Landforms Assessment
Kelli Sprenger
Landforms Assessment
Standard 6: Assessment
Landforms Assessment
Standard 6: Assessment
When I arrived at my placement at Palmer Elementary, the students were in the middle of a unit on landforms. The previous student teacher had been teaching the unit, so my cooperating teacher did not know exactly what or how much of the unit had been covered, but did think that they should almost be done with the unit. I chose to do a review on my first day with them, as a review for them but as a baseline to show me how much they had already learned. I just asked them questions about the section and recorded how much they were able to talk about each of the landforms. From this I could tell that the students already knew many of the main features of landforms, as well as some body movements to help remember them. I read some of the textbook to them to freshen up on the details.
One of the assessments I gave during this unit was to label, draw, and color four of the landforms in order to show their features. Each student folded a regular plain white sheet of paper to create four areas. They could choose any four of the landforms that they had already learned about. After they were finished, I asked them to share one of their drawings with the whole class in order to share the features of the landforms they included in their pictures.
One of the assessments I gave during this unit was to label, draw, and color four of the landforms in order to show their features. Each student folded a regular plain white sheet of paper to create four areas. They could choose any four of the landforms that they had already learned about. After they were finished, I asked them to share one of their drawings with the whole class in order to share the features of the landforms they included in their pictures.
I think this was a great assessment. It was a great way for me to see each student's understanding of the features of these landforms. The students really enjoyed the time drawing and coloring also. One problem is that by allowing the students to choose, they would probably choose the 4 landforms that they are the most familiar with, so I would not be able to assess whether or not they know all of the landforms. Another problem was that it took a very long time for them to get all four drawings done. I think next time I would not have them do all four, but instead maybe two. I would also set a timer to be finished. I noticed that some of the students were taking so much time trying to make one picture so perfect that they needed a lot of extra time to finish all four, so I think having a set time to finish would have helped. Overall, I think this was a great assessment for me to better see what the students had learned before I started working with them. Although the class discussion helped, it did not allow each student to share as much of their knowledge as the drawing did. Using both techniques provided me with a much clearer picture of how much more time needed to be spent on learning the features of these landforms.