An Experience That Has Caused Me to Consider How I Would Improve My Teaching Practice:
I handed out a Year 9 Industrial Technology Timber Research Assessment Task three weeks ago for the students to complete. I spent an entire 50 minute lesson briefing the students on what was required of them to receive full marks in this task. I gave students three lessons during the three weeks to work on their assessment task. On the due date I had eight students who did not hand in the task on- time. Each student was aware of the consequences which is every day it is late 10 per cent is deducted from their final mark.
Once all the students had handed in the assessment task, I spent a lesson debriefing the students on how they could improve their marks in future tasks. The areas of concern were noted when marking the task.
I found that this lesson did not go as planned because many students were just interested in their overall mark and did not care about the feedback they have been given. I knew this would generally be the case so I spoke to students generally about the misconceptions of the assessment task and general areas of concern, then once I was complete with this oral feedback, I called students individually to receive their mark and grade. This was coupled with written feedback on the assessment marking sheet, which I tried to begin the feedback with positive comments about the assessment task and things they could improve on, as well as where they lost the marks and reasoning for it. With this assessment task I attempted to achieve my goal of making a conscious effort to supply my students with the feedback they need to improve their learning and understanding of the content. This is an example of NSW Teaching Framework Element 3.1.7- Give helpful and timely oral and written feedback to students. I decided to give oral and written feedback to students because according to Wiggins (2004), "if our aim is to improve student performance, not just measure it, we must ensure that students know the performances expected of them, the standards against which they will be judged, and have the opportunities to learn from the assessment in future assessments."
To improve my teaching practice, I believe the best way to completely achieve this goal would be to provide students with written feedback in general that they can read while I provide them with oral feedback. I think this will increase student's attention and they will be able to absorb the information and use the information for future assessment tasks.
Here is the Assessment Task I created. Please Note some details from the task have been removed for privacy reasons.
Industrial Technology Year 9- Australian Timber Assessment
Wiggins.G, (2004), "Assessment as Feedback", New Horizons for Learning, retrieved on 03/09/2010, from: http://www.newhorizons.org/strategies/assess/wiggins.htm
-------------, (2004), "NSW Institute of Teachers Professional Standards", retrieved on: 03/09/2010, from http://www.nswteachers.nsw.edu.au/Main-Professional-Teaching-Standards.html
