Teacher evaluation

Teacher evaluation Teacher’s evaluation is a very important tool to help a teacher improve and become a better educator through feedback and motivation. Having highly-skilled, committed and motivated teachers is to the benefit of all students, by improving their learning experiences. Developing and maintaining skills, is part of a career-long process. This process involves all teachers engaging in self-evaluation and in being career-long learners. Some ideas for a self-evaluation could be to keep a journal and have notes after you finish a class. See if the students were motivated and engaged. What motivated the students the best?. This helps not to forget little details about the class. Reflecting is another very useful tool by writing teacher’s own concern about the class. Thinking about other strategies or resources that the teacher could have used to support student learning. Reflecting on topics you could spend more time or less. Collecting feedback from students at least twice a year is another important tool a teacher can use for self-evaluation. I would do it at midterm because it allows immediate adjustments in response to students’ difficulties or suggestions and it allows the students who made the suggestions to benefit from the adjustments. On the other hand for me a colleague’s observation can be very useful. This type of observation can be a very useful source of input on reading lists, course handbooks and practices related to assessing and giving feedback to students. Simply giving a colleague a copy of one of these course materials and getting their feedback can be very useful. Formal evaluation by the administrators is more formal. It involves goal setting, mid-year review, and final evaluation components. To assist with the processes of setting goals, assessing performance, and demonstrating growth. The focus of the observation is not what teacher teaches but what the students learn. How does the teacher know that students will remember what they just learned, if the teacher Checks for Understanding using formative assessment often. Does the teacher give and get immediate feedback, otherwise students and teachers will not remember. Good and defined instructional practices for students who need a more structured learning environment. Since I teach Elementary Spanish is also very important for the Principal to see a good display of visuals of cultural related materials in the target language. At ACS teachers have formal observations once a year. The class is videotaped to be watched at a later time. The teacher will have a post observation conference for feedback and new ideas to improve his/her teaching. This type of observation is very practical for me because it releases the stress a formal observation brings. To me this observation helps me reflect in my teaching strategies, keep on doing what is working best, and improve whatever can be improved more.

Differentiation: It Starts with Pre-Assessment

Differentiation: It Starts with Pre-Assessment

When my elementary Spanish students make connections to the prior lesson with what they are reading, their comprehension increases. Helping students make those connections before, during, and after learning gives me the chance to identify and adjust my goals better.

Probably the best way to find out if my student make connections with the prior knowledge is to pre-assess before starting a new lesson. Pre-assessment plays a critical role in the teacher’s ability to differentiate instruction. It helps to make instructional decisions about student strengths and needs, to determine flexible grouping patterns, to determine which students are ready for advance instruction.

Some of the pre-assessment I use in elementary Spanish are:

Flash cards They are simple, versatile, and fun. They are very good for visual learners, especially if they are colorful. You can pre-assess concepts as well as vocabulary.

Informal surveys

Surveys can reinforce and verify data from daily,weekly reports of student learning. They very useful to work on data about the progress of whole classrooms and programs.

Venn diagrams

Using Venn Diagrams to assess what the students need and want to know. Mesures the level of understanding of the students placing them in the diagram.

Inventory check lists

Students can make lists about the things they know about certain topic. This gives the teacher the chance to plan lessons better.

Conference with students

This is a wonderful way to get a firsthand info about the students

Pop corn sharing

In a circle all student need to participate like popcorn, no one is skipped, they have to share their ideas with the group.

Tiered lesson for three groups:

In a foreign language class you are always going to have different level of students. Pre-assessing the knowledge of the students is the best tool a teacher can use to teach differentiated groups. Pre-assessment allowed me to have flexible grouping, learning centers, tiered assignments, adjusting question for every level. In the lesson about Christopher Columbus I had three different groups of students.

• The first group of students who had some knowledge about explorers, who discovered America would get the chance to work on a project where they would be able to go to the elementary library to use the computers to do research on their own based on certain outline that I would give them. The summative assessment for this group would be a class presentation with posters of Christopher Columbus trips.

. • The second group of students will have to read in class some magazines or books available, the text book, and work with the textbook worksheets. After the students finish with the reading assignment they will draw a poster with map of the trip that lead Columbus to America.

. • The third group will be able to work with the teacher in a more informal environment. Seated on the rug while the teacher will tell the whole story while showing colorful books of maps and routes that Columbus took to come to America. There will be coloring drawing of the explorer and his ships.

This type of tiered classes make the learning process more interesting. It helps students achieve goals without feeling left out which ultimately is going to lead them to be successful. I firmly believe that every student needs to be challenged according to their abilities. Tiered lessons give students the respect they deserve for being different.

