School Performance & Malnutrition

 

        Usually, students are naturally off-task than on-task, and being on-task should be taught to the students; however, some students get easily tired and lose their focus too quickly. Since Now a days, children are tempted to eat fast food from MacDonald or Hardees for example and crave it even more from the chemical endorsed in the fast food (MSG: is a chemical that tricks the mind about the taste, in addition to it is an addictive chemical used to let customers want to buy more of it.), so children prefer eating fast food instead of a healthy and balanced meal. Their blood sugar levels tend to go up and down like a roller coaster, they don't have the nutrition needed for their brains to function properly. Not to mention, DEHYDRATION!! I mean, children play at school and they lose fluids from their bodies. This really affects their performance.

 Let us see how malnutrition can affect the student's performance. 

    1- Iron Deficiency: Iron is the atom that carries 4 oxygen molecules per Red blood cell. They provide the Oxygen throughout the body. children who have iron deficiency have poor concentration levels, due to poor circulation. In addition they are also always sleepy, and fatigued. However, this doesn't mean that the student is lazy, rather than having an unbalanced nutrition. 

    2- High or Low blood sugar levels: Many children tend to have an undiagnosed condition of high or low blood sugar levels. When this happens, they tend to have a brainfog and confused of what the teacher is saying. Not to mention, the sickness they feel from it as well as the anger that they experience. 

  3-High Copper: Having high copper levels have been associated with depression and other psychological problems. Increased copper is due to either high level of copper in food from using copper utensils and cooking pans, or it could be accumulated in the liver and the brain of the baby if the mother was consuming a high level of copper during pregnancy. High copper levels also come from low zinc or insufficiency in the adrenal glands. 

    4- Iodine deficiency: Iodine deficiency leads to thyroid problems such as an underactive thyroid gland, which is practically responsible for most body functions. Symptoms of an Underactive thyroid include constant fatigue, poor concentration, and drowsiness.  

    In conclusion, having a child who is always sleepy and tired , is often mistaken  to be a lazy student and an off-task student, not taking into consideration the other factors like malnutrition and health problems. It's our job as teachers to discover the source of the problem, and not to judge the child rather than help them reach to a better version of themselves. Nutrition plays a key factor in behavior, as well as performance; therefore, awareness should be raised for students for the importance of having a healthy meal, as well as for teachers who should be aware of the possibility of reasons why the students is having problems in responding well to them and being on-task. 

                                                                                                                       - Dana Molla - 

Technology and Learning disabilities

 

       At schools, there are students that encounter learning disabilities that are usually misdiagnosed, and the blame is put on the children, that they are not studying well or they are not smart and this is why they are not doing well in classes; however, there are many disabilities that can be encountered, such as Dyslexia, ADHD, Autism Spectrum disorder, Poor eye sight, Hearing problems... etc. 

  Thanks to the technology that is rising everyday by day, it is helping students with learning disabilities to overcome this and improve their educational performance and their mental development. With the innovative creations in technology and specific programs, every student is able to express how they feel or what they know in their own way. 

 Let us see how technology can help students with learning disabilities. In the Video provided through the link , you will see how assistive technology uncovered the true essence of students with disabilities. 

       How Assistive Technology Supports Students With Disabilities - YouTube

     In fact, this was a very emotional moment while watching this video, because we cannot determine what a child is capable to actually give or how smart they are. 

   Learning is not always evaluated or assessed through paper-pencil exams to determine what the students know or what they don't know, some students are not able to express their thoughts in writing rather than talking but that does not mean that the student is not smart.

   As teachers, our job is to develop the minds of our youngsters and to help them move forward in their lives, not to judge them and feel that they are not worth it or they are not up to the level. They can be smarter than anyone in the room, but it is our job as teachers to figure it out.  

                                                                                                                          - Dana Molla - 

Tools that Can be used in Online Assessment

     What is Assessment? It is the Procedures or  Techniques that are used to know if the student have reached the learning outcome or not. There are 3 main Concepts when we say assessment; first it starts with determining the learning objectives, second is to monitor the progress of the student towards the learning objective, and finally to assess the students if the learning outcome was reached at the end of the course as expected or not. It is a continuous process and authentic (Valid), It comes in different types wither the Paper-Pencil Type of Assessment or Performance Assessment. Keep In mind that each have their limitations as well. Assessment can be either formal or informal; There are different types of assessment that are used in classrooms, Placement Assessment, Formative Assessment, Diagnostic Assessment, and the Summative Assessment. Let us look Briefly of the usage of each type

                        

              1- Placement Assessment: Usually done at the beginning of a course to know the level of the students to be able to plan the lesson correctly, and to group students according to the learning styles , multiple intelligence, or Their level according to bloom's Taxonomy 

             2- Formative Assessment: Is Used to Monitor the student Progress towards reaching the learning outcome and is used for us as teachers to know if we continue to the next concept or not. 

