Jon Choe

Reflection 3
TCH 306
Reflecting upon what my cooperating teacher responds to literacy and what I have
researched upon with literacy towards a risk analyst, I’ve noticed the importance of designing
instructions, assessment, assignments, and activities is to bring in authenticity. The importance of
authenticity provides students the importance of learning the content. If students can find what
they are learning and relate towards their own life or brings in an interest, that could possibly
increase student interest into learning the content. The practices that are given students should
relate towards the importance of comprehension of the material. Specifically, for a math class, I
remember given for homework a list of problems to solve, but most of the problems wanted the
answer and nearly never asking students to explain their reasoning skills. Easy points for those
that got them all correct but doesn’t insure if students understand what they completed. Most
students know how to solve the problem, but most of the times they would be wrong because of
minor errors. Then students would be expected to take a test on it and be successful in it. That
method of math teaching has changed, now homework in my CT’s classroom is just practice and
would not be graded. Students are given tasks to do in class that would be engaging and would
motivate students to complete it. Students are given POK (Proofs of Knowledge), which include
a total of four questions. Each question is a different level of math, while the level one is mainly
computation and the level four question is the reasoning skills. The POK would be graded on
two areas, one would be if they knew how to solve the problem while the other would be if they
knew how to reason or explain their though process. These types of assessments really show if
students are comprehending on the material rather than seeing if students can get a correct
response.
The literacies that are being evaluated in my CT’s classroom are like how the students are
being evaluated in other content areas. Students are assessed on their accuracy and reasoning
skills. I find that both are needed, because getting a correct response shows that students know
how get an answer but explaining their thought process shows that the students knew what they
were doing and could reason through their thought process. Both are needed in assessments,
activities, assignment, and instruction.
Overall, for students to be successful within a content, the teacher needs to bring in
literacies that require the RICE (relevant, integrated, challenging, and exploratory). Having
student participate in those types of task will provide students the comprehension of that specific
content.