Reflection 9

1.  Description of a method of understanding prior-knowledge of students.

Elise Mueller, an elementary school teacher explains, "I talk to my kids about this all the time. I tell them they can be consumers or they can be producers. It's better to be a producer. That means you're creating something that brings our learning to the next level. That the goal--the global goal--with Web 2.0. There's no point in just being a consumer anymore." Students must be actively thinking throughout the entire project process, from beginning to end. In a well designed project, students know they are taking on a particular task and how it leads to them toward important learning goals. They also know what success looks like when finished with the project, and they understand the various categories by which their performance will be measured.

2.  Discussion on the importance of establishing anchors for a project.

By establishing anchors in the project process, teachers gain a sense of where their students are starting, and how far they are going as they work to meet learning goals. To help with the idea of establishing anchors, teachers should keep track of his/her students projects so that way they can actually establish this anchor.

3.  Description of several ways to assess what students learned during the project.

There are several different ways that teachers can assess their students on what they learned from doing a project. Rubrics are always helpful because the student will get to see feedback written on the rubric of what they did good and what they need to work on. Online grade books are also a good idea. Video taping interviews with students at the end of the project, which allowed the students to be reflective and honest about how their project helped them learn. Teachers may also ask students to create something new that asks them to summarize what they have learned.

4.  Discussion on how concepts in this chapter relate to your topic/project.

This chapter helps a lot with our project because it gave us different ways to create assessments for our students after the project. It also gave us a sense of how we can keep track of students learning throughout the project process.