Activating Prior Knowledge and Meaningful Assessment

Activating Prior Knowledge and Meaningful Assessment

It's more than a test!

Activating prior knowledge, in my opinion, is one of the most important components of teaching a successful lesson. In my current placement, the student’s experiences are significantly different than my own. I am from a small town where I can relate farming terminology and Walmart jokes into my lessons and my peers would understand. The student population I currently serve has grown up in the city and many students come from a lower income household. If I am talking about combines in relation to a social studies lesson, my students (for the most part) would have no idea what I am talking about.

Setting the stage for learning new knowledge is a must! As a pre-assessment I like to use the K from a KWL chart. The K stands for “what we want to Know” and helps me assess where my students are starting and what they already know about something. The L stands for “what we want to Learn” and helps me direct my lesson in the direction of student interest. I think this part relates well to Project Based Learning because I can focus on what the students want to find out about a topic. My W serves as my meaningful assessment at the end, and stands for “what we Learned”. This portion of the KWL allows me to evaluate the effectiveness of my lesson and whether my students met our objectives.

In relation to our project, I cannot simply assess a student on his or her prowess for acting or the ability to hit all the high notes; I have to look at multiple areas of assessment. I am more concerned about the effort put forth, the attention to what needs to be done, not merely the performance aspect. Furthermore, high stakes testing is not the "way to go" when aiming for meaningful assessment.