Formative Assessment 3.0

It's very hard to believe that this is the last assignment I will be submitting for this class. In looking at this assignment, I have tweaked it from the first of the assignments. After looking where I started, I needed to explain myself more in a lot of my thought process as to why I was choosing to go a certain way in my assessment. I still find it harder to give kindergarteners an assessment, mainly because I am teaching by myself, and 5 year olds are not always quite or willing to let their teacher focus on one thing at a time. I like the idea of adding a technology piece so that it is easier on my to put a child on a computer and work through their activities.  So here is my final assessment of my formative piece.

Second Draft

First draft

My Best Work

My best piece of work for CEP 813 was my Minecraft assignment. Using Minecraft as an assessment tool was one of my biggest challenges, and also my biggest learning experience throughout  the class. I never saw how a game that my students play consistently could be turned into a classroom assignment that they can build worlds in and be assessed upon.

I began the week on the assignment having difficulty loading the software onto my computer. Though I have loaded many things onto my computer, the new windows program lead to learning how to reinstall the video option, microphone, and even speakers back onto my computer.Although that was not my only learning experience, it was one that happened that week.

When it came down to the assignment, I had never played Minecraft before. My students talk about it all the time and had even shown me books about how to play the game, but I never truly understood. In the assignment, we were required to build our own world and give assignments throughout the world. My biggest problem with this, is that I teach kindergarten and most of my students cannot read on their own and a lot of them do not always have the help at home that would be necessary for them to complete the assignments. I have to think out of the box about the basic things that they are able to do. When it comes to building, I know that my students are capable of doing so in Minecraft because they are the ones who showed me what to do. I wanted to make the signs with simple instructions, so that if the student had a sibling to help, they would be able to do so.

I liked that for our part in the assignment, we were able to create a screen cast. I was able to explain why I chose certain aspects, and show areas of my project on my own terms. I felt confident in being able to show what I was doing and explain it at the same time. I believe that some students would really enjoy being able to give a screen cast because they are always wanting to show what they are working on and what they are doing. I have never knew that using a screen cast software would be so easy.

The lessons I could take from this assignment is that there are times that you can meet your students in activities and pull out ways to assess them. For students, I can really see the passion in them with working on something that they love and being allowed to do so because it is for school. I also learned that technology is not always a friend, and although things should be easy to install, that is not always the case. Lastly, I learned that while I always thought that screen casts were complicated and a lot of work, I found out that they are actually quite simple to do, and very beneficial for students to show what they are working on.

CMS Activity Assessment

In this activity we looked into using CMS as a way of offering digital assessments for our students. I always have to think a little bit outside of the box when it comes to doing these assignments since I teach kindergartners. My students love to work with technology and I use it as a reward to play games on my phone and such, but when it comes to the reading aspect of the technology is when we run into problems. That is why for this assignment, while I used Edmodo as a starting place, I connected another website for them to actually do the assignment.

Power my learning offers the opportunity for my students to take an assessment, while being given instruction on what to do during the activity. It also allows for me to assign different assessments to children if I need to throughout the year. I like the idea of having CMS around because it allows for students to go online and complete things, without having to have all the paper work around. It also allows for teachers to meet students where they like to spend their time, on the computer.

Here is my screen cast  of my assessment activity.

My Sandbox for Professional Growth

In the beginning of CEP 813, I was confused about how assessments and blog posts would relate to each other through out this program. When it comes to thinking about assessment, my mind is so wired to the way of standardized testing. I am so use to talking about NWEA data that we use at school, and how the students are scoring on that, that I forget that assessment can include different assignments and stages of learning. When it comes to thinking about blog posts, I always think of people who have a lot of free time that can explain life details or give advice daily. Never did I see them both connecting together to gain a new perspective to keep track of learning.

Through reading of my blog, I can see my growth not only as a teacher, but also as a student. In the beginning, I could not tell you what a precis was or even how to write it. Even when it came to linking a site with a word, I did not fully understand. I was very confused as to how and why we submitted our assignments the way we do. But now at the end of our class,  I see that it was so that we could reflect on how we can use a variety of things to assess our students in their learning.  It was a way to teach adults who may have grown up in technology just some new ways to do things that your students may know more than you about.

