Samantha Seeger

SPED 875 Assessing Student Learning Assignment

The purpose of this culminating project was to choose a learning target based on

student work. From there we planned and taught the lesson with specific learning targets in

mind. This assignment allowed for there to be two lesson plans in order to monitor progress,

deliver feedback, and examine student work to decide whether the students are reaching the

instructional target. Assessing student work provides the evidence we need to carefully monitor

students learning every step of the way. This process allowed us to teach lesson one and lesson

three with that specific learning goal in mind. Throughout the rest of this course, we continued

to make instructional decisions about how to teach the content. The instructional choices

reflected our knowledge of what our particular group of students already knew in relation to

the content standard and what should be learned next to move them closer to the learning goal

that was established. The final project is a culmination of our experience as we used student

work to plan our instruction using the first and third lesson plans. The final project was a

VoiceThread that displayed the necessary information to accompany this assignment.

To start this assignment, I first examined student work. I knew I wanted to focus on

math because that was the area of need for this particular group of students. Once I collected

the data I spoke with my mentor teacher to go over the assignment, the area of focus, and

lesson plan one that I had written. My mentor teacher was fully onboard and agreed that this

was definitely an area of focus. The first lesson plan reiterated two digit rounding rules with

various strategies that would hopefully benefit each student. Lesson one went well and as I

continued monitoring student progress, I noticed that the students were grasping two -digit

rounding. From that point, I decided to move on to rounding to the nearest ten using three
Samantha Seeger

digits. This next step was a struggle from the data I collected and from working with each

student individually and in small groups. Although the lesson didn’t go as planned due to

unforeseen circumstances, the students were able to grasp the idea with multiple visuals. Once

the lesson plans were complete and the data was collected I put together the VoiceThread to

display the journey. The VoiceThread includes a sample of student work that influenced my

instructional decisions; a description of the student-centered learning goal; the instructional

decisions I made to teach the content; the measurement tool I used to determine student

progress toward the goal; a sample of student work after the content was taught; the analysis

of the outcome of my instruction; and what I learned from this process.

After reviewing the assignment, watching the VoiceThread, and examining the rubric, I

chose not to revise this assignment. The assignment was authentic to the experience and the

necessary information was displayed. The professor did not provide any specific feedback other

than the rubric. I felt that this assignment was complete.

This assignment reiterated the importance of examining student work in order to drive

instruction. These particular students went from not understanding the content to

understanding beyond the required content. Although more work was put into planning the

lessons, the outcome was definitely worth it. I will continue to examine student work in order

to drive my instruction as a classroom teacher and as a special educator.