Other Great Blogs

Please take a look at other amazing educators blogs. The last eight weeks I have had the opportunity to read the blogs of some great women who have a huge heart for the success of the children we come in contact with. It has been great to work alongside these ladies. In your spare time you should check out two blogs that stick out to me:
Stacy Perry and Felecia Towler's blogs-

http://www.teachersteachfromtheheart.blogspot.com/

http://feleciatowler.blogspot.com/

Quotes About Children

"Children are great imitators. So give them something great to imitate." -Anonymous

"There can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way in which it treats it's children." -Nelson Mandela

Assessments

I think children should be assessed in every way. I think they should be assessed socially, cognitively, fine/gross motor, and subject based when they get into the school system.I think that it is important for parents to know how their children are doing in all parts of their education. We don’t send our children to learn about the information in books alone. The social aspect of school is important as well. When I have children I would want to know how they handle themselves with the other children in the classroom. I would like to know how they problem solve with others that are not their siblings. But at the same time I would also like to know how they are doing with their schoolwork. I would be very interested in how they are progressing in each subject matter. I would spend time working with them or getting help in areas that may need improvement. 

Assessments are not only great for parents, but they are also great for educators too. I think that teachers need to assess their children in order to know how they are doing and what they can do to help students grow. I think teachers could look at ways to make shy students more social and to help bring forth leaders in the classroom who tend to step into the background. Again, I am an advocate for the social aspect of a child’s eduction and how it can help them progress when they get older. I also think that when teachers assess their students on subject matter, they are able to see areas that need work, and areas that they can improve on professionally. If an entire class is suffering in mathematics a teacher may want to work on their teaching style in the math area. If the teacher sees where some students are doing better than others they may want to suggest programs to parents that can help their students progress. Assessments are helpful in may ways to the parents, teachers, and students. 

Assessment experts from Austria, the Flemish and French speaking communities of Belgium, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, the German Bundesländer, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom (England) and United Kingdom (Wales) participated in an assessment project. This project was designed to see how students could progress by implementing further assessment guides. These countries together established inclusive assessments. This type of assessment prevents students from being segregated based on ability. It also allows to students to continuously grow and not just show growth from assessment to assessment. Assessment information should be used to help with strategies and learning for teachers. Inclusive assessments allow for this to take place. All of these countries agreed that using assessments to segregate students did not help the students in the long run. They wanted to do something that would allow them to grow even more. 

Reference: http://www.european-agency.org/agency-projects/assessment-in-inclusive-settings