Reading Reflection 9

Understanding prior-knowledge of students:It is very important to help students tap into their prior knowledge at the beginning of a projects because it is a great way to for students and teachers to being monitoring a student’s progress throughout the project. An activity such as a KWL is a great way for students to think through what they already know when they begin a new topic. Then students can set goals for what they want to learn and at the end, this assessment can be used for students to list what they have learned. By completing a KWL throughout the project based learning process, students have a record of their learning process throughout a project.
 The importance of establishing anchors for a project:Establishing anchors for a project is an important part of the learning process. Teachers should help students go through the process of establishing a starting point setting themselves up for learning. Anchors are a good way to find out where students are starting and then monitoring learning and progress towards a project goal.
 Several ways to assess what students learned during the project:Good teachers asses everyday, multiple times a day. Assessments can be informal and formal and good way to keep strong and helpful data is to perform a variety of assessments constantly. Assessment can be a project that students complete following a rubric that is given to them by the teacher. Another assessment could be checking for understand at the end of a lesson by having students fill out an exit slip before they leave or having students list things they have learned, etc.
 How the concepts in this chapter relate to our project:We will use anchors and frequent assessments to make sure our students are learning and the project is benefitting them.