Guided Response: Respond to at least two classmates’ posts and provide specific feedback regarding their analysis and ideas for differentiation, student reflection, and reassessment. 

How you will identify particular areas of need/misunderstanding (what will you look for? See Chapter 6 from Ward, Fischer, Frey, & Lapp).

Formative assessments are assessments that are used to monitor progress. These can also tell you what students are not understanding (Ward, Fischer, Frey, & Lapp, 2013). In my Hunter Lesson Plan from week four, the lesson was for students to write their names and understand the phonemes that make up their names. For example, Billy has a ‘B’ in it, which also makes the sound buh. I will identify the students who are misunderstood by walking around the classroom while the students are writing their names. They will have multiple chances because odds are, someone will not spell their name correctly the first time. 

How you will address and re-teach with differentiation, so students meet the learning objective?

In week four, I wrote that providing visuals and offering to model writing my own name would do the trick. However, if this approach does not work, I will offer each student a name card for them of their name to trace. I will also offer letters with directional arrows (O’Block, 2015) as well as a video from YouTube (One Kids, 2015). 

How you will employ students in the process of self-reflection and identifying areas of misunderstanding?

I will ask them to look back at all the examples of the right ways to do it such as tracing letters, listening and watching the YouTube video, looking at letters with directional arrows as instruction, and offer my help in the process.

How you will reassess for the learning objective?

I will reassess before the lesson is over this time. I will see what pictures line up with the sounds of the letter and what do not. I will use my voice as a tool to help students understand that the ‘T’ in Trent sounds like t. 

How will these instructional adjustments better prepare them for the impending summative assessment?

I believe modeling, having hands-on experience to discover letters and sounds, visuals, and auditory cues will help students in preparation for the summative assessment. They will have many different ways of learning one thing so everyone will have more than one option to learn the letters and the sounds that accompany them.

References

James-Ward, C., Douglas, F., Frey, N., & Lapp, D. (2013). Using data to focus instructional improvement. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development. Retrieved from http://www.ebrary.com (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.

One Kids. (2015, September 05). Retrieved January 15, 2019, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bl6FEiAh19k

O’Block, T. (2015, July 29). Differentiated Alphabet & Handwriting Practice for Kindergarten & Pre-K. Retrieved from https://lessons4littleones.com/2015/07/29/differentiated-letter-writing-practice-for-kindergarten/

In my lesson, the students are asked to go through a theme, plot, and setting PowerPoint as a group, read a story as a group and identify theme, plot, and setting and then play a game of Kahoot! in order to show that they have learned the information.   If my students were having trouble with the Kahoot! game, I would identify particular areas of need/misunderstanding by using the data collected from the questions they got wrong and analyze them to know what I need to focus in on throughout the rest of my lesson (Ward, Fischer, Frey, and Lapp, 2013).  In order to address and reteach with differentiation, I would create a learning path in our learning platform, Its Learning.  It allows students to work at their own pace in individual lessons on theme, plot, and setting while I work with the ones who really need my help in one or more of any of these areas.  For these higher need students, I would work in small groups and read stories and work with the students to find the theme, plot, and setting of our stories.

For this lesson, I would use journaling for the self-reflection process and to identify areas of misunderstanding.  When the students are asked what they understand or do not understand in a private forum, they are more willing to open up about any confusions they have.  After we have retaught through Its Learning, small groups, and journaling, the next step would be for us to reassess our learning objective.    I would have the students use a “Diagramming a Story” worksheet to dissect a short story.  They would have to identify the theme, plot, and setting of a few different stories so I can grasp whether they are understanding the information or not. 

These instructional adjustments will better prepare my students for the impending summative assessment because it will allow each student an equitable opportunity to learn the information.  By focusing on the higher need students, they have gotten what they need, and by allowing the lower need students to work at their own pace, they can obtain the information needed for the summative and then be enriched with information that could help them in the future.  Each student is given multiple opportunities to be successful. 

James-Ward, C., Douglas, F., Frey, N., & Lapp, D. (2013). Using data to focus instructional improvement. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development. Retrieved from http://www.ebrary.com