Reading Reflection 9

1. Describe a method of understanding prior-knowledge of students.

Projects open the door for learning experiences and students benefit because they are active throughout the project and have input in the assessment. During projects the students learn new skills as well as how to apply what they already know. Teachers can assess students before the project begins to get an idea of what the students know and what they need to work on so that they know in what direction they should take the lessons. Another good way to understand the prior-knowledge of the students is through KWL charts where the teachers gets to see what the children already know, what they what to know, and what they learned.

2. Discuss the importance of establishing anchors for a project.

By establishing anchors teachers get a sense of where the students are starting and how far they go as they work toward their educational goal. Establishing anchors in a classroom gives you the opportunity to help all the students by differentiating instruction.

3. Describe several ways to assess what students learned during the project.

There are several ways for teachers to assess students, at the beginning you may develop rubrics to assess how much progress the students have made towards their goal. As well online grading books allow the teacher to give the students feedback and assess them based upon the actual work and collaboration they do, it is important to show what you graded them on so they can make improvements in the future. Another type of assessment is a traditional test.  When giving traditional tests they may not show all that the children have learned so it is important to also check in with the student throughout the project to make sure they are picking up on the important elements. There are many more ways to assess the students like interviewing them, having them do podcasts about what they have learned , other projects that synthesize what they have learned, have the students apply what they learned in a discipline related to their project, and having the students enter their findings in a competition to get their work published.

4. Discussion on how concepts in this chapter relate to your topic/project.

These key ideas relate to our project because as teachers we need to know how to get the children to apply their prior-knowledge to the project, how we will gain information about where to begin our lesson, and how to assess the information the children have learned. Our project is to have the children learn about the culture of another area through their food choices. At the end of the project we are going to have the students cook a meal from their area and serve it to their friends and family at a gathering we will have. The students will need to present the meal to the people at family night and also tell some information they learned throughout the project. This gives the students a way to apply the information they learned and a way for us to assess them.