Week 5 Reflection

What can I say by the end of this amazing work done this week !! Just one word!

This week's content, readings and assignments just remind us as teachers, that change may happen one day if we want to change, something may happen after trial and error, one change may work even many couldn't but the issue is not to give up and get frustrated. So the matter, is to overcome the problems that we have and try to create some motivational conditions not to keep stuck and thinking about the obstacles that we have. Simply trying to be positive and create positive things from what we have.

This week readings and tasks encouraged me to make change and to think about little changes that may cause great differences and stop thinking about changing whole systems and programs. This week we read about the following teaching techniques:

Project Based Learning 
I  read " A Project-Based Learning Activity About Project-Based Learning" in 
http://www.sun-associates.com/lynn/pbl/pbl.html
This article is about a sample project by sun associates.

The second is "Less Teaching and More Learning
Turning from traditional methods to project-based instruction, the author found that her students learned more" by Susan Gaer. In the article the author made us explore her experience with introducing PBL in a form of folktales and talking about traditions, their families having projects about where students can feel the meaningfulness of the project to their lives and interests. We can learn a lot from that experience; further, she added what the crucial elements in project should be stating that: (1) the project must be geared to the population (2) the students must see value in a project (3) flexible timeliness are necessary.

The third reading was about alternative assessment by NCLRC (National Capital Language Resource Center)
http://www.nclrc.org/essentials/assessing/alternative.htm.
In the article, many elements are covered such as defining alternative assessment, features, criteria to define alternative assessment activities and alternative assessment methods being checklists and rubrics. Alternative assessment uses activities that reveal what students can do with language, emphasizing their strengths instead of their weaknesses. Alternative assessment instruments are not only designed and structured differently from traditional tests, but are also graded or scored differently. Because alternative assessment is performance based, it helps instructors emphasize that the point of language learning is communication for meaningful purposes.
Alternative assessment methods work well in learner-centered classrooms because they are based on the idea that students can evaluate their own learning and learn from the evaluation process
Rubrics
Another issue that we explored thoroughly this week is Rubrics. I used to design rubrics and dealt with the issue since 2010; also, I had a conference presentation about designing rubrics but I have never heard about Rubistar http://rubistar.4teachers.org/ which I find very useful and helping to limit the assessment criteria particularly for the writing and oral tasks. I would share some hints about rubrics here.


Criteria to design effective rubrics are classified according to the steps of the learning process which are product, process and progress.

General  Criteria

• The specific areas for assessment.
• Focus areas for instruction.
• Clear and relevant.
• Age appropriate.
• Form and function represented.

 Product criteria

ž  What students produce (pamphlet, brochure, play a game, create a game, perform a routine).

ž  Performance and projects are examples of products.

ž  Rubric contains critical elements necessary for required content.

ž  Stating performance outcomes in terms of products says nothing about application or correct form.

ž 

Process Criteria

ž  Critical elements necessary for correct performance.

ž  Outlines the processes that students use to learn.

ž  In Physical Education process criteria refers to the quality of physical performance.

ž  Self-check, peer evaluation, teacher evaluation.

ž  Evaluating process says nothing about how much a student has improved.

Progress Criteria

ž  Determine how much a student has improved or progressed.

ž  Determines the mastery of the critical elements of performance.

ž  In order to measure progress teachers must administer assessments more than once

  

Considerations to Address when Creating Rubrics

Validity – Does the rubric measure what it claims to measure.

žReliability – Does the assessment consistently produce the same results.

Transparency – Criteria are clear enough to students so that they can assess themselves and others with roughly the same reliability.

Subjectivity – The amount of judgment used to assign a score to a student’s performance.

WebQuests

The other teaching technique for this week is Webquest which we explored through
http://zunal.com/zunal-help/help-about-whatiswebquest.php
http://www.webquest.org/
http://www.thirteen.org/edonline/concept2class/webquests/index_sub3.html

Before having read this articles, I have never thought that I will use or be able to create a webquest one day, but trying that on  http://questgarden.com/ and http://zunal.com made me feel that nothing is impossible or hard if we have a will to change or have a start. It has been my first experience but I liked it much and I am motivated to design a webquest for my course project. So, for the change I am thinking to implement in my class, I think it would be a PBL activity with guide through a webquest. Much work and readings to be done but one must think that limitations are always there.
This week's task is a potential class change !! I think the change is started to be realized since our metacognition started to have change (more awareness, more knowledge, more self evaluation, replanning ....) and I am sure the change starts from ourselves. Now, I am sure all of us will try something out.

A hard mission but worth trying

As said by Andrew Littlejohn