             3- Diagnostic Assessment: Is done when 3-4 formative assessments are done and there is still a problem you should do the Diagnostic Assessment to know where the problem is

             4- Summative Assessment: Is done at the end of a term and it indicates how much of the learning objectives were reached.

      Keep in Mind that assessment is not just about putting a Grade, but rather it is used to determine the weaknesses and the strengths of certain skills to improve the developmental process through teaching. Not everyone is perfect and we always need a mentor to develop our skills. A grade doesn't determine our success or our failures rather than it detects what point shall I work on to improve and be better at it?   

      How can we Do the Assessment of Students Online during the Online teaching? Luckily Some tools can help achieve this; therefore, technology these days have a solution for everything. Now, how can we assess the students who are studying online? Let us see some really nice applications and tools that helps us achieve this. We will divide the tools based on the type of assessment.                           

                                                             

  1-  Formative Assessment

        A- Poll Everywhere: This can be used to get feedback from the students and see if they understand the objective or not , and if you continue to the next concept or not. In Poll Everywhere it can be used during a presentation for example to see the understanding of the students. 

         B- Padlet : Padlet can be used in a very effective way in which we ask the student to fill in a table of KWL chart which is used to know what the students already know, what they want to know, and what they have learned . This can give a feedback to the teacher of how much the students understood About a certain concept and where are the things that are not yet understood?

         C- Jamboard: Jamboard can be used to see the Response of the students and their feedback about a topic they are asked about and they can work in the same time. We can also use Microsoft PowerPoint to make a certain design and post it on Jamboard

     D-No Hands Name Picker : Just like the informal assessment done in class when asking oral Questions, we can use this tool to ask oral questions about a concept and by randomly picking the names of the students. This technique leaves the student more focused waiting for their name and more engaged in the activity being done.

     E- Google forms : In google forms it can be used to make a quiz for example about a concept because as we said that formative assessment can also be graded as well, so using Google forms, can help create a quiz and in order to ensure no cheating is done, then we have to make the Questions shuffled and set a timer. This does not eliminate the chance of cheating rather than it just decreases it. We can also make it controlled in a way that we don't allow students to submit more than 1 response, thus decreasing chances of cheating even more.

       F- Word wall : This is a website that is used to Create certain games which in turn can tell us how much the students know about a concept before moving to the next topic. This Game integration is very important because we can assess the students in a fun way and let them more engaged in the Classroom activities and there is a leaderboard, so when there is a challenge, it makes them motivated and want to be the first in the game and this will show us the maximum performance of the students. Therefore, in this case we are actually assessing the students indirectly without making them notice it. 

      G- Google Classroom: Using Google Classroom, as teachers you can post assignments, set a due date, post questions as participation as well as Sharing exams with the students and they also have the chance to post a question if they have any question and allow them to share with the classroom about something that they found interesting. This all Contributes to informal assessment, because maybe you can see what topic are they most interested in and sharing information about then as a teacher will spend more time on it and much more things can be interpreted through this. 

       H- Google Documents: Doing an assignment on Google documents allows us to know the writing skills of the student for example and it also helps with the fact that we can leave a remark or a comment on the student's answer or telling them what they should be careful about for the next time for example. 

        2- Summative Assessment 

       Google Documents: Using Google documents, it allows us to create an exam and share it with the coordinator for making updates if necessary. It is also a good way to share things because you know exactly what each student have made.

       What about Placement Assessment?

     Before starting a course we can use Google forms to assess how much the students have of the pre-requisites needed for the Course by simply asking them to fill in a survey and we get instant statistics using Google forms, this can give us a hint of where we are at before starting. It is also helpful to make a survey regarding the learning styles of the students to know which is the best Technique to use in teaching, or we can simply do an English placement exam to know where the students are at for example. 

      But how can we Apply the Performance Assessment Online?

       A- Breakout Rooms : Using the breakout rooms it puts the students together in a team so you can assess the student's team work skills for example when putting them in a group to do a certain project.

    B- Preparing a Presentation: Yes, it is not completely a performance assessment because the missing thing is that you are not actually seeing the Body language of the student during presentation but making presentations allows us as teachers to See the Performance of the student like the presentation skills and how the student can explain his concept, and the way that the student CREATES a Power Point and How efficient is his skills in the organization, content, and if the student can make a creative Power Point or not. This is a part of Performance assessment  and we shall put a self Assessment rubric and explain to the student to fill it in after the presentation and that they will be assessed according to this rubric.

     C- Performing at Home Experiment: You can tell the students to Apply what they learned by doing a certain experiment at home and make a video Showing every step of how they were doing the steps and finally ask them for a report about the experiment and ask them to Analyze why the results were as such thus you are making students think about the experiment and understand the concept behind it not just perform it. Again, Rubric is a must to ensure a valid assessment when it comes to performance assessment 

     In Conclusion, weather Online or in Classrooms, assessment is a vital process when it comes to learning and luckily, using technology and certain tools we can make an authentic assessment even in Online Teaching.