I don’t think it has stopped snowing here for at least a week. When I left the house this morning, I had no idea what awaited me, and by the time I hit the thruway, I realized that any time I had set aside for blogging here would be devoted to expanding my drive time in an effort to ensure that my car didn’t careen off the road. But I made promise in this new…
I’m very excited to be spending this evening with local teachers, administrators, and literacy coaches at a meet and greet session of WNYLIT–a new forum for current and potential literacy coaches in Western New York. If you are interested in joining us at the Carrier Center in Angola, New York tonight or in the future, please contact me to register. There is no cost for participation. I’m grateful to Theresa Gray and her colleagues at…
I’m looking forward to many new adventures and learning opportunities in the coming year, some of which are documented inside of this month’s Coaching Connection. These newsletters are designed specifically for the WNY teachers that I coach, but others might enjoy them as well. Glad to be back! Here’s to a happy, healthy, and productive new year! January Coach Connect
Like most, I’ve been run over by the freight train that is December! I hope everyone is enjoying the very best of what this season has to offer. I miss being here, and I plan to return to posting regularly in the new year. Best wishes for a healthy, happy, and rewarding 2010!
Thanks to the support I’ve received from various members of my learning community (particularly Julie Kopp, Theresa Gray, and Jennifer Borgioli), I’ve discovered much more about the power of formative assessment practices in recent years. Reflecting on questions like these helped me begin shaping a vision for the sort of assessment work that I wanted to begin myself and support other educators around. The realizations below guided much of that thinking. Next week, I’ll share…
Compare and Contrast Constructed Response: How do your current assessment practices align to the vision you began to articulate here?
Multiple Choice: If you were a parent approaching a conversation with your child’s teacher, which discussion would be most informative to you? A. A discussion prompted by the results of an assessment recently given by your district or your state OR B. A discussion prompted by the teacher’s assessment of your child’s gifts and needs as a learner, shaped by evidence captured during instruction and practice Constructed Response: Please share your vision of what powerful,…
In recent months, I’ve been growing more and more concerned about the ways in which folks tend to confuse the words testing and assessment. I also have some substantial concerns about what people are calling rubrics these days and the purposes for using them–but I’ll save that for another post. For the next week or so, I’ll be trying to articulate where I am in the progress of my own learning around the topic of…
…for my kids to get home from school …for the laundry load to finish spinning out …for the teachers that I am working with to return from their lunch break …for the next episode of my favorite television program to begin …for my materials to finish printing …for the next item to appear on my never-ending “to do” list This is what I’ve learned as a participant in National Novel Writing Month this year: if…
…….especially if you haven’t had the opportunity to do it in the past. I’m working with quite a few teachers in different places this year who feel very much out of their element when they are asked to teach kids how to write. Sure, “all teachers are teachers of writing,” and I know that most elementary teachers were certified to do precisely this, but when did pre-service learning ever perfectly prepare any of us to…