This week, we discussed getting started with assessment, especially in relation to our field placements. We created a home survey as a communication to parents and families in order to gather general information about the family as well as information about reading in the home.
Home Survey Questions
- Who lives with you in the home?
- What types of activities do you do as a family?
- What types of interests does your child have that you know of?
- What is the primary language spoken in your home?
- What are your child's reading habits? What about academic habits in general?
- When is homework done in the home? How? Do you have any rules about getting homework done? What kinds of support does your child receive at home to do their homework?
- What are some goals you have for your child to accomplish by the end of this year?
- What abilities for your child to have are most important to you in terms of skills they will need to succeed in life?
- What would you like to see in your child's teaching?
- In what way would be best for me to communicate with you?
I chose these questions because I feel like they would be essential to determining the values of the family and understand what the family thinks is the best learning style for the child. Especially with elementary age students, it may be difficult for them to really know and verbalize what their preferred way of learning is, and the families are experts on their children, allowing the teacher to really see into what they believe is most important.
Many of the other Home Surveys I found that pertained to reading had similar information on them as well, however I believe mine have some more detail attached to the questions in terms of what the family values right off the bat. One survey I found that I really enjoyed and would use to alter my questions on incorporated asking questions about the type of technology students have access to in the home. The link is below. I find that these types of questions could be very important when giving assignments to students, and oftentimes people, including teachers, assume that everyone has a working desktop with a printer or WiFi access in their home when that may not be the case. Also, by finding out what kind of technology is used in the home, I can offer apps and websites that could be used as enrichment activities based on my lessons.
http://thetechieteacher2.blogspot.com/2013/07/parent-technology-survey-freebie.html
We also had a fishbowl discussion about the topic of race in general, but also focused in on the classroom environment. One of the parts of that discussion that really struck me was the idea of color-blindness. In our discussion, we discussed color-blindness as a way to not see color in our students and in turn treat them all equally regardless of their race. However, we also discussed that race is a very important part of a student's individuality and identity and it's important to acknowledge their racial background and make them proud of who they are, no matter where they come from or what they look like. I also realize that we discussed our cooperating teachers and the students that they teach in terms of race relations. I've realized that there are only two African-American students in my classroom, one of which is actually from Haiti. The other student on the other hand, whose name is Nyshima, tends to have a distrustful relationship with my co-op. She frequently disobeys the rules that they review daily, and acts out frequently when reprimanded. My teacher actually called her grandmother one day to threaten her over her bad behavior, and as I later tried to redirect her to avoid her getting reprimanded yet again, my cooperating teacher essentially told me to back off so that her grandmother could see the full scope of her actions and discipline her in the classroom. The grandmother never did come into the classroom (at least before I left) so I do not know what became of that situation. But it irked me and I also found it odd that she was not providing a nurturing environment and redirecting the student to the best of her ability when that is a teacher's role in the classroom, and other students of other races may at times act similarly but she will not reprimand them in the same way.
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