As an instructional coach, I have the fortunate opportunity to work with a wide variety of teachers and in various classrooms and content areas. Recently, I worked with a sixth grade science teacher to create and implement a classroom experience that required students to use their problem solving and critical thinking skills. Read more
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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
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One of my favorite books is Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell. For those who haven’t read it, Gladwell writes of the untold stories of success. Rather than telling the stereotypical story of super intelligence or unabashed ambition, Gladwell argues that the true story of success can found by spending more time looking around those who have succeeded; their family circumstances, where they were born, and even their birth date. 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
One of the most challenging sales job that we as educators may ever have to make is related to the idea of productive failure. Productive failure is included in our tenets of effective assessment practices as a component of a learning rich culture along with risk taking and celebrating success. Failure seems to be hard-wired into our brains as a negative and something to be avoided at all costs. Our job as educators is to recognize this perception and work to correct it. Read more
“What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.” – Jane Goodall
Why should I make a change in my grading practices? What difference does it make moving to a standards based system from a traditional one? Given the current climate of education with initiative after initiative piling up, why is this endeavor worthy of my time and consideration? 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
Post 1 of 4 on Using Assessment to Improve Achievement
A person who never made a mistake, never tried anything new.
Einstein
The primary mission of schools is to help kids learn. That’s it. That’s the bottom line. It stands to reason, then, that the primary indicator of success will always be achievement scores. But our work with making decisions about learners must remain far more humane then making decisions about learners based on a set of cold, calculated scores (and it doesn’t matter if those data come from the grades in our gradebooks or external test scores). The measure of achievement should never mask the face of the learner. This is personal. And, it’s very serious work. Read more
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The ultimate goal is assessment as learning, where assessment occurs in real time and is the process by which people reflect on their own thinking and diagnose how they’ve changed.
Sir Ken Robinson (2015)
In a previous blog post, I shared conditions that support an environment of habitual and authentic student self-assessment. This post will focus on “digging deeper” into why students may find self-assessment a challenging enterprise and how to develop the sub-habits that support this essential skill. Read more
This is a guest post by Kelly Rockhill, Solution Tree
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Bloomington, Ind. (January 25, 2016)—Solution Tree, a premier educational publisher and professional development provider, announces the release of a powerful new book that seeks to reinvigorate teaching and learning through collaborative assessment practices.
In Collaborative Common Assessments: Teamwork. Instruction. Results., author Cassandra Erkens outlines the practical steps teacher teams must take to establish clear, comprehensive assessment systems that guide instruction and strengthen professional learning communities. “When common assessments are developed and employed properly, as a collaborative, formative system aimed at improving learning for teachers and learners alike,” writes Erkens in the introduction, “the gains in teacher efficacy and student achievement can be staggering.” Read more
