Friday, November 9, 2012

Assessment Post 2

My learning goal is to make sure my 4th grade students can tell me (or anyone else) the presidential candidates and their parties of this year's election in everyday conversation. I would assess this using the information processing theory because it would be based on using what they already know. Using the three step model, the information would come in as input to the sensory memory from the media and other sources. Depending on the student's perception and attention (the goal is that all students attention will be focused on candidates and parties) the information will make it's way into the working memory. From here, the students should be able to encode the information into the long term memory. They will pay attention to the stimulus of learning the candidates and parties because it may have an emotional and personal significance, especially if their parents talk about the campaigns. They can retain this new information by rehearsal, which is repeating the same information over and over. If the campaign is brought up in class, eventually the students will be able to retrieve this information because it will be encoded to their long-term memory. To assess this, a simple summative assessment will be necessary. Since the campaign is over now, they will be given a piece of paper asking to list the candidates and their respective parties. If they can answer these questions, they will be able to retrieve their names in conversation.

3 comments:

  1. I really enjoy this idea. I like how you clearly explained the three step module but also what your using it on. I feel like every child past the fourth grade should have some information and knowledge on presidents and facts revolving around the president.

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  2. I think this is a good goal, but I also think it might be a little much for fourth graders. Maybe if it was a small number of candidates it would work better.

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  3. I like how your learning goal and theory guiding instruction align very well. However, why not use a performance assessment? Your learning goal states an action--something that is informal--so why not have them conduct mock conversations, or give them an assignment to bring up the candidates in conversation and then tell you about it later....?

    I think it's a bit of a stretch to assume that if they can list the candidates on paper that they can use the names in conversation, so I might try to align the assessment a little more with the learning goal and theory (how is the assessment based in IP theory?)

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