Search results matching tag 'formative assessment'

Why We Do What We Do! (Formative Assessments and Learning Targets in ACTION in 7th Grade Math)

Anonymous — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 23:18:04 GMT

My goal is to never be so far removed from the classroom that I forget what it’s like to be a teacher. Over the last few weeks while I’ve been adjusting to my job and new responsibilities, I’ve been running from meeting to meeting, a million miles a minute, task after task, running out of time before I realized time had passed.

I needed a quick reminder of why I am doing what I’m doing, a refocus, if you will. Which led to my totally informal observation in a 7th grade math class at one of our buildings. I know they say you know good teaching when you see it, and today I saw good teaching. Selfishly, I was excited to be around kids again (even if they were awkward middle schoolers); I have missed the interactions, and the teacher was gracious enough to let me talk to the kids while they worked. They were doing a neat activity that got them up and moving around the room through a “Math Scavenger Hunt.” Posted around the room were numbers paired with an equation, exponent, etc. for students to solve. The solution to the equation, exponent, etc. was another number around the room; they would move to that number and answer its associated equation, exponent, etc. Really cool idea.

But what I wanted to share is the awesome work the teacher is doing with formative assessment. I apologize in advance for the picture quality, but my iPad should be in soon

First, she had a “Math Map” wall that clearly lists the learning targets in the unit.

Note a couple of things:

Learning targets are specific and directly connected to the 7th grade standards.
Learning targets include info about when and how they will be addressed using the textbook.
These are not daily targets, but represent instead the learning that is to take place.
The “stop” sign is a planned formative assessment, although she also informally formatively assesses as she goes.
The ending stop sign is a summative assessment.
Check out the Lightning McQueen and Mater characters representing current location within the learning.

She gives students the following document at the beginning of the learning, and they indicate dates when they reach each target.

How cool!

Finally, posted at the front of the room (and I’m assuming making their way around the room) are the learning targets they have already focused on in previous units:

Having read this post, the teacher wanted to relate new learning back to targets they already addressed and/or revisit the learning as they grow. So she uses racecar stickers (very small in the picture) to indicate targets as they revisit them.

It is observing good teaching that makes me feel reinvigorated and excited about being in education. This teacher’s work was awesome!

It’s All in the Follow-Through

Anonymous — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 15:22:17 GMT

First, an important analogy…

I’ve been potty training my daughter for what feels like months. In February, when she started showing interest, I’d try a tactic, it would work briefly, it would stop working, and then I’d get lazy and give up. We’d end up back at step 1. A few weeks later, a new tactic–I’d stick to it, it would work briefly, it would stop working, and then I’d give up. Again, square 1. Several cycles of this later….on our most recent and longest attempt, I think we’ve finally got it.

What did I do differently this time? I had everyone on board–family, daycare–we tried a tactic, it would work, it would stop working, and we would immediately regroup and try something different. Everyone stayed the course with the same end goal–get the kid potty trained!–and we revised our plan as we went along. Hundreds of diapers and many trips running through stores to get to bathrooms later, and that dedication is paying off. Thank. Goodness.

Second, my connection to education…

I had the potty training in mind because I just finished reading several articles about how the CCSS will fail (nothing new, same old complaints), and I started thinking about how education is so much like my many initial experiences with potty training–we try it, it works, it stops working, we leave it behind and go back to step 1. This cyclical approach to failure is no more effective in teaching and learning than it is in any other area (dieting, anyone?).

The missing piece in these cycles is a plan for follow-through. Think, for example, of any initiative your school/district has undertaken. Initiatives start with good intent–typically, raising student achievement. So, let’s say your school has undertaken a “No-Zeroes!” grading policy with the hope of increasing student accountability and improving the quality of the kinds of homework teachers assign. You and your grade-level (building-level, district-level) team spend some time planning to implement, you change your syllabi for the beginning of the school year, you enforce the policy with fidelity and commitment right from Day 1, and things seem to go well for a couple of weeks. Then, the number of missing and incomplete assignments start to pile up, and every time you open your online grade book, you feel yourself desperately wanting to pack zeroes into those blank spaces. Suddenly, the No-Zero policy that you have spent so much time and dedication adhering to becomes a flop; within only a few weeks, everyone resorts to life pre-”No-Zero.” It’s easier, it’s more comfortable, and it eases our frustration from trying so hard and committing so much to implementation.

Instead of letting our attempts flop, it’s important to have a plan for following through with whatever policy, initiative, or change is taking place. We have to revisit our implementation strategy, assess what’s working and what’s not, realign to our original vision (the reason for the plan in the first place), and restructure or revise to continue momentum. It’s almost ironic that we are so caught up on formatively assessing in our classrooms as a way to guide instruction, but applying those same ideas (end in mind, assess progress, redirect course) to other areas of life is so challenging for us to wrap our heads around. Following-through with a plan in this way is essential to moving things forward. Not following-through or having a plan for revision is often an automatic death sentence for any initiative.