In the second part of the assignment (Reanaissance teacher work samples) I couldn't find a Foreign Language sample, so I chose a science sample for 1st grade. http://www.xmind.net/m/PXBU

HIGH STAKE ASSESSMENT

High Stakes Assessments

M6 U1 A3/Ximena Rojas Armstrong

It is important to reflect on the complex issue of standardized educational evaluation applied in most of countries. A high-stakes test or a standard educational evaluation  is any test used to make important decisions about students, educators, schools, or districts, most commonly for the purpose of accountability, on the attempt by federal, state, or local government agencies and school administrators to ensure that students are enrolled in effective schools and being taught by effective teachers.

At ACS, here in Bolivia, since it an American school, children in elementary grade 3-5 are tested once a year with the MAP, which is an acronym for Measures of Academic Progress. I am not part of the test because I teach Spanish K-5.

Grade 5 students take tests in Reading, Language Use, Math, and Science. Grades 3 and 4 students take Reading, Language Use, and Math. The tests are administered in three or four separate sessions on three or four different days. Technically, there is no time limit, but most students complete the test in about 40 minutes. Students are allowed an hour for each testing session, but are also provided for Extra Time sessions. Students are permitted to stop their test and continue it at a later time or on a different day. Anyone who misses a testing session will be asked to complete the test at another time. We have several Extra Time sessions built into the schedule. The scores on the MAP are only part of the information that ACS gathers about students. When a student is struggling, classroom performance, teacher comments and observations are all used together to make decisions about students.

On the other the education system don’t use standardized testing because the Bolivian government, does not dedicate sufficient funds to pay highly qualified teachers, funds to maintain decent schools, classrooms, decent meals, or buses for student’s transportation. On the average a Bolivian teacher working for public schools makes between 200-400 US $., therefore not motivated teachers make the quality of education at public schools and universities in general, lower than at private options. Standarized testing would be a difficult task for the government, specially in rural areas due to the lack of technology in schools.

Bolivian students live in high poverty, very poor scientific and technological development, and high levels of violence. It is documented that the problem is generated from the education system where children and young people drop out or end up with low educational level, which does not allow them to make plans for a dignified life. It is therefore urgent to obtain truthful information, do the relevant analysis, develop more coherent interpretation, encourage reflection and build the most objective solutions for the reorganization of the education system, so we can transform the reality of the region.

There is no standardized testing in Bolivian public schools. There is an urgent need of a culture of evaluation, rated as important by all participants in the educational system actors. As a matter of fact a culture of educational evaluation would involve as a first step, self-assessment (teacher, school, country) to realize themselves of how their work is done. This reflection would show from within whether or not the teacher meets the standards performance. But, in the absence of this evaluative culture and especially of the self-evaluation that leads to self-criticism make essential and standardized assessments of national and international Latin-American school.

A comprehensive, education reform has made some significant changes here in Bolivia. The educational reform proposes profound changes in all areas of primary education: reorganizes the education system poses an intercultural and bilingual education puts the emphasis on the / the student and learning, and seeks to reform teacher training. The transformation also includes, among others, development, production and distribution of educational materials; training teachers and principals and core educational unit; the transformation of school supervision subsystem; the transformation of teacher training subsystem; implementing a measurement subsystem the quality of education.

It would be very hard for me to compare these two educational systems. But from what I see at the American School where I work high skate testing has many disadvantages, among them:

1. Narrowing curriculum to the subjects being tested
2. Excluding topics that are not being directly tested
3. Diluting learning down to rote memorization and a "beat the test" mentality
4. Devoting too much classroom time to test preparation rather than learning

I am hopeful that I can help my students cope with the pressure and stress of these tests even though I am not involved in the testing process. Testing at its core is an experience of stress and pressure whether students like it or not, stress and pressure are part of the real world. I think of high-stakes testing as a method to help teachers self-reflect their teaching to be able to improve and look for more professional development. Most of the students I teach will go to US universities therefore they need to learn to cope with standardized testing. Parents approve the use of these tests because they are focused in the future of their children.

Talavera, M. (2014) Magisterio boliviano y Reformas Educativas en el siglo XX. http://www.revistasbolivianas.org.bo/scielo.php?pid=S2078-03622014000100004&script=sci_arttext

Froemel, J. (2009). La efectividad y la eficacia de las mediciones estandarizadas y de las evaluaciones en educación. Revista Iberoamericana de Evaluación Educativa, 2(1).Letelier, M. (2009).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhRHnXZGG3M

http://www.education.com/magazine/article/high-stakes-testing-pros-cons/

http://inesad.edu.bo/developmentroast/2006/10/what-do-we-really-know-about-education-quality-in-bolivia/