Adjusting Assessments

As we continue to use our assessment checklists, we are making adjustments and many changes. First off, we assessed most students during our soccer unit. What we assessed was different for each grade, depending on the skills we determined they should be able to successfully execute at each level. We started off by checking off if they could perform the skill appropriately; however this raised some questions for us. First off, what if a parent wants to know specifically what their child can and cannot do? Also, as a teacher, I should know which aspect of the skill the student needs help with. That way I can work on the specific movement and then the skill as a whole. Because of this, we decided we need to break the skills down and create rubrics for each skill. We are going to create rubrics (1-4) with "4" being they can do the skill perfectly and "1" being they can't do the skill at all. Obviously we will be specific for each skill and know exactly what to look for. With the rubrics, we will be able to look back and see which skills the students excelled at and what skills they struggled with. This then will affect our teaching; we will spend more time on the challenging skills while only having to review the skills they are more proficient.

Since this is a lot and is new to all the PE teachers, we are working together to develop the rubrics. Over the year, it is going to be a lot of tweaking this and changing that, until we get our overall assessments to a point that is most effecient for us and most effective for the students.

Andrea/September

Can you believe that September is almost over? I just had my meeting with my principal about my PDP goal (which is to create an assessment binder to create more strategy groups in literacy, rather than just guided reading groups) and I am starting to create my binder. I have started DRA testing, and decided that I would use DRA's to create my first strategy groups. After I do a test, I decide what areas of instruction are needed to improve a student's reading. I think I'll create an excel spreadsheet of data that tells me what strategy each student needs. After that, I'll be able to create groups based on a strategy, such as "comprehension" or "predicting," etc. So for now, I keep on chugging with my DRA's, and then try out some strategy groups! It'll be interesting to do more conferring and strategy groups, rather than alot of guided reading this year, but I think it'll be for the better. Classroom teachers--- are you feeling the pressure to do more strategy groups, and less guided reading?

Changed PDP

All the elementary PE teachers are really focusing on assessment this year. We are looking at where we are in terms of assessment, where we want to be, and how we get there. Because of this, I changed my PDP to focus on assessment and implementing new assessment techniques in class. My current PDP is now:
"I want to incorporate various assessments into our lessons by following our "Assessment Schedule." These assessments will cover all three domains (psychomotor, cognitive, and affective), while focusing on psychomotor. Today we began these assessments with our 3rd grade classes and our 1st grade classes. I felt that all the PE teachers were worried about using checklists for skills because we don't want to include skill testing at the elementary level (since they are so new to these skills and are just being exposed). However I believe that this assessment improves my teaching and specifically my feedback. It is a more focused way to give feedback to my students and I now have a hard copy of who can do which skill. By the end of the year, I should know that all the students can do the skills that were designated for their grade level. This has become a more formal way to give feedback, along with keeping records and holding myself accountable that every student should be able to do their grade level skills. At the very least, when the 5th graders leave us in the spring, they should have a checklist of all the elementary skills and hopefully they all should be checked off. So, so far, so good!