Academic Monitoring and Competency (2 Brief Papers)

Describe four appropriate strategies teachers can use to monitor student understanding of research material for your selected grade level or content area.

One strategy for monitoring student understanding is grading homework. Sometimes students dread this practice because they may be good at the subject, but over-committed in their free time, and therefore get zeroes which impact their grades in a manner that is perceived as unfair. However, not all homework has to be graded. Grading homework can be seen more like a pop quiz, done a half-dozen times total over an entire semester.

A second strategy for monitoring student understanding is pop quizzes. These quizzes are designed to catch students unprepared and test baseline understanding.

Another, third strategy could be monitored classroom discussion. If discussion can be kept on track, then learning objectives can be stressed. "Two experimental research studies have shown that students who understand the learning objectives and assessment criteria and have opportunities to reflect on their work show greater improvement than those who do not" (Concept, 2014) These types of assessments can become more formalized around student needs.

A fourth strategy is teacher observation. "While feedback generally originates from a teacher, learners can also play an important role in formative assessment through self-evaluation." (Concept, 2014) There are many strategies that can be used.

Describe an adequate monitoring system that could be used in classroom for students struggling with academic assignments.

Students who are ELL or have disabilities are often in need of monitoring systems which stress metacognition, within the general paradigm of the inclusion-based classroom. Although these students may need special attention, they still have to often function along with their peers who do not have disabilities, in terms of keeping up with the core curriculum. Therefore, assessment needs to be based on that curriculum through the use of "curriculum based measurement (CBM). CBM is a set of standardized and well-researched procedures for assessing and monitoring students' progress in reading, math, spelling, and writing." (Hasbrouck and Tindal).

At the same time, the student needs to be taught to monitor their own progress and a sense of pride in accomplishment has to be engendered by the pedagogue. This is why metacognition based monitoring is very important because it provides "determinants of performance and efforts to affect performance. Thus, if a learner monitors that he or she has not yet mastered a task and reacts to that perception by working on the task some more, monitoring has played an important role in cognitive control." (Pressley & McCormick, 1995, p. 621)

There are often unique challenges when it comes to ESL and special needs classrooms, since there is a dearth of knowledge about effective practice. From one perspective, there is the argument that inclusion classrooms will increase the tendency for teachers to be overwhelmed by having to change pacing in mid-class to accommodate one or two learners who are behind the group; this creates an unbalanced learning environment where the student with special needs is seen by the other students to dominate the teacher's attention.

However, others make the argument that inclusion classrooms improve social cohesion and the acceptance of diversity among students, as the ELL or disabled student is optimally accepted and becomes part of a more mainstream type of environment. Schools are often not as open to change as they could be regarding the accommodation of special-needs students. And teachers face problems of having to single them out in class and slow down the rest of the group. To put it another way, overall, the majority of the students in the classroom should not have their education compromised just because one or two students need specialized attention to reach the same curricular milestones.

REFERENCES

Hasbrouck, J. and G. Tindal (2006). Oral reading fluency norms: A valuable assessment tool for reading teachers. International Reading Association.

Pressley, M., & McCormick, C. B. (1995). Advanced educational psychology for educators, researchers, and policymakers. New York: HarperCollins. The Concept of Formative Assessment (2014). ERIC Digest.