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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]