Throughout my blogs, you can see the growth I had as a teacher, along with how I understood the assignments. Some weeks, the work was tough and confusing to me, while other times I understood ideas. I also can reflect on that I need to explain myself more in blog posts, rather than just writing a quit blurb and turning it in. I was able to explain frustration on some, like the Minecraft assignment, while also seeing how truly beneficial that program would be to my students throughout the year. Setting up a digital portfolio allows for me to look back on these assignments and see where I need to work on things, and where I can see some of my passions in the program. I never thought that I would learn that creating a blog, would lead to my very own start to an educators portfolio.

Theory to Practice

I have always wanted to create a digital portfolio to use as an educator. The process has always been confusing and overwhelming to me at the same time. Through doing the work for this class, I have come to realize that is is more of a time in the day type of problem more than a not knowing how to do so. With that being said, I have realized that as an educator the best thing I could do is to create my own digital portfolio. It allows for me to keep track of my own work, lesson plans, lesson ideas, and assessments all in one place, without having to look through a variety of binders, blogs, and computer files. The organization alone is a huge help. It also allows for me to compare work of my students to previous years. I am able to showcase each year what my class is doing and how hard they are working through an assignment, but also reflect on what worked and didn't work in the process. I will than be able to learn from the experience that I have gained in the work, and work towards creating new goals.

Creating a portfolio for students is something that I think my school desperately needs to do. With a high teacher turn over rate year to year in our charter school, most teachers end up keeping their student's work themselves, and not allowing the students to really see how they have grown. I think that if we created a digital area where students can see where they started from in Kindergarten, going all the way up to eighth grade, they would really begin to get that sense of ownership and pride that can continue throughout high school. Last year, our eighth grade students made a portfolio just for their eighth grade year to present to the school staff, and seeing the presentations they gave was not only heartwarming, but also a learning experience. When the student could explain why they chose an assignment and where it lead them to, they truly connected with it and understood what work they needed to do. The portfolio also impacted them, because when they come to visit us, they still talked about how much pride they had in that assignment and wanted to add to it through their high school years. In Niguidula (2005), he talks about making portfolios meaningful to students and that they can serve a variety of contexts with either best work, expectations for graduation, and as a way to communicate with parents. I believe that having this in a digital context allows for students to carry it with them through the years and watch how much they have grown over the years.


Niguidula, D. (2005). Documenting learning wtih digital portfolios. Educational Leadership, 63(3), 44-47

Creating an assessment

For this week, we continued to work on our formative assessments. I continued to work with what our math assessments are lacking in, while also trying to make it easier for teachers. I find that including technology into math is a lot easier to do than reading at the kindergarten level. I have to think a lot about what my students are capable of doing on their own, and what they would need full instruction on to complete. The hardest part for my students is when it comes to feedback. They can not read as well as older grades, so a lot of their feedback has to be verbal. However, when it comes to an assessment, we have to keep a record of what they have done. The feedback created for this, would be for the parents to see the growth and progress, while the students would be receiving verbal  feedback. With that here is the next part of my formative assessment.

For review, here is the first part.

CMS Assessment Creation

This week we created a CMS assessment online for students. With teaching kindergarten, I always find that you have to search for ways to really make it beneficial for the students to use. I took one of the websites that I use daily in my classroom, and created a grouping of games for the students to play. The website tracks points and scores and emails them to me when a student is done. I am able to see how a student is doing, and what they are struggling on. With that link, I embedded it on to Edmodo. I liked Edmodo for the fact that I can send messages out, and polls to collect answers. However, with teaching kindergarten, I am going to get more parent interaction, than student. Creating links and activities for students to connect to is a wonderful way to use this CMS in the classroom. It allows for me to have a record book of what students have accomplished, along with also having a cut off period to use. Here is my screencast of how I connected the assessment.