Determine Student Outcomes in the Content Areas

           Chapter five is about the mapping of instructional practices and techniques for designing assessment tasks with multiple purposes, both of which are necessary to determine student outcomes in the content areas.  Mapping instructional practices is when an educator evaluates the elements of instruction or any combination of resources, and whether those practices work best for the students.  This is can be seen as reflective practice, which encourages educators to critically examine what did and did not go well in the lesson and what can be changed when the lesson is re-taught.  Educators must use standards to develop and standardize curriculum, establish benchmarks for student performance, provide the basis for formative and summative assessment and guide instructional practices.

            Standards are very important for educators.  There are content standards, performance standards, curriculum standards, and delivery standards.  NBEA standards are used by school administrators, curriculum writers, and teacher who seek to develop or improve their business education curricula.  There are also state standards made to be used which are developed by each state.  With No Child Left Behind, states are required to set clear and high standards for what students should know and educators are required to measure the student’s progress toward each standard.

            There is also standards-based assessment, which makes the content of lessons more meaningful to students.  Assessment is fundamental and can help determine the effectiveness of education and training.  There is process and outcome-oriented assessment which provides students with instruction that is thematically focused around big issues and real-world problems.  Teachers can use an integrative approach with their lessons, and two approaches mentioned in the book include High Schools That Work (HSTW) and Integrating Computer Technology into the Classroom (NTeQ).  Both of these can be used in building integrated learning activities with a primary goal of providing students with a streamline model of how disciplines fit together in reaching goals for workplace readiness and academic success.

            This chapter also provides a sample lesson plan which goes into great detail of the different sections that are included in a lesson plan.  This lesson plan is very detailed and definitely makes me re-evaluate how I make my lesson plans.  The lesson plan uses the NTeQ model which is a ten-step lesson plan.

            Integration is a very important part of teaching and learning.  Teachers should create interesting and stimulating lesson content to keep students motivated to learn and do well in the classroom.  I hope that when I am a teacher I can be creative in the classroom and my students will really enjoy the class and enjoy learning the subject being taught.  I know that I will need to be reflective when I am teaching and also get student input to help my lessons even better.  When I was interning, I would always get student feedback and they would let me know what style of teaching they preferred.  I would try to make each lesson presentation different to meet different student needs and I think the students enjoyed that.

Moore, W. & Woytowish, S. J. (2007). Determine Student Outcomes in the Content Areas. In M.L. Bush (Ed.), Assessment for an Evolving Business Education Curriculum (pp. 57-73). Reston, VA: National Business Education Association