The same is true with implementing the CCSS. There is so much work happening right now in implementing them with fidelity and dedication that I am afraid at the first sign things aren’t working, we will drop them all together. I also think the nay-sayers are waiting for that moment when the CCSS seem to stop working so they can criticize all the work that has gone into the standards since the beginning. Clearly, if the standards aren’t perfect in their initial form and if American students don’t immediately improve drastically in all measures, then the CCSS weren’t worth the webspace they occupied, right?

No…any plan worth implementing is a plan worth revising and following-through. To implement with fidelity, in my opinion, means to be open to revision when things go awry.

Basic Skills in Literacy

Anonymous — Wed, 08 Aug 2012 22:31:39 GMT

I’ve been working recently to realign lesson plans and strategies available through the Ohio Resource Center (yes, my place of employment) to help teachers/districts begin implementing the Third Grade Reading Guarantee (3GRG) this year (keeping in mind that although required reading diagnostics begin this year, it doesn’t begin impacting students until 2013-2014 with students entering third grade that year). Because most of my professional experience has been in grades 6-12, it’s been a slight learning curve, but I’ve actually managed to get a deeper understanding of the K-5 CCSS through the work I’ve been doing. And in fact, I am seeing connections between early literacy skill building in grades K-3, reading interventions in grades 4-12, and how literacy skills relate to the CCSS.

Literacy Skills in Early Elementary

The ORC has a wealth of information available for building literacy skills in the early grades, and I just want to take a moment to mention some of the resources because, to be honest, before I began working at the ORC, I didn’t know it existed–and what a shame that was!

PreK tools–ORC has an entire website devoted to Early Childhood. There are over 400 lesson plan/activity/experience resources and tons of books and activities for building literacy skills. As a parent who wants her child to be ready to read by kindergarten, there’s a lot of value to me in this site.
Literacy K-5: This is primarily what I am working on right now with the goal of having all our materials aligned to the CCSS before school starts (whew!). By digging into the work on this portion of the site, I learned more about teaching reading than I did in obtaining my teaching license.
The K-2 and 3-5 bookshelves are cool because they are organized into sets of books that address either a specific literacy skill (fluency, vocabulary, etc.) or a shared theme (Native Americans, People in Ohio).
The “Reading” section features the five basic reading skills: comprehension, fluency, phonemic awareness, phonics, and vocabulary. Each section includes specific lesson plans, professional development tools, videos of teachers putting the reading skills into practice, and assessment items.
And the “Reading Strategies” section that provides standards alignment (*I’ll come back to this in a moment), tools, activities, lessons, and instructional guidance on the reading strategies research has shown to be trademarks of strong readers: comparing and contrasting, connecting to prior knowledge, determining the importance, making inferences, predicting, setting a purpose, summarizing, and visualizing.

Basic Skills Through All Grades

When I wrote the other day about RtI and FA, I discussed not knowing how to teach reading because as a secondary teacher, particularly as a high school teacher, my focus was content not skill building. The basic tools and guidance on the Literacy K-5 site (especially the Reading and Reading Strategies sections) are applicable to teaching reading skills at any grade level because really, the skills we need to access a text are the same throughout all grades.

So, when we think about providing reading intervention to our high school students, we can look at it the same way an elementary teacher looks at teaching the basic skills, and we can still use grade-level appropriate texts to teach those skills. What if we refer back to Sarah Brown Wessling’s thoughts on fulcrum, context, and texture texts and use the context text (which I discussed scaffolding to each student’s ability level–allowing them to practice a skill in an “easier” text) to teach and strengthen those same skills that are taught in elementary (the Reading and Reading Strategies listed above).

Even more powerful…what if we use screening/diagnostics to figure out which areas students struggle with and plan units that address the specific skills.

…..My thinking started to run away with me, so I had to step away from writing and try creating a visual. Check this out:

What you’re seeing: If I were creating a unit plan for The Great Gatsby, I would start by pulling my learning targets from all my deconstruction templates of standards–note here I used knowledge targets from Reading Informational Texts, Reasoning Targets from Speaking and Listening, and Product Targets from Writing. I would plan activities throughout the unit that address these targets (UbD–start with end in mind). Throughout the entire unit, I would continually focus on and formatively assess these targets.

I would then begin finding LOTS of texts, multimedia, etc. that discuss the 1920′s, Prohibition, bootlegging, and New York to build context for the main piece of the unit. I would also make sure I have context texts at all ability levels so everyone has equal access to the context for the novel. While completing learning activities that are standards-focused using the context texts, I would plan for and concentrate on certain reading skills that the students need to continue developing their reading abilities. Here, I highlight two, but any of those strategies I mentioned above will work. In the context texts, students should be comfortable enough with the reading level of the text that they can focus more on the reading strategy.

The same goes with texture texts. Lots of texts at all levels so that while students are reading and applying skills to the fulcrum text, they are also continuing to practice them with “easier” texts.

