EDUC 490 Practicum Reflection:
For the past four weeks, I have had the privilege of working and learning in a grade five classroom. During this EDUC 490 practicum, one of my most impactful growth areas has been my understanding of pre and formative assessments.
By finding out what students know, I discovered and honored their strengths and areas that required additional support. As I was now able to plan lessons based on pre-assessment information, I could differentiate activities anticipating the learner’s needs. Due to being able to gear the lesson to fit the learner’s needs, I could also assess students’ understanding more accurately as students responded to the content rather than fighting a teaching approach that did not match their learning style. With this insight, I could further set students up for success by avoiding barriers in other academic areas from impacting how students represented their mathematically understanding. Students could present their answers in various ways, such as numerically, in sentences, visually, and during conferencing, orally. By continuously engaging in formative assessment, I remained informed on how students responded to the information and instruction, thus enabling me to modify the lesson accordingly.
During this practicum, I had a lot of valuable experience with pre and formative assessments. My next step for EDUC 491 is to become more familiar and experienced with summative assessments as I will have more opportunities to initiate and finalize units. I am looking forward to this upcoming learning opportunity as EDUC 490 has been so invaluable and enlightening.