Model Report

The one thing I've come to appreciate is peer evaluations. You get great feedback from someone who is going through the same process as you.

I was having difficulty figuring out how to represent communication in my model. It's important that someone understand that there are factions of people who need to communicate together in order to successfully implement a change in the classroom environment and instruction. After getting to sit down with Leigh and telling her who was communicating with whom, her idea of a visual representation got me sketching out parts of my model.

Her sketch places communication as the center with spokes attached, but as I began to think about it and my model in general, I’m looking to change the behaviors of the teachers in their classroom, and since it is a teacher centered model, the center of communication should be teachers.

I’ve also narrowed down what I believe would be necessary for a comprehensive FEA. Initially I was going to include a teacher self assessment, a student assessment that looked at their learning style, their strengths based off of Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences, and if they have all the necessary prerequisites for the grade level curriculum. There would also be an assessment of the available outside resources to supplement classroom instruction. In talking to Leigh, she mentioned that it would be valuable to have possibly an outside observer in addition to a self assessment to help counteract any bias the teacher would encounter in assessing their own teaching practices.

In looking at how to develop the new lesson plans, I’m a bit muddled and need more time to think about that and play around with sketches, but looking at other example models is really beneficial. It’s helpful to see what I like about other models, and what I dislike to help clarify what direction I feel it would be best to head in.

The other portion I’ve been thinking about currently is the evaluation aspect of this process. End of the year summative evaluation is a must. Feedback from how the students are achieving is important, along with feedback from administration. What I’m unsure about is how prominent I want to make formative evaluation. On one hand occasional spot checks to see how students are achieving would be helpful information for future lesson plans throughout the year in. But on the flipside, if students didn’t comprehend a certain unit, I don’t want the teacher to fault the technique he/she used and not use it again because of poor results.

Thinking about how my model looks, as of right now I almost see a series of boxes, and each box contains smaller pieces, which are all necessary for the larger section, and each section informs to section that comes after it. But in doing something like that, I feel like it creates a process that’s too linear and not one that is iterative. I could have arrows that point back to previous sections, but then it gets muddled and confusing. It’s something that I have to think about more.