Teaching the fulcrum text either with or before the texture texts, I would focus on scaffolding appropriately so the “red” and “yellow” students can practice the skills they are learning using a grade-level (in some cases, very challenging) text.

I hope that was relatively clear–it’s one of those things that works well in my head and on paper, but in reality may not be as practical as I think. The idea is that we continue to address those basic skills in conjunction with our standards-based learning targets and incorporate all those ideas about FA and RtI.

But some of those basic skills aren’t IN the standards.

This was what brought me to this post today. While trying to align the skills “making predictions” and “determining the importance,” I realized there is no standard that discusses, mentions, or even infers some of the literacy skills that we know work for kids. My first thought was to get rid of the resources from the ORC site–after all, if it isn’t in the standards, it won’t be assessed; if it isn’t assessed, we don’t teach it, right?

Given more thought, though, I came to the realization that those skills and strategies are what give our kids access to the standards. We don’t have to use every strategy every time (hence the pre-reading debate–we don’t have to pre-read for every text), but we have to teach those skills within the course of our instruction to allow our students to access the curriculum. Strategies/Skills aren’t in the standards because the standards are the end product, the goal, and strategies/skills are the means by which we get students to reach the goal. It’s difficult to align a strategy/skill to a standard because they are stable pieces of our “good instruction” toolboxes that never go out of style with each educational trend. We just need to figure out how to incorporate what we know about good instruction with what we know about the intent of the standards and what we know about the needs of our learners (easy task, no? )

RtI, FA, and Paying Attention to Each Student

Anonymous — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 19:28:20 GMT

I vaguely remember the moment when it hit me in my classroom…It was a couple years into my career as a secondary teacher, poring through half-sheet after half-sheet of reading pop quizzes from my 130 students, marking red “x” after red “x,” thinking to myself “We just talked about this! Why didn’t they pay attention when they were reading!!” and “Where on Earth did he get that answer?!?!”, when a sudden flashback on all of my experiences in education led me to a sudden realization….

Some high school kids can’t read.

Somewhere deep inside I knew it all along. I remember my own brother who struggled with reading all the way through school–the kid could sit for hours reading and have no idea what he read. He could read one sentence aloud, perfectly fluent, but have no clue what the words meant. I knew some kids couldn’t read, but because I didn’t know what to do about it (I was, after all, trained in my area of specialty–American literature), I chose to ignore that it happened. I told myself that if they couldn’t read by high school, they would have to figure out on their own how to fake it the rest of the way through school. I thought giving them audio recordings was the solution to all their problems, and I really thought those teachers in grades below me did the kid a disservice by passing him/her on to me without the necessary reading skills.

I sought to justify their reading difficulties (and often, their failing grades) because I didn’t know 1) their areas of weakness, or 2) how to help fix the problem.

Then, I learned about Response to Intervention (RtI). I’ve written on this blog time and time again about RtI and its benefits, but I’ve only recently started connecting the framework of RtI with the concept of formative assessment. Because I can see how these ideas fit together, I think of them less as educational fads and more as elements of good instruction. And because I see true benefits to combining formative instruction with RtI, I want to make them both as practical as possible for teachers to implement as soon as possible.

Let me make my case for RtI/FA in reading instruction, particularly at the secondary levels: Let’s face it, I am not the only teacher who willingly said, “Ok, they can’t read….Guess they need to figure that out.” I’m probably one of very few who would openly admit to thinking it, though. Like I said, as a secondary teacher, I wasn’t taught to teach reading. But as we move deeper into implementing the Common Core Standards, we all become reading teachers through all grades–we are just teaching reading at grade-level appropriate levels. As a 9th grade teacher, then, I am using 9th grade level texts to teach students how to cite specific evidence to prove what the text says. I am teaching comprehension and analysis of grade level texts. I am teaching reading. Using combined RtI/FA allows us to pinpoint areas of deficiencies, and if (like me) you aren’t familiar with specific interventions for those areas, a quick Google search will help you build an intervention toolbox for the long run.

Because we can 1) Identify the area(s) of weakness, and 2) Find methods to help fix the problem, it is unethical for us to continue to ignore the problem. Even if we are high school teachers steeped in our content.

Let’s talk very briefly about RtI and FA. I want to keep this brief because no matter how little or much you know about the two, the point isn’t to swim in the verbiage, it’s to grasp the main idea and find simple means of implementing these good practices into your own classroom.

Both RtI and FA are frameworks for thinking.
Both frameworks are adaptable to any situation.
Both are cyclical processes.
Both are elements of good instruction, and FA is something quality teachers do naturally all the time a thousand times a day.

Formative Assessment: Here’s a slightly verbose image to highlight a simple process–

In even simpler terms…

1. We teach something.

2. We assess somehow (exit slips, handout, observations, conference, thumbs up/down, etc.) to see who’s got it, who’s almost got it, and who’s in left field.

3. We do something to move those who have got it forward, to help those who have almost got it, and to really help those in left field.

