Week 2

 This week we went over the different types of observation techniques.  Observations are the foundation of all assessments and are extremely important for a teacher to utilize.  A few reasons we observe are to see patterns in learning and behavior, remember what the children know and can do, plan instructional activities, and see what's in the child's mind.  Observations can be quite difficult, however, because they need to be completely objective.  In order for an observation to be accurate, it must be fact based, quantifiable, and measurable.  There may not include any influence by personal emotions, opinions, or personal feelings.

I want to use observations quite frequently in my future classroom.  I feel like it is pointless to bounce from one topic to another if the class has not grasped onto the original topic.  This would just be an endless cycle of learning information for the end test and forgetting it the next week when we begin learning something new.  With that being said, I think rating scales, checklists, and rubrics will be used most often in my classroom.  I would like to use rating scales for my own personal records, so I can see a change in my students throughout the school year.  I don't think I will give my students rating scales, as they do not provide as much detailed feedback as a rubric would.  I also think checklists will be helpful to guide the students throughout an assignment or activity.  The checklist will be able to guide them almost step by step as to what my expectations are, without any loopholes or surprises.  Checklists will also be useful in developing the class' self awareness strategies and techniques.  I would use rubrics for bigger projects or tests to document and grade the student's work. 

Developing an analytic rubric was much harder than I had anticipated it to be.  I think the areas I struggled in the most were detailing each expectation as much as possible and figuring out what each task's point value would be.  I think that my group's rubric may have been laid out a little better if we had a better understanding of the hypothetical assignment we were developing a rubric for.  I have learned from this assignment that creating an analytic rubric is definitely a personalized task.  Each assignment will have a different rubric set up and different standards I will want to hold for the students.  Understanding the assignment in full will be helpful when creating future rubrics.