Learning and Assessing

     One of the most discussed topics in education because of its great importance on student learning is assessment. This topic was the focus of my mathematics education class this week. Using the clapping activity as a demonstration, all the students in my class got an opportunity to understand the importance of establishing learning goals and success criteria for students. It was an example of how students can improve if they are given descriptive feedback which outlines some areas for improvement. After this we began to discuss the importance of setting learning goals and what these goals need to look like.

     I learned that learning goals are important because it gives students a target for them to strive towards. I remember many times when I was a student being frustrated when I received a grade that I was not content with because it did not know what I had to do to get a good mark. I believe that it is critical for teachers to outline clear goals for their students so that they know exactly what they have to do to be successful.

     We also learned that learning goals must have certain characteristics. They must not only by specific to curriculum expectations, but must also be accessible to students using language that they understand. In addition, they must be filtered through a big idea and rooted in conceptual understanding. All in all, I felt that it was most important for me to understand that learning goals must be clear and effective for students to know exactly what it is they must do in order to be successful.

Here is a link to a website with resources that we were to explore this week which helped me to understand how to create effective learning goals: http://www.edugains.ca/newsite/aer/aervideo/learninggoals.html. 

     I also want to discuss my learning activity presentation that I conducted this week. Although the presentation did not go as smoothly as I hoped, I still received an insightful learning opportunity. I learned about creating an activity which can not only get students engaged with the topic, but also teaches them about the concept (which was Pythagorean Theorem in my presentation). For my presentation in particular, I also got to see how technology can be incorporated into instruction. My application allows students to visualize how Pythagorean Theorem works by expanding and shrinking the sides of the triangles while seeing the hypotenuse change accordingly. In addition, I learned about how I can use an app like this to help students solve real-world problems. I wish that this was done during my education because I enjoy a visual of how math concepts work and how it can be applied to everyday life. Overall, I believe I can use this experience and learn from it so that I can create more effective tasks for my own students that will help them grasp the concepts I am teaching.