4. We reassess somehow.

5. We try something else.

And the cycle goes on as we progress toward our learning goals. Good instruction is responsive to student needs–it doesn’t just truck through lesson plan after lesson plan; it is adjustable.

Response to Intervention: RtI is also cyclical, involves the formative assessment process, but quantifies FA with data.

1. We assess all students using a benchmark screener/diagnostic assessment (which will be repeated two more times during the year to see growth over time).

2. We use data from the screener to see who’s got it (on track for the year–approximately 80% of students will fall in this range), who’s almost got it (potentially on track–approximately 15% will be here), and who’s in left field (not on track–approximately 5% of students).

3. We then create customized learning paths for those students in the “struggling” 20%.

4. We teach something to all students, but we also use intervention techniques with the 20% we’ve identified as needing additional assistance (with progressively more assistance for those struggling the most).

5. We use our formative assessment practices with all students. (Teach, assess, change instruction; teach, assess, change instruction)

6. Periodically, we monitor the progress of the “struggling” 20%. Those who have almost got it could be assessed once a month or as needed, and those who are in left field can be assessed more often (up to weekly). Using the data from these progress monitoring assessments, we can figure out if the intervention we have been using with each student has worked, and if it hasn’t, we know we should try something else. We can try additional interventions until we find one that works for a student (as reflected in the progress monitoring and/or teacher professional expertise).

What this means for reading instruction (aka: How the heck do I incorporate this in my classroom?)

Benchmark screeners are a great starting point because they focus on the skills inherent in the common core. They can pinpoint skills (such as analyzing point of view) with which each student is struggling–and how amazing and wonderful would teaching be if we had this kind of information about each and every student? But given financial strain, I know beautiful benchmark screeners such as those by NWEA (MAP) and STAR that do a fantastic job of drilling down to standards-based areas of deficiencies while offering suggestions for intervention strategies for each individual student, are completely out of the question for many districts, but all hope is not lost. Look for benchmark assessments that are packaged with textbook materials and use those. Don’t have any of those? interventioncentral.org and/or rti4success.org have tools that allow you to create your own benchmark assessments for free.

I know, I know, that’s a lot of work, so I’m losing some of you in the verbiage again…

If you don’t have a benchmark tool you can use and you don’t feel like creating one, try using your district’s common assessments. No common assessments? How about creating a learning-target-based (NOT CONTENT BASED!) benchmark tool for your own classroom? (**Let me clarify…we’re looking as assessing reading skills–skills that are applicable in any context with any text; we are not looking to assess content knowledge, such as “Who wrote Grapes of Wrath?”) The key is to start with something that gives you a better picture of each student right away at the beginning of the year–no more waiting until November to finally have solid footing with each student’s strengths and weaknesses.

From there, focus on learning-target-based lessons and target-based grades that will allow you to track individual student progress that is aligned to the skills in the standards. Because you’ve adopted, created, manipulated a screener into place, you already have a working knowledge of students’ areas of strength and weakness. As you plan units based on learning targets, you’ll know which students need more assistance (because the targeted skill is an area of weakness) and which students you may need to push further (because the targeted skill is a strength). Constant formative assessment (that thing we do naturally when we say to ourselves, “Oh, he’s definitely got it!” or “I need to work more individually with her!”) tells us whether the student is advancing in those areas of weakness or if our strategy for working with that student is not working at all.

I hear you…”Wait, Christina, you just multiplied all my work ten-fold!” And here I will argue with you. I don’t believe anymore in nightly homework assignments or grading every piece of paper that comes across a teacher’s desk. In fact, I think the assessment that comes from using a tracking sheet and working your way around the classroom to observe and work individually with students is so much more valuable than the feedback given by an arbitrary 9/10 on an assignment. Imagine how much less grading you would have if you spent less time in front of the classroom lecturing (yeah, I’m calling myself out again for my own practices) and more time working with students on assignments. Do you need to collect a product from an activity when you have already worked with John on a skill and you know he is still developing? Likewise, do you need to “grade” each answer to questions 1-10 that are all focused on citing from a text when you know Sarah has already mastered that skill with the text you’re reading? I say no. When we remove some of the grading factor and make instruction more about the one-to-one exchange of teaching and learning, we make learning more effective for each learner.

Where you go from here…

It’s not as important that you understand every single facet of formative instruction or RtI to improve your instruction. But was is important is that you begin to look at each individual student’s strengths and weakness (skills, not content!), that you notice students who struggle with reading and work individually with those students to build reading skills and track progress over time. It is important that you (I) acknowledge these students and try new strategies to help them–instead of handing over an audio recording and saying good luck. Combining the basic tenets of RtI and FA into our instruction gives us an organized means of paying attention to each student and maximizing each student’s opportunity to learn. And in the era of Common Core, it’s important that we really step up our own game as teachers.

My mindset was TOTALLY unacceptable. I, once again, think of the kids to whom I did a great disservice as I passed them on knowing they couldn’t read.

