Wednesday, July 1, 2015

MTI Final Assessment

For our final assessment in MTI 562, I chose to evaluate Project #3. Project #3 was my favorite project to work on in this class because I enjoyed learning about different web tools. I have many websites that I frequently use in my classroom, but I am beginning to get tired of them. I always am looking for new ideas or tools but I can never seem to find the time. Technology is moving so fast, and it is hard to keep up! For Project #3 I researched Teach Your Monster to Read, and I ended up falling in love with the site. This is tool that I will DEFINITELY try out next year in my classroom, and I feel that my students will benefit from it. This site is geared towards younger students and focuses on those main reading skills that students need in order to be successful readers.

As a teacher I find it helpful to students to provide a rubric for grading BEFORE a project is assigned. I think the guidelines should be clear for the students, and they should know what they are working towards. In MTI 562 Jacqui provided each of us with a rubric for her grading policies, including projects. When I am completing my assignments I  use this rubric as a guideline for how I want to layout my project, and review if I have completed everything. This is something I want my students to do when I assign them a project, so I try to do the same. For our final week, I used Jacqui's rubric to self-assess Project #3.

Personally, I thought that I had a strong understanding of the assignment and provided strong evidence of insights I had gained. I completed the blog post in a thoughtful and meaningful manner without any grammatical mistakes. I presented everything in a sequential order that would make it easy for teachers to navigate through the website. For this project I gave myself 160/160 or 150/150 in each area for a final total of  770/770.

Another element I would have liked to see on this rubric is creativity. I like assess students on how they presented the project in their own creative way. For example:
Creativity: Superior- Presented in a unique way that includes lots of graphics or examples.
                  Sufficient- Presented in a simple manner with limited graphics or examples.
                  Below Standard- Presented in a plain manner with no graphic or examples.
By presenting this project with graphics or examples it helps demonstrate understanding, as well as application of web tools we learned in class. I thought my project had many examples and graphics which is helpful for teachers who are learning to navigate the website.

6 comments:

  1. Your passion for this webtool shines through . I agree with all of your grades. Your review is thorough, well-considered, and makes me want to use that tool also.

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  2. Your excitement about Teach your Monster to Read gives me the incentive to play with it over the summer and share with my colleagues in the fall. Thank you!

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  3. Thanks! It was pretty easy to navigate.

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  4. Melanie, I like your idea for adding creativity to the rubric and how you categorize the creativity element. Providing a rubric to students before hand does allow student to understand the expectations although sometimes I worry about students using it merely as a checklist. I'm not sure it that occurs with younger students - I teach at the high school level.

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    1. Sometimes a checklist can be a good thing. It lets them know what is expected. No surprises.

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