Sunday, March 29, 2009

April 8 Week 11- Exit Card

List three things you learned, two things you found interesting and one thing you still have a question about. Comment on someone else's question.

For me, this has been a very educational course. The knowledge I have acquired in both assessment and curriculum is already been applied in my daily instruction. In addition, on a personal side, having come from CT and not familiar as yet to the required NJ standardized tests - I now know what is to come for my younger son and how best to prepare him.

What did I learn?

1. Identifying 21st century skills - knowing what skills are needed for our students future success helps me embed these skills in my current instruction. Although critical thinking has been key for me all along, knowing that this skill is important for future success of my students reinforces for me that my approach is in the right direction.

2. Exposure to the revised 2009 NJCCCS. As I update my curriculum for next year I will be taking these new standards and their strands into account.

3. The changes in standardized testing for NJ regarding particularly, the EOC and its future implementation. It is good to see that NJ is moving away from HPSA and into a more course related assessment. Last year the EOC for biology was introduced. The goal as mentioned above is to eventually eliminate the high school HSPA test and replace it with the EOC series.The EOC series will consist of three tests in science encompassing biology, chemistry, and physics. In addition three tests will be administered in math and three in language arts - the focus I for the latter two areas are unknown to me at this time.

Two interesting things -

1. Technology tools such as Web 2.0, Flickr, Slidelicious, etc. I am now teaching my students on how to use these tools for their presentations, particularly in reference to their projects for Q3/Q4.

2. Social networking tools such as Wikispace. My students all have facebook pages, but they are now learning how to communicate their understanding of physical principles to me and their fellow classmates on their personal classroom wikipage.

One question -

How does one truly judge the effectiveness of curriculum? This question is constantly on my mind. I am always looking for new approaches to curriculum and assessment of that curriculum.

No comments:

Post a Comment