One of the greater challenges that people in positions like mine often face is creating alignment between what learners, administrators, and teachers need in order to be successful. Sometimes, people have different perspectives about what is truly needed. They may not share a common view of what success will ultimately mean or what it is supposed to look like. They have different thoughts about how it will be achieved, how quickly, and to what degree.…
Over the last few years, I’ve come to realize that my greatest duty as a teacher in any capacity is to create the conditions that enable relevant (or at the very least meaningful) and engaging learning and work. These words possess a distinct and critical meaning, too. This conclusion led me to another important discovery: I need to become very critical of my own practices and processes as well as those that are imposed upon…
Been thinking on the question I posed at the end of this post. I’m beginning to wonder if some of the more critical “21st Century Skills” that we need to foster in our kids and in ourselves include the ability to assess and effectively respond to the stress created by some of these realities….what would you add? Overwhelming choice and opportunity–because we are bombarded by options, whether it is brands of ketchup on a supermarket…
The best rubrics are designed by learners who are investigating and defining quality work. Rubrics allow learners to articulate criteria based on this discovery. The rubrics they design can then guide their own work and inform the feedback that they provide to peers. Creating a great rubric isn’t a simple undertaking for learners or for teachers, and when people set out to do so without studying how to do it most effectively, a whole lot…
Inspired by Georgia Heard and Jennifer McDonough, Katie D. over at Creative Literacy went on a Wonder Walk and captured this video for her students using her flip camera. I wonder what educators could learn about themselves, their students, and their collective work together if they wondered around their classrooms and schools in a similar way? Capturing our wonderment in this fashion could provide us some very meaningful information about our learning and our practice…
So……now what? Seriously. Scores have improved in many of our local schools over the last several years. What does that even mean anyway? If all of the professional development initiatives teachers have been a part of, all of the learning community work they’ve participated in, and every formative assessment they’ve “given” students inside of classrooms was heavily motivated by a thirst for improved student performance on tests of any kind…..what will happen now that this…
This fall, I had the opportunity to talk with over 100 writing teachers about the instructional practices that made the most difference for their students. All of these teachers identified and articulated clear learning targets for their students, based upon their previous assessment of student needs. All of them documented what they did as teachers to support their students as they worked together to meet these objectives as well, and during our conversations together, they…
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,…