Saturday, December 3, 2016

Final Thought on Testing

Curious kids learn how to learn and how to enjoy it-and that, more than any specific body of knowledge, is what they will need to have in the future.
Amanda Lang (Wright, 2013)

 Children need to play to learn and in my humble opinion it only makes sense to "play" to be tested or assessed. Sal Khan (2016) made a very good point in his Ted Talks presentation stating that even if a student receives a 95%  on a test there is still 5% that same student does not know in that one particular subject. Instead of teachers going back to reteach the 5% the student did not know we move onto the next subject. This may continue on and on always leaving 5% which adds up until the child hits a wall in a more advanced subject. The student then believes she/he was not meant to learn. What is suggested by Mr. Khan is to teach mastery education which is learning all there is to know and to make sure that each child knows 100% of the subject. Children love video games so there are now computer games that assess while the children play. When children do not know there are tests going on they are less stressed. We need to teach our children how to learn not how to memorize. 



Khan,S. (2016) Let's teach for mastery-not test scores. Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/sal_khan_lets_teach_for_mastery_not_test_scores.

Wright, S. (2013). Academic teaching doesn't prepare students for life.  Retrieved from plpnetwork.com/2013/11/07/obsession-academic-teaching-preparing-kids-life/

3 comments:

  1. Hi Jennifer! I enjoyed reading your blog this week. I agree that children learn from playing, but how do you know if they are learning and what they need help on?

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  2. I love your blog and agree that children learn through play.

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  3. Jennifer, I work for the US Air Force and the focus in all of our facilities is learning through play. It is about the expereinces children have and the information they come away with from the experience.

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