FIAE Chapters 11, 12, 13 & 14

These chapters of Fair Isn’t Always Equal focused mainly on grading scales and the place they have in the classroom. These chapters were really informative and really helpful for me as a future teacher, especially because they had plenty of graphics when they were introducing something they knew that readers would be unsure about. The first chapter was all about sixty vs. zero and the effects that either the sixty or the zero would have a student’s overall grade. The argument the chapter made was that, while zeros would impact the final grade more, students who don’t do anything and still get sixties aren’t going to be motivated to get their work done.

One of my favorite things said in these four chapters, was that whatever grade scale is used, should focus more on the learning and the progress than just on the grade itself, which is what it should be about. When students receive their report card at the end of the grading period, they should be thinking more about what kind of learning they achieving, instead of just on the grade itself. For this kind of response, Rick Wormeli suggests that the 4.0 grade scale be used, as it’s less focused on letter grades.

Another really useful chapter in this section was the chapter about how to arrange the grade book. As a teacher, we’re going to have a lot of students and a lot of grades for each of those students, and there are many different ways that we can organize these grades for not only our benefit, but also for the benefit of the student and the student’s parents as well. Grade books are an important part of teaching, because students are always curious about grades and it’s important to keep all those things organized, so when the end of the grading period comes around, everything is available to you.

This section was extremely informative, with chapter 11 including a lot of different tricks to grading and information that many people might not immediately think about, like grading late work, grading kids with different needs and intelligences, and grading English work versus science work versus math versus social studies. All different subjects are going to have different requirements for grading.  A math assignment is going to have less focus on grammar and more focus on the mathematical process, unlike an English assignment, which is obvious going to have a heavier grammar focus.

Overall, I thought everything presenting in these chapters was extremely helpful and informative with information that I hadn’t necessarily thought about before. Hearing ways to organize your grade book was definitely something I had never considered before. I also think, as teachers, it’s important to understand the different grading scales and the pros and cons of both, so we can use the one we find best in our classroom.

FIAE Chapters 7, 8, 9, 10

These four chapters focused primarily on grading and how we can be successful graders in a differentiated classroom, when everyone shouldn’t be graded on the same level. These chapters brought up a lot of good points about grading and what kinds of assignments should and be shouldn’t be graded. One of the major things that these chapters seem to agree on, is that students should be graded on their journey, instead of just their end product.

Grading is such a grey area in teaching; every teacher grades differently and uses a different scale to grade different things. Some teachers put a lot of weight on participation and others put a major emphasis on homework and attendance.  While, it might be important to note attendance and participation when finalizing a student’s final grade, along with their homework grades, chapter 9 suggests that students receive a grade for homework, especially if it’s just a grade on whether or not they did the homework.

Chapter 9 outlined ten different key things teachers should remember when grading students, and I found these points very helpful and agreed that all of them are important when grading a student. One of the major things pointed out in this chapter, that seemed to be a major point throughout the entire four chapters, was number five, “avoid assessing students in ways that do not accurately indicate their mastery,” not all students reach that mastery the same way, some it can take days, others it might take weeks, everyone works at different paces and has different strengths, so instead of just grading everyone’s test or essay after a certain amount of time, should be avoided, or at least changed to make it easier for the student to succeed.

Sometimes, as teachers, grading might be affected by something happening in a student’s life, as outlined in chapter 8, with F. being a smart student who is present and participates in class, but because of a hard home life, has a hard time completing a homework assignment. While, it might be tempting to just not grade this student on homework at all, as teachers, it’s hard to give certain students passes on homework, while every other student in the class is required to finish it and work towards a grade.

I really enjoyed these chapters of Fair Isn’t Always Equal, after learning a lot about assessment; reading about grading was extremely helpful. Before these chapters, I had assumed that assessment and grades were the same thing, and was unaware of all the different aspects of grading. I definitely know that when I have my own classroom, I’ll work to making sure that students are grading more on their own process to mastering the skill or task than anything else, because at the end of these chapters, that seems to be the most important point that is being made.

Chapter 8 UbD, Chapters 8, 11 & 12 MI

Chapter 8 from Understanding by Design focused mainly on the best way to grade and assess students. It talked about how using a traditional grading system had many flaws and that many problems can arise from using traditional grading. The chapter offers up many examples of ways this system can be problematic, such as handing out zeros to missing or late work can deter the learning of a student, that grading shouldn’t have the stigma that A means the best and F means the worst, and that using averages can give a incomplete or inaccurate representation of someone’s learning. I agreed with a lot of the statements in this chapter, especially that student’s grades should be a representation of their learning over anything else. I thought it was really nice how this chapter brought back the idea that “effective assessment resembles a photo album – a collection of evidence – rather than a single snapshot.” Grades and a student’s achievements in a class should be looked at in a big picture kind of way, rather as a one opportunity to get a good grade. I definitely think that it’s important to grade students more on their overall learning and growing in a class instead of just one summative assessment at the end of the year or unit. 

