Module 2 Reflection

This module has helped me think about using standards, CFQs, or formative assessment in the following ways:

I'm going to latch onto the CFQs part of the prompt for the beginning of my reflection. This module has really helped me understand how much thought needs to go into creating the curriculum framing questions, as well as how much harder it is to write CFQs than I initially thought it was going to be.  I don't know if I am the only one who feels like this, but I panicked a little when I first started trying to create an essential question that was broad enough that it could cover my entire school year, yet focused enough that it made sense being used in my classroom. I am pretty confident now, though, that "Why do we read and write?" fits into that space I was trying to work with. As for my unit and content questions, I think I'll probably do a little revising. I just want to make sure that they fit appropriately with the project, as well as with what types of answers they are supposed to encourage. I guess I'm getting a little stress from trying to create my curriculum framing questions because there are so many specific things that the questions are supposed to accomplish, and I want to make sure that I am successful in creating questions that spark my students' minds like they should.

As for using standards, I never really have a problem finding standards I can use; my problem stems from wondering if I'm using too many or too few when creating my unit plan. I want to make sure that I use a variety of reading, writing, and speaking standards for English Language Arts, but I also want to make sure that the standards that I use are the most appropriate. I'm thinking I really need to just do some research on how many standards are appropriate to use in a unit.

I am actually excited about creating the formative assessment of my unit. This is the part where I get to be creative and think of ways other than tests and papers that I can assess my students (although I still think I may have a paper be part of my unit plan because I feel that papers are really important). I know I'm wanting to use project rubrics and checkpoints, as well as some sort of student refection. I'm thinking that maybe my class could have a blog where everyone puts down their thoughts based on a prompt like we're doing in this course. I also want to implement some sort of creative writing assignment, as well. The trick is fitting this all into my unit without worrying that I'd overwhelm students or drag the unit on longer than it should be.