Chapter Seven: Assessing and Reporting Student Achievement

This chapter of Teaching Young Adolescents was focused on assessment.  I appreciated that the authors pointed out the specifics of each type of assessment, and how to implement them correctly. I think that it can be easy to overlook the mechanics of an assessment, but this chapter made me realize that it is very important with regards to making it as effective and valid as it can be to demonstrate what students have learned.

Another thing that I took from this chapter is that it's important to use varied assessments, not just the same assessment consistently for every topic, unit etc. This way, students can express what they know in different ways, and perhaps if they are weak in one area of assessment they can still achieve because of the variations.

Chapter Six: Preparing an Instructional Plan

I found this chapter of Teaching Young Adolescents to be very interesting. I just finished ETE 215 this past spring semester, and this chapter made me reflect a lot on what I had learned in that class about instructional planning. In this chapter, the authors pointed out that there are several ways that one can create instructional plans. I liked that the way that the authors in this book and Dr. Cantu explained it was different from what I had previously learned. This allowed me to reflect on which ways I am more effectively able to implement a plan. Of course, this can and will change throughout my education, experience, and the needs of my students, but it was still beneficial to learn how to create plans in different ways.

I also think that Gardner's multiple intelligences and DeBono's thinking hats are a good way to think about lesson planning. Although it may be difficult to include all of them in one lesson, I think that it is important to implement these as much as possible. This is especially important for a middle school classroom, to develop the ways in which students think.

It was interesting to see how my thought process had to be different for this lesson plan versus an elementary school lesson plan. In both, it is important to keep students engaged, but for middle school it is even more important to encourage students' higher thinking skills and different ways of thinking and solving problems.

Overall, this was one of the most beneficial chapters for me. Even though it was a lot of work, it encouraged a lot of reflection on my part, and how I need to adapt for the needs of different students depending on their strengths,  ages, etc.

Chapter Five:The Curriculum

Generally, this chapter of Teaching Young Adolescents was very straightforward and will be useful for my future classroom. I liked that it was organized in a way that was specific and easy to follow. Specifically, I found it memorable that the authors pointed out,

"If the term authentic assessment sounds rather silly to you, we concur. After all, if the objectives and assessment don't match, then that assessment should be discarded or modified until it does match. In other words, assessment that is not 'authentic assessment' is 'poor assessment' and should not be used" (p. 196).

I had never really thought of this until reading the chapter, but it does make a lot of sense. All assessments should be as authentic as possible- to assess what the students know according to the instructional objectives.  In fact, I believe it's important for everything in the curriculum to be as authentic as possible- to better prepare students for real world situations.