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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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, [...]
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 [...]
Just a quick post on the fly this morning, really–but one that I’ve been formulating in my head for some time now. I’ve spent a good portion of this fall working with over 150 teachers of grades 3-12 who have been capturing formative assessment data about their students as writers during guided and independent practice. [...]
Just as teachers rely upon a gradual release of responsibility model to ensure effective instruction, many coaches begin moving toward similar models once they’ve established agreed-upon learning targets for their efforts with teachers. I was first introduced to this model through my study of Doug Fisher and Nancy Frey’s work and then again when I [...]
Carol left a comment on yesterday’s post which left me thinking again about vision and action. I’ve written about this before, because in my experience this is as essential as it is complex. Defining literacy is no easy task, and articulating a vision for supporting the development of it within a district is a tremendous [...]
Literacy Coaching is relatively new to our region, and while schools outside of our area may have established coaching models long ago, the opportunity to support teachers in this capacity is something that many districts in our area are just beginning to make happen. It’s exciting to be on the ground floor of this work [...]