Creating Units Based on Learning Targets

Anonymous — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 13:45:13 GMT

The Ohio Resource Center offers free resources and lesson plans for teachers. We are on the cusp of realigning ALL of these resources to be common core friendly, but in the meantime, I have pulled together a sample unit plan for 9-10 grade reading informational text.

Using original materials created by ORC contributors, I realigned the original work and organized the lessons according to common core standards. I want to walk you through this process to discuss how this might/could look in a classroom. Keep in mind this is just a sample of my process and solely intended as one way to help guide you in your efforts to implement the common core.

The unit in its entirety is available through my ORC Collection.

First, I started with the collection of lessons, which is a little backward from what I am used to. I was not starting from scratch; I was, instead, starting with material and adjusting to fit new standards. I read through all of the lessons and followed all of the links. I then listed all of the applicable standards statements for each of the seven lessons as I tried to find one overarching standard for the entire unit (the common thread of all the lessons). As these lessons were originally intended for the 11-12 grade band, I looked at standards for both 9-10 and 11-12. Once my standards were listed, I zeroed in on the the seventh statement in reading informational texts, but because I did not think the rigor or complexity of the lessons met the new expectations for the 11-12 grades, I opted to move it to a 9-10 unit plan. The overarching standard for this unit, then, is “Analyze various accounts of a subject told in different mediums (e.g., a person’s life story in both print and multimedia), determining which details are emphasized in each account.”

The next thing I did was deconstruct that overarching standard statement. I won’t lie, I enjoy deconstructing standards, and I did something similar last year when I began breaking down the new standards on my own. Deconstructing helps me to determine very specifically what I want my students to know and do, and it gives me a clear picture of my expectations. For demonstration purposes, I uploaded my sample deconstruction as a Google doc and linked to it in the sample lesson plan (a cool feature of the “My Collection” tool the ORC offers for free to all educators!).

Throughout the lessons in the sample plan, I stopped short of prescribing which learning targets would be appropriate for each lesson because I didn’t want to lean too far into directing classroom teachers; I just wanted to show one way this could be put together. However, I would like to describe how using learning targets might work. In my deconstruction, I broke the standard into four learning targets. Looking at the lessons, I could plan to specifically address each learning target on certain days throughout the unit. Lesson Two, for example, requires students to use different media formats to research the same event. This lesson would work well for the learning target: “Locate multiple accounts of an event in different mediums.” Notice, that this isn’t the ONLY potential learning target that could be addressed in this lesson; in fact, the lesson itself has about four standards statements attached to it that could be addressed. A good English lesson would include learning targets from throughout the strands (reading, writing, speaking & listening, language, etc.), but for the purpose of mastering standards, and for the purpose of giving students a clear picture of expectations, zooming in on one learning target is appropriate.

Once you have plotted your learning targets and their connected lessons, you can create a learning-target based tracking sheet like this one: Sample Tracking Sheet. Instead of collecting mounds and mounds of handouts and worksheets, I would use a tracking sheet and observations and/or personal communication with students to determine if they are reaching the learning targets. This method also allows you and the student to zero in on specific areas of difficulty the student has. So, instead of saying, “This kid can’t, ‘Analyze various accounts of a subject told in different mediums, determining which details are emphasized in each account,’” both you and the student can say, “We need to work on how to identify details in an informational text.” If I were using this tracking sheet in my own class, given my critique of my own grading practices, I would designate a B, D, M system for beginning, developing, and mastery. Without venturing too far into the realm of formative instruction or the RtI framework, I would make sure I work more individually with B students, plan accordingly for the D students, and add enrichment opportunities (more complex learning targets, moving to the “next step” in the deconstruction, and/or more complex texts/tasks) for the M students. The tracking sheet would provide me with a quick way to record my observations AND a quick way to adjust my instruction for each student.

You’ll notice in my notes for one of the lessons that the particular lesson aligned so perfectly with a speaking and listening standard statement that I would have deconstructed that standard, created a rubric using those learning targets (or another tracking sheet, perhaps), and devoted that part of the unit to that overarching standard before returning to the original informational text standard.

Enjoy

A Few of our Favorite Things

Anonymous — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 11:00:00 GMT

As I've been tweeting and Pinterest-ing (is that a word?), I got an iPad for our classroom.The reason I didn't jump on the bandwagon earlier was that I wasn't convinced that an iPad could offer my students learning opportunities that they couldn't find elsewhere. A vast majority of the apps I had seen, turn students solely into consumers. Just because you make a worksheet (or textbook) digital doesn't change that fact that it's still just a worksheet. I want my students to be more than consumers...I want them to be producers of new content. After some research I found enough of reason to make this purchase for my learners.

They are having a blast embedding the iPad into their learning routine in the different content areas. What I'd like to share today are some of the tools that we have been using to increase our productivity and efficiency of regular classroom routines. With these apps the students take (further) ownership of their learning environment.

