Assessment

Prior to addressing my assessments, I need to mention the fact that in

retrospection, content standards would have been incredibly beneficial in the creation of
my pre and post lesson assessments. As my content is agriculture and I was placed in AP
Environmental Sciences, I simply collaborated with my cooperating teacher regarding the
content he wanted me to teach and focused on the outcomes and objectives of the lessons
as opposed to examining the content standards. For this reason, I feel that my assessments
were not specifically aligned to content standards, but rather to evidence outcomes of the
lessons.
Additionally, I gave my pre-assessments by simply engaging in classroom
discussion. In both lessons I encouraged the class to explain their understanding of each
principle (biomes and overpopulation) with the hopes that they would refresh their
memories about the chapter reading while allowing me to gage their understanding of the
material. Although my cooperating teacher had already collected chapter study guides
prior to diving into the unit plans, I now understand the importance of being able to
collect a pre-assessment prior to the lesson itself. It would have been beneficial for me to
be able to acquire a deeper knowledge of each individual students comprehension of the
material (as opposed to only those who felt like contributing in the fairly brief classroom
discussion). I realize that every lesson does not necessarily have to have a written preassessment, but I would definitely like to practice this method in my student teaching
semester.

With this in mind, I am still confident that my students learned as a result of my

lessons. As I began each lesson, I specifically commented on the learning objectives for
the day and guided the classroom through a short discussion about the content as it
correlated to the objectives. I asked students the essential questions (listed at the end of
my lesson plans) prior to the introduction of the material in order to not only guide their
area of focus throughout the course of the lesson, but also to assess the depth of their
answers. Upon the completion of the lesson, I was very impressed by the breadth of their
answers to the same essential questions, and by student cooperation through the
culminating discussion. Their active and intelligent discussion to end each lesson proved
to me that they truly learned the content throughout the course of the lesson.
Not only did I do a verbal post-lesson assessment, but I also collected hard copies
of the work they produced throughout the course of each lesson. Their biome brochures
were very well informed, had all of the required information (for the most part), but often
lacked analysis of the facts that seemed to simply be regurgitated onto the page. It is
apparent now that I must specifically ask for this analysis both in writing, and while
explaining the assessment. Finally, the worksheet collected after the completion of the
human population webquest mainly checked for completion of the exercise. Although the
questions were guided towards making the material more relevant to each individual
student, the answers I truly cared about were the questions asking them to create an
educated opinion regarding the issue of overpopulation, and what we should or should
not do to combat it. I was extremely pleased by student responses, and was inspired by
their creativity! Their answers were logical and much more detailed than those elicited by
the pre-lesson discussion.

Overall, I believe that I understand assessment to at a much higher level after

practicing and reflecting upon my own lessons. I now understand the value of tracking
each individual students progress, thus keeping the quiet individuals from falling
through the cracks. I am excited to practice writing more effective pre and post-lesson
assessments in my student teaching semester, and feel confident that I will be able to
improve in this area drastically.