have a tendency to create evaluations that may not challenge all of my students. I have to wonder if I am creating a bit of laziness in my more capable students. That is not what I want to do, however, I don't want to create an evaluation that makes my less capable students feel like a failure. I know that with more experience I will learn to balance this better. Sometimes I feel that the mother in me has a huge impact on my teaching and evaluating style. Sometimes we want to do so much for our children (our own and our students) that if we are not careful we could easily cripple them and create children who are unable to think for themselves. I aim to work harder to create the most reliable and valid evaluation process that I can.
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4 comments:
Hi Tonya,
Thanks for sharing your feelings on the evaluation methods. I am a supporter of the rubric. A well defined rubric gives each student the opportunity to rise to the highest level of evaluation and expectation. When developing the rubric, over analyze the steps and place them on the rubric in elementary fashion. Structuring the rubric in this fashion will allow each student the opportunity to excel to the level that they focus on. For example--paragraphs-Points will be awarded based on the following, sentences with errors will not be considered:
-5 pts= 5 sentences
-4 pts= 4 sentences
-3 pts= 3 sentences
-2 pts= 2 sentences
-1 pt= 1 sentence
Spend time educating the students on your expectations of a paragraph. I would place second criteria into the rubric to evaluate sentence error. Small segments of information may improve student focus and improve student outcome and overall confidence. I found early in the year that students did not recognize the value of a rubric. Therefore, we have to spend time educating them on how valuable the document is in their success.
Thanks again!
S-
Hello Tonya,
I enjoyed your post and I must say you took the words right out of my month. As for evaluations I tend to create evaluations that may not challenge all of my students as well. I'm sure we will be able to learn how to balance. You are right about wanting to do so much for the students as if they are our children. I hope the students learn something at the end of the day.
Tonya. I am so in agreement with you. I can see that just as I did, you entered this teaching profession because you care. I want all of my students to be successful. I too have students from different backgrounds, socioeconomic statuses, students that have different leaning levels and styles as well. All of this has to be taken into consideration when planning lessons, and with making our different types of evaluations. I did decide to change my tests. I expected all of my students to read the chapters and that is how I mainly made the tests, as if they had read the chapters. But I had to realize that no matter what I did and how much I preached, they are not going to read. So I decided to make the test based on the important information in the chapters that I want them to retain. When they go into their future healthcare programs, they will learn all of the other stuff that I really wanted to teach them. Once I looked at it this way, I began to calm down more and decrease my own stress. I also agree with you statement that we can to things to cripple our students as well as our own children. I have some further re-evaluation to do as well.
Ecellent post, Tonya, and comments from your colleagues are more to the point than I can add!
Dr. M
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