In Multiple Intelligence, chapter 8 was all about how to manage your classroom using multiple intelligence. While a lot of these ideas were clever and unique to each intelligence, I feel like it would be hard to incorporate some of them into a secondary classroom. To me, it seemed like most of these suggestions seemed to fit better with a elementary classroom, such as the singing or making animal noises to form groups, or using many hand gestures to get students attention. One thing in this chapter, though, which I really agreed with, was coming up with classroom rules as a class and working together to come up with guidelines to improve the classroom environment. 

Chapter 11 of Multiple Intelligence talked about multiple intelligence and it’s relationship with special education. I thought a lot of the points made in this chapter were really good and I definitely agreed with a lot of this things said in this chapter about how a lot of kids that are in special education, might have a deficiency in one intelligence, but are extremely proficient in another one. I think it’s really important to find out what all students intelligences are, and realize that just because someone might have no proficiency in one, doesn’t mean they aren’t proficient in another one, which is what this chapter was mainly about. Intelligences should be something that are celebrated, even in students who might be low in another intelligence. 

Chapter 12 focused on cognitive skills and their relationship with multiple intelligence. It’s main point was that all students learn and retain information differently, and as a teacher, it’s important to give students resources they need to retain information and succeed.

MI Chapters 7, 9, 13 & 14

These four chapters focused on two different subjects, primarily. The first two chapters talked mostly about how you can make MI come alive in your classroom and how you run and set up your classroom. The second two chapters talked about other uses for MI that go beyond the classroom, and how you can apply MI to other tasks. Both of these components are extremely important to the overall concept of MI and both of these ideas are fundamental to our understanding of MI, and both of these can be applied to the classroom. The former, of course, can be implemented much more seamlessly, but by introducing how the latter can be important to your students, you can integrate it into your classroom.

           

Chapters 7 and 9 of Multiple Intelligence mainly focused on the concept of how MI can be physically integrated into the classroom and introduced ideas on how to integrate MI into the overall school environment, this was done by giving examples from a “MI School” that has special features that directly connect the school with the theory of MI and it’s integration of it into the school system. In chapter seven, the main focus was on how, as a teacher, you can bring MI into the classroom, without making too many changes to your classroom. This might be as simple as making a reading nook for linguistic students, adding a pop of color to the classroom for visual learners, having the curtains open for the naturalist students or keeping to a routine for logical learners. One of the key components, at least for me, is to integrate all these intelligences, but not in a way that makes it obvious that they’re being integrated. Chapter 9 on the other hand introduced this idea of a “MI School” that has many features of it overall that contribute to multiple intelligence. This includes having specific instruction for each intelligence, having groups specific to interest and learning style and having a room in the school where students can go and express their multiple intelligences in creative and fun ways. While these ideas were really interesting and I could definitely see them working, it would be hard to work them into your average, everyday classroom.

Chapters 13 and 14 focused more on ways to apply multiple intelligences in places outside of the classroom. The examples that were given were computer technology, cultural diversity and job hunting. Computer technology has the ability to reach out to all different levels and kinds of intelligences based on design and interface.  Cultural diversity can easily weave in all the different intelligences and can make it assessable to everyone, no matter his or her intelligence. Job-hunting relays pretty heavily on multiple intelligence, as it’s important to have a job that applies to their preferred intelligence. Chapter 14, on the other hand is all about the new intelligence, existential intelligence, which values arts and thinking. This chapter also tells you how to apply it to the classroom.

UbD Chapters 6&7, MI 5&6

In the chapter 6 & 7 from Understanding by Design and chapters 5 & 6 from Multiple Intelligences, the main focus is creating a curriculum and working in the right teaching styles for that curriculum. Both books talked a lot about the important key elements to a curriculum, although both brought up different elements that teachers should incorporate into their lesson plans. Understanding by Design focuses primarily on how to create a unit plan and curriculum and making sure students understand it and teaching it in a way that all students understand. Multiple Intelligences, on the other hand, focuses on how to make sure your curriculum is available for all students of all intelligences to understand, and teaching it in a way that reaches out to all intelligences.

