EEND 679 Artifact #2

I have always been resistant to trying new assessments because they have always been cumbersome to make for a PE setting and would become frustrating with how much time they would take away from class.  This past year, I experimented with Plickers in my class and my students really enjoyed using them and I really enjoyed how efficient they were.  I was excited to learn about GoFormative during module 3 of this class.  I explored its different options on their site and really liked what I saw.  I decided to create a short quiz that I use for my 4th graders but used Goformative as the platform.  I am really happy with the way it looks and am excited to try it out in this upcoming school year.  Many students in our class spoke very highly of GoFormative and I am looking forward to sharing this resource with my other colleagues.

https://goformative.com/clone/LPXDHD

EEND 679 Artifact #1

During module 4 of this class we learned about digital badge pathways and were assigned to create one for our classroom.  This whole digital badge concept is new in the PE world but I have seen a few ideas being shared around on Twitter in the PE community.  I really enjoyed this week's assignment because I was planning and creating something that I had never thought to bring in to PE before.  There are a couple natural fits in the PE curriculum and I chose three that I felt like would work; climbing wall, jumping rope, and dribbling a basketball.  This is the planning sheet that I created for those activities.  I can foresee these activities being fun and motivating for the students when they see the natural progression.  I created a digital badge for the climbing wall but I would like to create more, similar badges for the other activities because I think elementary students would really like to collect them and find them motivating!

EEND 679 Reflection

     I really enjoyed and benefited from the discussion during module 2 about the topic of formative assessments.  It was really eye opening to see all of the different ways that people in our class are assessing their students.  I have always had this mental block that assessments were difficult to administer and took forever to create.  After reading through the resources and hearing what others had to say about their favorite ways of assessing, it was refreshing to hear that it doesn’t have to be so hard and can actually be simple and efficient if you do it right.  I think my biggest takeaway was investigating the website GoFormative and hearing what everyone else had to say about it.  I really like the layout of the site and it seems very simple to use with chromebooks that our students have.  I am a big fan of Plickers as well because they are so simple to use and very efficient in a PE setting.  There is no chromebook or ipad required by a student, just a small piece of card-stock with a unique logo on it.  My students have responded very well to using Plickers but I think it might be fun to try a different way of assessing by using GoFormative. 

     My other big takeaway from this class was our time spent on rubrics.  This is one area that I have always pushed away because they always seemed too hard to make and too cumbersome for a simple task.  However, after digging through the resources of module 7, I discovered there are a TON of resources online to help with rubrics from pre-made rubrics, to rubric builders, to articles explaining why they are so important in assessing students’ learning.  I created a rubric for a fun, technology project that I do with my 5^th graders and I am convinced to making more rubrics for other assignments in my class.  In addition to the rubrics, I also learned a lot about digital portfolios in this class as well.  Many students in our class shared that they have done portfolios with their students before and that they really enjoyed them.  I really like the idea of having a PE portfolio for my students but there is one thing that is keeping me from committing to them and that is time.  I have very limited time to begin with (30 min, 2x a week) and I just don’t want to give up that time to have students on a device.  For me to incorporate a digital portfolio, the majority of the work would need to be done outside of class on their own terms.  I am not opposed to this but I feel like students have enough on their plate with their other disciplines that creating another portfolio just to show that we have one, seems like a lot of work on both ends.