One method of understanding prior knowledge of our students students could be through a variety of assessment strategies, such as the criterion-referenced assessments, alternative assessments, and performance assessments. Another method could be KWL charts, or Know-Want to Know-Learned graphic organizers.
When you establish 'anchors', you gain a sense of where students are starting and how far they are going as they work to meet learning goals. You are also able to expand the opportunities to differentiate instructions and help all learners to be successful. When using PBL, the emphasis is all on quality and not quantity.
There are several ways to assess students knowledge during a project. First, you will want to create a rubric to assess progress towards the key learning goals, or objectives you feel are the most important things your students should know. Another way to assess what students have achieved is through an online grade book, like Curtis at the New Technology Foundation created. This online grade book has different categories, like knowledge of a content, written communication, critical thinking, and work ethic. A second assessment tool could be podcasts, which allow students to be reflective, honest, and insightful about articulating their own learning.
Regarding our PBL on Food Preservation, I feel we can use many applicable points from this chapter. First, we obviously need to understand what our students already know, in order to have a base and foundation to build off of. I also think this is applicable because as teachers, we need innovative and inventive ways to assess our students, especially when traditional ways just don't measure all of the knowledge and applicable, analytical ways that our students think. As teachers, we need to think about creating assessments after they have created their projects on food preservation.
I agree with you that this chapter has given us many points that we can apply to our project on Food Preservation. If we don't know what students already know then we could be starting our lectures too basic or too complicated for our students knowledge base. Knowing what they know and then knowing how to move them forward is extremely important in any classroom.
ReplyDeleteI really liked the comment you made about how Project Based Learning is QUALITY not quantity! That is so true because it isn't about how much material they get through but what the students actually get from the activities that are incorporated into class time. It also goes back to how anchors are used to see what students already know and not every student in the class is going to have the exact same background knowledge- so whatever they learn from the unit will be quality not only to what they already know and want to know but they'll see the importance of it instead of it just being one of the 20 lesson plans from that unit that all seem to mesh together.
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