Blog reposted from allthingsplc.info
About five years ago, I decided that it was time to get in shape. An infomercial caught my eye and I found myself ordering a video program, weights, bands, nutritional guide, and pull-up bar while waiting impatiently for my new life to begin.
2
Assessment is a messy process. Developing, using and responding to assessment supporting learning requires reflection, trusting relationships and, at times, re-learning and re-assessing. When assessment is simply seen as a test, resulting in points scored and grades assigning, the fundamental learning opportunities of effective assessment practices are lost; and what a tragedy this is. Read more
4
Formative assessment is one of the strategies most often talked about by educators in schools today. Type those two words into a Google search and hundreds of thousands of items are identified. Yet the practice is still confusing and unevenly applied within districts, schools, departments, and classrooms. Read more
5
I have the honor of teaching at a laboratory school and working with many pre-service teachers as they move through their teacher training programs. The mission of our school is to act as a model for educational methods and theory in support of the preparation of future educators. Many of the pre-service teachers that come through my classroom, as well as many of us, went through school with very traditional assessment practices and a traditional mindset when it comes to education, assessment, and grading. Read more
2
Accurate assessment design can effectively leverage our ability to deeply understand a student’s next steps in their learning. As we gather evidence about what students know and can do, we can utilize that information to better determine what a student does know as well as which areas are still difficult for them to master. Yet talking about and planning for assessment design can be a challenging endeavor, especially when this kind of work was never part of our schooling or training. Read more
It was a warm winter day. Snow was falling and my 8-year old was ready to ride the youth snowmobile. I was determined that he was going to learn to do this. While Chase loves to “drive,” he is more concerned with everything around him than the road right in front of him. He watched his older brother jump on and thought that he should be able to ride as fast as he does. Read more
Post 2 of 4 on Using Assessment to Improve Achievement
We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them
Einstein
As noted in my first post of this series regarding using assessment to support achievement, the primary mission of schools is to help kids learn. Schools write mission statements toward that same end: all students will be successful. But, have those mission statements become routine and somewhat cliché? Read more
This is a guest post by Kelly Rockhill, Solution Tree
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Bloomington, Ind. (March 4, 2016)—Solution Tree, a premier educational publisher and professional development provider, has announced the release of Grading From the Inside Out: Bringing Accuracy to Student Assessment Through a Standards-Based Mindset. This new book by Tom Schimmer provides educators with active steps to positively change grading and reporting in their classrooms. Read more
2
Over the last few months, I’ve had the opportunity to work with collaborative teams at meetings where they are discussing the results of their common formative assessments and planning how they will respond to the information from them. In some of these situations, I’ve been asked to work with teams who are frustrated by a process that they see as being overly cumbersome and complex, as well as not very helpful in their work. Read more
The other day, I was sitting with a colleague after we had facilitated a reading intervention lesson with four grade six students. It had been a lively hour, with the students finding it difficult to engage in writing about reading after we had spent time reinforcing comprehension. They needed to be reminded often to focus on the task and apply their understanding of the text in written form. We discussed these challenges and proposed reasons why the students were finding the work difficult. Read more