            

In the two chapters of Understanding by Design they talk about backward design and the multiple stages involved in designing a unit. I liked how this chapter talked about the different stages in creating a unit, which allowed me to relate it back to what we’re doing in our class now and it’s something I can do when I have my own classroom. Chapter six in Understanding by Design talks mostly about how to do responsive teaching, which means being proactive and designing your curriculum to be available to all students. Chapter six also talks about how in order to create a successful curriculum and unit, the main goals and overarching questions that will be answered in the unit must be involved in in order to have students fully understand what they will be learning. Chapter seven in Understanding by Design talks about how teachers should teach these curriculums successfully, including uncovering the answers to the essential questions, using the facets of understanding and putting to use the WHERETO model, which answers basic questions that need to be uncovered in the unit. I found the WHERETO model very interesting and will probably use it my classroom.

In the two chapters of Multiple Intelligences, it like Understanding by Design focuses on the creation of a unit and how to teach that unit to a diverse group of learners. But, instead talks about how to incorporate the different intelligences into a curriculum. Chapter five of Multiple Intelligences talks about the important things that need to be incorporated into a curriculum to make it appropriate for MI. Some of the things the book suggests doing are, focus on a specific topic; ask key MI questions, to make sure the curriculum is accessible to all multiple intelligences. The book also suggests brainstorming how you can appeal to all intelligences. The sixth chapter of Multiple Intelligences gives activity suggestions for each intelligence in order to further understanding. These were very interesting to read, but it would be hard to incorporate them into every classroom.

FIAE Chapter Six

This chapter focuses primarily on how, as teachers, we can create good test questions that correctly assess and challenge students. The chapter addresses the different types of questions that teachers can use on tests, including multiple choice, true/false, essay questions, matching, short answers and others. These are considering the “traditional” test questions that are used in multiple different content areas and are most commonly used. The chapter also talks about more “nontraditional” questions that teachers can use, like asking students to draw pictures, make diagrams, analyzing examples and using real world examples. The chapter suggests that in order to make the most successful test questions, teachers combine the use of so called traditional and nontraditional test questions, in order to make students more engaged with the test and provide more options for students to display their skills and mastery.

The chapter also talks about how another successful way to administer a test is to make sure that students get immediate feedback on their results. This can be accomplished by having students make two copies of their answers and then go over the answers after the test, with teachers having one copy of answers and students being able to correct their own copies. The only problem with this method, is that students would have no way to correct an essay question, so they would still have to wait for feedback on those questions.

I definitely liked all the different tips and suggestions this chapter offered about how to design tests. My favorite being that you shouldn’t ask the same question with different wording, and keeping tests short in order to really test the student’s knowledge.

FIAE Chapter Five

This chapter introduced and explained the concept of “tiering.” Tiering is when teachers adjust the complexity of an assignment or an assignment itself to meet the skill level of the students. This can be done by changing the amount of instruction given or giving students more and less options on how to get an assignment done. This idea of “tiering” would be perfect in a differentiated classroom, as in a differentiated classroom, most students are at different skill levels and bringing in tiering would allow teachers to adjust assignments to meet the needs of students. Tiering is mostly based on the pre-existing knowledge of the students on a subject and can be adjusted as the knowledge grows and the mastery in the skill increases. 

This chapter also talked about ways that tiering could be used in the classroom effectively, such as changing the wording of an assignment to make it more difficult for students, giving them different options for how to complete an assignment, giving them more or less control on an assignment, or having them look at a concept from multiple viewpoints to get the  most out of the subject. 

I found the concept of tiering to be really interesting, with the idea of changing assignments often to make sure that the assignments are on level with student learning and are leading to student success. My favorite example that was given, that I could see myself using in the classroom, is switching the wording of assignments, in order to give students more options or make it more difficult for students.

FIAE Chapter Four

In this chapter, the main focus was on different alternatives that teachers can use for assessment that go beyond big projects or tests and quizzes. There are three major examples used in this chapter, which the author then goes into detail, explaining why all of these examples would be a good form of assessment in the classroom.  The three different kinds of assessment talked about in this chapter are portfolios, where students pick out work that they want to showcase to show that they understand the material and have mastered the skill, rubrics, where students have to hit certain points in order to get the full credit of the assignment or unit and student self assessment, where students are given the opportunity to reflect on their own learning and assess how they believe they’ve done learning the skill.

I definitely can see myself using all of these different forms of assessment in the classroom and I like how all of them can be used for nearly every subject and don’t have limits because of the content area. I also really liked how more than one of the forms of assessment as students to look back at their own learning, whether it be to reflect on how they believe they understood the unit and skill or in looking back at old assignments to pick out ones they believe showcase their skill level the best.

I think that the most important form of assessment is the one that asks students to reflect on their own work, because I think that students know their own learning better than anyone. Asking students to reflect and using their own reflection of their work to come up with their grade is, in my opinion, one of the most effective ways to assess students.