Who likes taking tests?

While helping teach with Kindergarten, I never really seemed to notice assessment strategies until this unit in our class. Thinking of the Summative, Formative, and Authentic assessments, I see several different methods of authentic assessments in our classroom. I never really thought that the book reports, journal entries, or projects were a form of assessment, but it is a very smart method. In our classroom we have been working on letters, and small, simple words. A form of assessment we have used in our classroom is our classroom mailbox. Every week when we work on new words, we have the students write a letter once a week to another student in our class, and put them in a mailbox in our classroom. In a way, this is Authentic and Formative, because it is a creative form of testing, but it is also continuous throughout the school year.
When I was in grade school, the assessments that worked best for me were the ones that I looked forward to working on. Having a creative poster, diorama, video/short film, or even filling a basket full of representative/symbolic items. These can be the most fun assignments for the students, because they get to put their own creative spin on their assessment project. I have testing anxiety whenever I have an exam, and forget what I am doing once the packet is in front of me. I know I am not alone in this, so when there are authentic assessments like these that are given, I am excited to show what I have learned. This is what I want in my own classroom, I don't want students scared for exams, or boring projects, I want my students excited to show what we learned together.

IDEA: Students with Disabilities.

This is a topic that I have a great deal of passion about. I have seen IDEA in action in the schools I have done my hours for pertaining not only to this class, but in many other classrooms I have interned in for the past 2 years. In my classroom right now, it is kind of hard to see specific learning disabilities with children that are so young. My kindergarten class is wonderful and I love all the students in it. The parents had to fill out a substantial amount of paperwork when they registered their student for school, and had to have a meeting or two with the classroom teacher, and what the school calls the "Skill Building" instructor. They help devise a plan for their childs/students learning to best suit their needs. There are 3 students in my class who have a hard time in the classroom, and 2 or 3 times per week they will go with the skill building instructor to another room in the school, and work on things that they may be falling behind in.
For example, we were working on spelling certain focus words about a week ago, and once we looked over the students worksheets they turned in, Mrs. Bennett made a few notes concerning those students that have been having a hard time with spelling, and reading, to give those notes to the skills lab. I thought it was such a smart idea to not waste any time to work with these students. The next day, 2 of those students were taken to skills lab to work on those words, and a few other things they had been working hard with. I have a lot of sympathy for learning disabilities because my own little brother has one. He was born premature and so his cognitive and mental skills have developed slower than a lot of the other kids his age. He had a hard time learning how to walk, and speaking came a little later, and even now kids his age are wrestling with each other and being rough, and he still has a little skip when he runs. He is such a smart kid, and when I was considering going into elementary education, my parents encouraged me to help him at home, and I couldn't be happier I did. He has taught me so much, and so have the students in my classroom. Not everyone is at a runners pace, or even a brisk jog, some students are just walking along and doing it one step at a time.  IDEA is such an amazing principle, and I don't think we would have created the education system for these students without it.

My little brother Fischer catching drops of rain in Hawaii

Diversity in the Classroom

The best opportunities that I have had so far in the classroom, have been when I am working with small groups of students. One of the assignments that we did was drawing a picture of what their family did on the past weekend. When asking the students in each group what they did on the weekend, it was really cool to see how different they all were. In our class we have all kinds of different nationalities. We have a young boy who is from Mexico, a few colored students, and a young girl who's parents are from Korea. These students do the same work in the classroom, and it has been a privilege to see them interact, and become friends. 

When looking over the student's drawings after class, everyone had such different activities over the weekend. There were traditional clothes depicted in some of the drawings, maybe like a festival or something they must have attended. Students drew different types of food, places, and people. It was cool to see the different cultures and diversity when looking through the artwork. 

These students really don't have any sense of racial judgement yet, but they are also very blunt with their questions. "Why is your skin that color?" is a question I heard the other day, and the student just responded that is how they were born. The student asking the question just replied "That is so cool!" This is the kind of interaction that I love seeing in the classroom.