Our Favorite Things... Productivity Edition:

Confer As we all strive to meet the needs of our individual students, one of the most daunting tasks can be documenting the progress of each learner. Over the years, I have tired all kinds of methods...folders, binders, tables in Word (many of our school computers don't have Excel), but I knew there had to be a more convenient way for me and my students to track their progress in each subject. Not only do we chart their successes, big and small, but my students create personal goals in each content area. Confer does all of this and more. Through confer, you can easily form flexible small groups and you can export your data as a Google spreadsheet or a an email attachment. You can tell this app was created by a classroom teacher who knows what teachers and their students need to make their conferring productive.Here is a video demonstrating how Confer works.

Notability We all have to address what we do for students who are absent from class. How do we keep them informed? How do they know what they've missed and get caught up with their peers? We started using Notability. Each student takes a turn creating a note of the day's activities. The notes can include text (class activities, homework, classwork, deadlines, announcements, etc.), photos (my students take photos of the flipcharts they use, review games, vocabulary lists, science experiments, etc.) and audio (of me or one of them explaining something that needs more than text or photos). When a student is out for a day or two, he/she comes in when he/she returns to school, pulls up the note for the dates he/she was out and discovers exactly what went on in the classroom that day. The notes are also easily emailed, so they can also be sent to parents.
Teacher's Assistant Pro Another task that can easily take up precious instruction time is documenting behavior within your classroom. We know how important it is to document everything: good, bad or ugly.One thing that I do with my students when we privately discuss their behavior is that I have them design the consequences and future plan of action for their behavior. It puts the responsibility on them to make any necessary changes. This app is easily customizable to meet your needs. So if you like to send home positive behavior reports like I do, this can be easily done as well. This app comes with a feature where with the click of a couple of buttons, the behavior report can be emailed to parents. You can tell that this app was also designed by a classroom teacher. Here is a video demonstrating the basics of how this app works:

So although these apps may not seem as flashy as other apps, in the hands of my learners, they have increased our productivity and given us more of that valuable learning time. It's given my students tools to track their progress and take further ownership of their personal learning journey. And that is what all tools we bring into our classroom should do.

Thoughts on Grading Practices

Anonymous — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 14:34:56 GMT

In the classroom, I had a difficult time assigning grades to student work. Several “team time” conversations amounted to a general consensus that grading is hard work–not the process of grading, but actually figuring out what makes a difference between an 8/10, 9/10, 90/100, or 400/500. Really, what is a “grade” other than an arbitrary number we teachers, the all-knowing keepers of grading secrets (“You–A, You–B”), assign to a task. Having never experienced a course on grading practices in all seven+ years of college, no one has ever explicitly said to me, “This is a good way to grade.” So I fell into a trap of counting the number of questions/tasks/alternatives, making that the total, and counting the number of errors. Like magic, number correct divided by number of total options equals an appropriate score–I wave my grading wand and *poof* the student has a grade in the online system.

It makes me sad to admit all of that. It makes me sad to think of the number of kids I hurt when their one failed attempt at a question caused the assignment to go into the gradebook as a 90%. How many college admissions transcripts did I smudge with my thumbprint of ineffective grading? How many A+ students walked away from my class with a C- because I didn’t know how to evaluate them effectively.

This year, before I left my classroom, was really my first attempt at adopting new grading practices. I was tired of my “bell curve” expectation that so many students should fall within expected grade ranges. I wanted more meaningful grading, something to better reflect progress rather than single snapshots of practice.

I began thinking about how I graded essays. In the past, I graded both the progress and the product, assigning 30 points for completed outlines and drafts, and using the district-adopted rubric for grading the final. Last year was the first year I offered revisions to my students, but I required a writing conference and additional steps (reflective paper requiring them to detail the changes they made and what they learned). This year, I questioned putting the writing conference after the initial grade–Why shouldn’t a paper be in its best form when the student hands it in? Why can’t all students receive a 100% on that final product? If they have completed revisions, conferenced with me, and revised in class, why wouldn’t a final paper be in nearly “perfect” condition (I emphasize “perfect” because we all know there is no “perfect” in writing!).

This morning, I read “Courageous Conversation: Formative Assessment and Grading” by Andrew Miller (@betamiller on Twitter), which initiated my need to post. I like the way Miller defines the difference between assessment and grading:

We grade assessments, and assessments reflect learning that has occurred. However, the concept of grading and assessment is complicated, and has further been complicated by the many ways that education reform has manifested itself in the classroom.

Assessment, then, is not the same as “grading.” I hated “grading,” but I could have given feedback on assessments all day long. I would have preferred to read an essay (or any other task), write focused comments (“What you’re using as support from the text does not support what you say you are arguing,” for example), and hand the work back for the student to reflect on and either try again, or try differently; I hated marking “wrong answers” and connecting that to the arbitrary numbers.

I want to connect these thoughts back to something I posted before about “I can” statements and the “I can” statements for 9-10 I published. First, I want to say that my “I can” statements aren’t the best, but they were a starting point when I began looking at the CCSS this summer. I needed something to work with, so I did the best I could with the information I had at the time. Now that I know more about deconstructing the standards, which the Kentucky Department of Education has also attempted to do, I know my I cans were not broken down as far as they could have been, but again, they were a starting point. In my “How I’m Using Those I Can’s” post, I detailed my development of units around the learning targets. My grading practices this year changed as a result of using the learning targets.

I found that telling the students the specific learning for the day and talking about 1) What the target means, and 2) What the target looks like helped my teaching tremendously. Students knew what they were supposed to show in their answers, and they knew if the target wasn’t focused on grammar and spelling, then I wasn’t grading grammar and spelling (and I made sure I didn’t!). They knew if they were to prove what the text said directly, they needed to show what the text said directly. We had common language for expectations.

Grading became an easier (though still arbitrary) task. All of my formative work was worth 10 points, regardless of the length. If students were progressing toward the goal, they could miss a few problems and still get a 9 or 10 out of 10, because the goal was to learn the target. If the student was “developing” or at the “beginning” level, he or she might get a 6, 7, or 8 out of 10 with the option to redo the assignment (here was my opportunity for differentiated instruction) and turn it back in for full credit. The summative test at the end of the unit reflected the targets they were to learn. I would provide them with a new, but similar, text and ask them questions aimed at those targets. After all, I didn’t want them to restate everything we discussed in class, I wanted them to apply what we learned in class to a new text.

I knew I was doing something appropriate when one of my struggling students said, “You mean, all I have to do is show you that I can prove what the author says indirectly and you’ll give me credit?” Sadly, I thought, what did he think his educational experience was supposed to be about all these years?

I’m not saying my system was perfect, but I was making some strides. I think Miller is spot-on in his discussion of formative grading practices, and I think that is the way we, as a society, should move in terms of education. Unfortunately, we are “reward-based”; we associate higher pay and higher grades with better work. Until that mindset changes, until we see learning as something more qualitative than quantitative, we will continue our arbitrary grading practices.

Running PD Like Formative Assessments

Anonymous — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 13:36:08 GMT

I have heard before at conferences, workshops and staff meetings that presenters have to treat teachers like we treat our students. We need to differentiate our training (not every teacher needs “Smart Boards 101″), let them work in groups, engage them, and deal with the occasional unruliness.

Why, then, do we not train teachers in a way that reflects a model of formative assessment? We are fairly headstrong about implementing formative assessment models in our classrooms, but in terms of raising teacher quality and making evaluations more effective, a formative assessment model is only in its foundational stages.

Here’s what I’m thinking…

The new teacher evaluation system in Ohio (the most thorough information on the ODE website is in the OTES Model document) involves a series of evaluations and administrator/teacher conferences through the course of the school year. Teachers will set “SMART” goals (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Results, Time-bound) at the beginning of the year and through a series of conferences, observations, and evaluations, their progress toward these goals will be measured and evaluated. Forgetting about the connection all this has to merit- and performance-pay for a minute, this framework for improving teacher quality encompasses all the elements of what we want teachers to do in their own classrooms: set clear learning targets (based on standards), make these learning targets clear to students, observe and evaluate individual student progress toward targets (formative assessment), and reteach through scaffolding or differentiation (the equivalent of what an administrator should provide in the teacher evaluation process) to help struggling students. The process reflects what we have come to define as best practices in assessment.

To make this framework as effective as it can be, teacher SMART goals need to align with district needs and the strategic plan. If a district is looking at a technology overhaul and wants teachers to incorporate 21st century skills, each individual teacher should have SMART goals oriented toward this district goal. A struggling teacher may say, “I aim to incorporate one piece of technology every week for nine weeks to improve student engagement,” whereas a more technologically skilled teacher may say, “I want my students to blog twice a week over the course of the next four weeks to improve their comfort with blogging platforms.”

To build even more on the evaluation/formative assessment for teachers framework, I would extend this system to professional development. Why not synthesize the SMART goals teachers write for their evaluations AND their Individual Professional Development Plans AND the types of staff development provided throughout the year? By creating one set of goals, teachers can have focus in their professional interests and learning instead of the anxiety produced by the constant inundation of too much stuff from disconnected PD offerings. Additionally, why not create cadres of teachers (outside of the PLCs that already exist) who are interested in and set goals about the same general interests. If a slew of teachers wants to learn about literacy across the contents (as indicated by their IPDP goals, which would match their SMART goals!), why not let them work together on learning opportunities instead of restricting each teacher to predesigned PLCs (grade level teams, department teams, etc.)? This cadre of teachers could work together throughout the year, and through peer observations, modeling, collaboration, and a peer-based formative assessment structure, PD (and meeting those IPDP and SMART goals) becomes a more engaging effort focused on learning targets (for teachers) and a steady progression toward those learning targets.

I can hear you already, “Where is the time to do this?” Do you still have group staff meetings where all teachers gather for an hour or two once a month to run through the gamut of business-oriented minutiae? In my opinion, those staff meetings would be much more effective if the minutiae came through email (or Google docs, or posted online…) and meeting time was used for professional learning. Use those two hours to unblock twitter and let the learning target cadre work together perusing the internet for their own webinars, you tube videos, PLC connections in other districts/states/countries, reading articles.

