My Path to Inspiration and Inquiry

Assessment Dilemma

I was asked by my school advisor to help with assessment with during centre time with my kindergarten students. When the kids were playing at their interest areas, I was asked to ask one kid to come up at a time to do a short 2-part assessment takes about 2 minutes or so to do. The first task was for the kids to count up from 1 to as many number as they can up to 100. And, I would have to observe and record if there were any mistakes, or were they repeating or self-correcting when they are counting. I would then jot down the last number they were able to count correctly. The second task was for the kids to count back from 10 to 0 which the kids knew as a “blast-off” activity. For this activity, I was just asked to do a check mark if they can or cannot count back from 10. If they couldn’t, I would jot a short note down of my observation.

Students are provided several opportunities each day during instruction with number counting up and down through their morning routines to the lesson activities whenever possible. Sometimes, they would include it in their chants and songs. I wonder what it means for the students who were able to complete each task successfully and the implication for those students who don’t. It was surprising to see some of the result. Some students who were struggling with their fine motor and writing sills excelled with counting. I wonder what some strategies some of the students used when doing rote-count? What is the purpose of assessing the students with these 2 activities? I definitely saw students who also struggled with the counting. How much prompts are we able to give? My school advisor did say to give some prompts to help them relate to activities we usually did in class? But, how much is too much? Does it effect the validity of the assessment?

There are a few different ways of getting student’s attention I learned from Kal, my SA today:

• “non-verbal cues”: my SA started some finger pattern movement and built on more as she attracted the whole class to the crowd. (*I was really amazed at how the crowd gathered at the carpet so quickly and how the kids are so intrigued with the finger pattern and hand movement)
• “how many claps (syllables) in your name”: for lining up to wash their hands for recess or lunch, my SA would say if you have “X number of claps” in your name, you may go wash your hand
• if your name starts with “a phonetic sounds of X”, you may go wash you hand

Friendship Lesson

• Tension between 2 girls at the carpet just before I was about to start  my lesson today. I was debating for a slight second on the spot whether to address it or not.  I felt it was relevant to the friendship conflict resolution activity I was about to start. So, I took their situation and asked the class how we can help our friends out! I was amazed at the helpful input from the rest of the class. However, the two girls still couldn’t get along, and I knew I had to keep the lesson flowing so I discretely separated them as I continue to start the first part of my lesson, a story. I understand at times we might want to to do classroom management right away to keep the flow.  I just thought of experimenting and taking an inquiry approach of bringing  a real scenario that was happening to spark student input and share helpful strategies.