Week 4 - Winter Term

This was definitely my busy week in January. I had a lot of assignments due, plus a midterm in my elective class, Classroom Assessment. I actually really enjoying my elective class, and most people that I tell this to are surprised. I know that I am learning a lot, especially since I feel that the 155 module did not do a very good job on assessment. For the midterm in the class I was really nervous, as there are a lot of terms that I had to know and understand. However, when it came to the midterm I was pleased with the way my teacher administered it. He administered it the same way that Paul Hewitt administers his test (if I recall correctly), the 60 questions ones that we do in class. My midterm consisted of two parts. The first was to write the test alone, and after 45 minutes sit in your groups of 4 and answer the questions again as a group. After the groups finished answering the questions, we took up the test as a class (something that I do not like to do) and gave 1 mark for your correct individual answer, and 1 mark for the correct group answer, so each questions was worth 2 marks. At the end, we added the individual marks and groups marks separately and took the average between the two, which is your final mark. When we talked about this is Physics I thought that is was a good idea, even though we talked about weighing the marks and not taking an average; and now that I have done it, I really want to do it with my classes. However, I feel that the key is that you can only do this with Multiple Choice questions, which are the hardest questions to write. In the end I really like this way of administering a test, as the students may feel that they have less pressure since they get to do the test again with a group. Personally, I felt that the pressure lifted off of my shoulders when he said that we get to do it as a group. As I mentioned in the description of the midterm, we marked it as a class. I really do not like this approach as some students my get embarrassed about their mark. I feel that if I student does not want to share their mark, then they should not have to. So by making another student mark their test, the student may feel worst if they do poorly, or not to their personal standards. I know this means that I will have to do more work, because I will have to mark another 30 tests, but I would rather do that than embarrass a student.

I am really excited to do the Peel presentations in Physics this week. I have not been able to look into Peel website that much since you need to be at school to access it (for free) and my laptop is a old and almost breaks every time you open it. However, I am excited to see what the procedures are, and think about ways that I can use them in my upcoming practicum.

In my first practicum, I had an idea to get students to present the different types of Light Sources, this is for the Grade 10 Science Optics unit. However, the way that I had step up the lesson, I was thinking of the three students presenting and not the 20 students waiting for their peers to get set up. This was not an idea that I learned here at Queen's, but it was still an activity I wanted to try. After the lesson, my associate teacher asked me how it went and how I can improve on the lesson in the future. We discussed possible ways to improve the lesson, and the idea that we came up to with was to use chart paper. Get the students to write down their points on the piece of chart paper, hang them on the wall of the class, then get the students to go around the classroom reading all the key points on the different types of light sources (this is something similar to what we did in my Math Curriculum class once). What I am getting at is I have tried to do thing that I have seen and I think might work, however they sometime fail. So, I understand your point that "hearing is only the first step", because what you think might work may not, and it is only through practice that it will become better. However, the important thing is to try and improve on lessons, and try them again the next time an opportunity comes around.

(Sorry for the inconsistent flow of this post!)