Clinical Field Experience Report

It was a valuable learning experience moving from the preassessment to the summative assessment, despite challenges here and there. I had the benefit of working with a class that was cooperative and receptive to learning. The primary purpose of the preassessment was to give me a general view of the students’ strengths and weaknesses. I used the data collected during the preassessment to place the students into groups depending on their literary abilities. With that, I was able to give the struggling students more attention to help bridge the gap with the other students. The preassessment focused on text comprehension; I identified three main categories of learners in the class. The first group had proper word recognition and text comprehension skills; the second had adequate language comprehension skills but had word recognition difficulties. The third group had problems in both word recognition and text comprehension. Besides language comprehension and word recognition skills, I evaluated other aspects of the students, such as their confidence level. 

There were no notable challenges during the design and implementation of the summative tests. I had already created a bond with the students, and they were already aware that there would be summative tests. Further, I had encouraged the students to ask any questions they had regarding the test during the lessons. Providing feedback to the learners is an essential part of learning. Feedback informs the students about the areas they need to put in more effort. Also, it challenges and motivates a student to work harder to achieve the set goals. With that said, I had the responsibility to provide high-quality feedback that would benefit the students. 

I had private sessions with the students, where we discussed their performance in the summative assessment. Some students appeared nervous, so my main task during the feedback sessions was to make the students comfortable. While preparing the feedback, I focused on making it actionable, goal oriented and student friendly. I was dealing with young students, so I had to choose words that would not have unintended consequences on them. That was one of the challenging parts. Also, I avoided bringing out a sense of competition among the learners or giving the impression that I was closely monitoring them too closely. Finally, I used the feedback sessions to obtain feedback on my teaching methods from the students. While collecting the feedback, I avoided asking direct questions as they would make the student nervous. 

Summative Assessment 

I used some of the data I had collected during the preassessment to design the summative tests. I had identified some knowledge gaps among the students, so I used the summative tests to check if they had been filled. The summative assessment had two parts: an oral activity and a written test. The challenge at this point was to come up with a test that was both interesting for the students and detailed enough to evaluate mastery of different literary concepts. In the oral examination, the students were required to retell a story I had given them to read. I awarded a score of 1-3 based on the student's fluency, loudness, intonation, words articulation, and use of expressions and gestures. 

In the written test, the students were required to read a comprehension then answer multiple-choice and open-ended questions. The students were expected to demonstrate an understanding of the text, identify the central message in the story, describe character traits, compare and contrast different characters, and explain the use of various text illustrations. I scored the test as below: