Tuesday, November 6, 2012
Assessment 2
My goal for the students is to learn about the solar system and be able to name the planets and their moons in order ranging from closest to furthest from the sun. I have decided to take the approach of information processing theory to teach my class about the solar system. Information processing theory allows for students to use their previous knowledge while adding on new information in order to enhance their already exisiting schemas. For instance, if the student's know about planets they know there are 8 planets. If they don't know each planet's name they will create a new schema for each new planet and retain information about each one they learn and about the various moons each many have. Allowing them to gather new information and place it with their old information will allow for the information to be stored in long term memory but only after we have used key encoding devices for such. Each student will be able to create their own form of a mnemonic to remember the names of the planets in order. The students will be judged on how well they know about the solar system and the planets so a formal assessment such as a test will be used after we learn about each of the planets and the solar system as a whole. This would also be summative because it is judging the application of their skills and is involving them to actually recall the information and put it into an activity. This would be filling out a table that has the names of planets and key characteristics, parts of the solar system, and the order in which planets go with the feel of a formal assessment or test like atmosphere.
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I think the creation of a chart is a great way for students to chunk importnat information about the planets together. It could help them compare similarities and differences between the planets so they can better understand the differences of the planets and be able to encode the way they fit into the solar system with the more knowledge they have about each of the planets.
ReplyDeleteI really like Sam's comment--using a chart to categorize information about the planets is great for IP theory--this is great for encoding, as we discussed in class, because it meaningfully groups information.
ReplyDeleteI think what you have here looks good, but it's somewhat unclear why you chose each. Everything looks relatively consistent, but why is IP the best theory for the learning goal you stated? Just 'stating planets in order' can be a behavior that is reinforced, so something that could be modeled from the teacher. It's just something to think about--why did you choose IP methods as the best theory of learning guiding instruction?
Why make it a formal summative assessment? Why is that the best choice, given your learning goal and theory guiding instruction? I think it's totally reasonable, but I want you all to think about why it's the best, most aligned choice (you'll need to do this on the final!) For example, emphasizing methods of retrieval/recall (such as using cues that were used in instruction) would be a way to make the assessment aligned with IP theory, or explaining how the chart is a method of meaningfully chunking/grouping the information during the encoding process AND performing that activity again as an assessment (a performance assessment of the task used during instruction?) shows that they can do it themselves.