Just as I get excited about improving the practices of teaching and learning for students, I get incredibly excited thinking about the possibilities for improving professional development for teachers. We must use our understanding of best practices for students and put them into place for teachers as well. Help them set meaning learning targets for themselves, help them find paths to meet and practice those learning targets, and use formative assessment processes to see where they are struggling. Talk about empowering teachers in their practice.

What I’m Reading

Anonymous — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 02:40:55 GMT

I just started Dylan Wiliam’s Embedded Formative Assessment (2011), and it is already making me think about Assessment FOR Learning and what it means in the classroom of today.

I think teachers know of the words “formative” and “summative” in terms of assessment, but I think anxiety starts when teachers are asked to delineate their practice of formative and summative assessments in their classrooms. To ease some tension, I thought I’d do a little teacher pep-talk in this post and revisit these ideas after finishing Wiliam’s book.

Formative assessment is what any effective teacher does on a consistent basis during the day. It is that moment when she asks a thought-provoking question (“how does the theme in ‘The Raven’ relate to the themes in other Poe pieces we have read?”), gets an answer that is slightly off target (“um, the bird is black?”), and reassesses the students’ learning of the lesson. Formative assessment is the stack of “exit tickets” on which students have analyzed their own learning for the period: “Yes, I’ve got it”, “I need more help”, “No clue what we just discussed.” Formative assessment is the way an effective teacher figures out who needs more assistance and works with those students more directly to help them reach the learning goal.

What I see happening with formative assessment (through my own RtI and CCSS lenses) is more reliance on the process of formative assessment. Because we are a data-driven, “prove it to me” society, we want documentation for a process that has heretofore been innate to introspective, reflective, and effective teachers. It is in this vein that it becomes a daunting and seemingly time consuming task.

It can also, however, be seen as a rewarding task. Something that many teachers do inherently can become quantitative and tangible. It could empower teachers by giving them the data to have real conversations with parents, to make teaching less about guesswork and more about facts. It can make IEP goals more meaningful rather than arbitrary statements.

When the process and data collection are used well, the rewards of the potentially (and agreeably, initially) time-consuming processes become tools for driving instruction because we have a better idea of what kind and how much learning is happening for each student.

Conceptua Math

Anonymous — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 14:25:00 GMT

Back in my Favorite Products post from ATIA I mentioned a new website called Conceptua Math. I was so impressed by this product that I felt it deserved a post of it's own. Conceptua Math is the creation of Arjan Khalsa, while the name might not be familiar, you probably know his work - Intellitools Classroom Suite. He put a lot of research into Classroom Suite, really pumping up the math section, and has brought the same drive to Conceptua Math. Arjan was also the inventor of the Intellitools keyboard, helped launch the Assistive Technology Industry Association, and was the CEO of Intellitools for 20 years. His continuing support of Assistive Technology includes starting the non-profit AyudaTec, http://www.ayudatec.org, to provide targeted AT in Latin America.

So, now that you have some background, what is Conceptua Math - a web-based set of materials for teaching fractions. I'm pretty sure there are quite a few of you looking at your screens rather strangely...why is a teacher of students with significant cognitive disabilities talking about fractions? I thought the same thing so I talked with Arjan (for quite a while at his booth) and his explanation is quite simple (from the Conceptua Math Website):

Our goal is to build strong conceptual underpinnings in the complex area of fractions in order to provide a basis for comprehension in all of the topics that follow. We know that many students struggle with fractions through high school, and we want to help remedy that situation.

OK, so that makes sense, but again, why fractions...because it's just counting! Really, when you come right down to it, making fractions is all about counting, and many of our students work on counting their entire life! Why not also teach them fractions also (which if you've ever tried to cook are extremely frustrating!).

The beauty of this product is what you are able to do with it. For free you can use 13 whole classroom instructional materials (Free Fraction Materials) - identifying fractions, adding & subtracting fractions, & comparing fractions to just name a few. For a very reasonable price you can subscribe to the Premium Features like a full scope and sequence, instructional support & formative assessments. Also included in the Premium features are independent practice activities for students. The activities include text-to-speech for instructions, Instructional support to help students find the correct answer if they have trouble (not just telling them it's incorrect), and a formative assessment. After the assessment is given students receive their results, the option to review what they missed and suggestions on how to continue (do another of the same type, practice with support or work on a preskill). The Premium Features also include data collection.

Conceptua Math is reasonably priced:

For school and school district use:

Classroom Price: $100/year for up to 30 students.
School Price: $600/year for up to 200 students.
Volume Pricing: Conceptua Fractions costs $3/student per year in smaller quantities, and drops to $1.50/student per year in larger quantities.

I am very impressed with this product, it is research supported and they have put a lot of thought into it. While is not entire math curriculum, it is a great supplement to most programs. Please check it out!

Patrick

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