Megan's Reading Response #5

I remember in one of my high school theatre classes we were studying for the final. To study the teacher gave us a packet. The packet was very thick and was full of paragraphs of writing. In starting to read the text I realized that we had never gone over the material in class and that we had never talked about it. When it came time to take the final, it was a terrible experience. Nothing I had studied was on the test. This is probably the worst assessment I had ever taken. This will never be repeated in my classroom. Based on my reading I found that those assessments that blended together and were connected to what was going on were the best kind. The curriculum model in the book about Anne Frank was a great example of assessments all blending together. The students have to see the point to doing what they are doing. I know from my own experience that I often asked that question. I always wanted to know why. If the why is only because the teacher said so that is not a good enough reason. All the theatre roles need to be connected. In the curriculum that we were asked to make up in class we tried to make everything connected. Sadly though I don’t think we made all the connections necessary for a successful curriculum and assessment. I think each lesson needs to build on the other. We need to make our lessons make sense to the students, they need to see the purpose. Also assessments should reasonable. If you didn’t get to something in class don’t test on it. I know that I will try my best to incorporate all these things into my assessments and constantly go back and see if they make sense.