Alyana Lara | FOUN 641

Using Personal Communication for Assessment

● Learning Target:

2.2 The student will investigate and understand that natural and artificial magnets have certain
characteristics and attract specific types of metals. Key concepts include
a) magnetism, iron, magnetic/nonmagnetic, poles, attract/repel; and
b) important applications of magnetism.

● Process & Feedback:

○ For the Question & Answer Session:

■ Name the two poles of a magnet. (Knowledge)
■ Is iron magnetic or not? (Knowledge)
■ What does the word attract mean? What does repel mean? (Knowledge)
■ When the opposite poles of a magnet face each other, do they attract or repel? How
about the same poles? (Inference)

■ Based on your knowledge of magnets, sort the following items as either magnetic or not
magnetic (Classification): nails, aluminum foil, paper clips, ring, safety pin, a penny
■ Do you think a non-magnetic metal can be made magnetized? If so, what could you do
to make a non-magnetic metal magnetized? (Evaluation)

○ For the Q & A session overall:

■ Describe the process students will use to answer the questions (e.g. show hands, write
response on a white board, think pair share, raise hands to volunteer, etc.) and how you
will incorporate wait time
■ Students will write their answers on their white boards. This will give them time to write
out their thoughts on the questions. When the teacher calls time, they will pull a stick
with a student’s name on it to tell the class what they think the answer to the question is.
This will ensure that all students have equal participation in class discussions.
■ Feedback is given back to the students through hand gestures from their peers (thumbs
up, in the middle, or down). Doing this will allow students to share what they think about
the answer their classmate gave, but also helps the teacher with behavior so that there
won’t be too much movement or chatter. From the teacher, direct feedback will be given
to the student during the discussion and will be supported by other students who raise
their hand to explain their reasoning behind why they agree or disagree.
 Alyana Lara | FOUN 641
○ For your other method of Personal Communication Assessment (journal, discussion etc)
■ For their personal communication, the teacher will have students use Seesaw and
complete an exit ticket in the form of a voice recording. What the students will do is take
a picture of the board with the questions I’ve asked during our whole group discussion.
Once they do that, they will record themselves on their iPads (or whatever device has
Seesaw) and discuss what they talked about in regards to the questions. They will add
these responses to the assignment that the teacher uploaded on Seesaw so that the
teacher can approve their work.
■ Seesaw will allow both the teacher and the parents/guardians to see and hear their
work. Once students upload their work, the teacher will have to approve it manually to
allow parents to see their recordings. The approval by the teacher will let the students
know that they provided adequate responses. If not, the teacher will ask the students to
rethink the answers they give and record it again.

● Monitoring/Recording Information:
○ During the Q&A, I will most likely use a checklist to determine which students are giving
responses and record information based on their responses. On the checklist, it’ll be arranged
similar to a table with the students names on the y-axis and a scoring guide (like a rubric) on the
x-axis so that I can check off the students and the strength of
○ For the second method of communication, I would monitor the responses by listening to their
voice recordings that they upload on Seesaw. If the responses that I hear are appropriate, I will
approve them for uploading so their parents/guardians can also see it, however if the students
seem to be having some trouble, I will personally communicate with them about the concepts of
the lesson and allow them to redo the assignment.

● Purpose of Assessment/Use of Information:

○ This assessment will not only assess the students’ responses to the questions, but it will also
show the teacher how proficient they are in using technology in the classroom. In doing this, the
teacher can determine whether this method of assessment was the best way to look at the
students abilities or not.
○ As mentioned earlier, the students will be giving hand gestures to agree and disagree with other
students on their responses instead of calling out. Also, throughout the assessment, these same
hand gestures can be used for the teacher to check understanding for all students and go back
over content if needed.