Who Gets to Choose the Audience? – John Spencer. Thinking beyond the summative assessment task | Time Space Education. Countless hours have been spent as teaching teams sit staring at a screen trying to agree on a summative assessment task. The purpose of these summative assessment tasks is supposed to be to check for understanding, to see how the students’ understanding of the concepts explored during a unit of inquiry has developed. Each one of those sessions may have gone absolutely nowhere, and signifies a misconception that exists in many schools today – that a one-size-fits-all summative assessment task will tell you about each individual student’s level of understanding. There are seven flaws here: The majority of these conversations are firmly within the realms of “what will we do?” And almost all remain in that realm without ever considering “why are we doing this?”. Many teaching teams teach units of inquiry without ever really figuring out what it is they are hoping students will understand.
Very often, the key to achieving all of these things lies in assessing the same way that you teach. Three Way Conferences a.k.a. Goal Settings | PYP Coordinator. What are three way conferences at KIS? Three way assessment provides a forum for teachers, students and parents to acknowledge student progress and achievement. In three way conferences students lead by explaining their learning achievements, as well as areas for improvement.
This includes displays of student work across a Unit of Inquiries and Standalone subject areas across the first semester. Three way conferences are an important avenue for involving parents and students in the learning process and help parents understand the learning and teaching and, assessment and reporting process. Here at KIS we emphasize the student’s role in these meetings, wherever possible it should be student who leads the discussion, not the adults. Three way assessment strategies and conferences have benefits for teachers, parents and schools. Some of these benefits are outlined in the table below. Edutopia. Start Small It sounds like a cliché, but Wildwood teachers all say the same thing: "Start small. " When the school piloted the idea of student-led conferences five years ago, a few of the teachers were simply asked to find ways to give the students a little more presence at the conferences, whether through a letter to the parents, a podcast, a poster or by just being at the conference themselves.
"We started slow with student-led conferences," says eighth-grade teacher Brigid Jennings. "It was almost like a gradual release to full student-led conferences. As they piloted the change, these teachers saw a big difference in the levels of engagement for both parents and students. Designating a Time Conferences at Wildwood happen twice a year.
"We never get through everything," says eighth-grade teacher Rebecca Braun. Students know that it's OK if they don't get through everything, and teachers know that the conversation doesn't have to end after ten minutes. Preparing the Work. 15 ways to spark student reflection in your classroom. In a recent survey of educators conducted by THE Journal, an overwhelming number – 81 percent – considered reflection skills very important. This doesn’t come as a surprise. The ability to learn from mistakes and recognize strengths and weaknesses can make the difference between success and failure, in school and beyond. Are you looking for some new ways to increase student reflection in the classroom? Here are 15 ideas you can try tomorrow: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. Let’s keep adding to this list. Sharing Learning, when parents are the students. | 1P.
The class was tided and beautiful, the children had considered where to put activities, carefully placing signs for parents to read. Cloth was draped over tables, cushions were placed in comfortable arrangements. No detail was too small. The room was ready for student led conferences. The class filled with the gentle sound of conversation and laughter. Children quickly moved parents to different areas.
Children delighted in their expertise and parents noted their children’s skills as guides and teachers. The experience is best conveyed through video, enjoy revisiting this special celebration of learning. Owen, Chen-Yan, Daniel, Alex and Lucas Lucas and Alex Isa, Andrew and Ian Noah, Vivi and Reina Kei and Yukei Leevi Lime. Inquiring Naturally thru Mathematics: Using the Summative Task as the Provocation. I was struggling to come up with a provocation or ideas for our Shape and Space Unit.
We are doing a unit the looks at monuments, so I wanted to try and incorporate some kind of building or creating into the unit. This unit really made me think how about how I could make it engaging for students. I didn't want to just go through property after property of different shapes. I wanted to give the students ownership of their learning and make them have to use the knowledge they have gained in some way. So I thought, what if I give the students the summative task as the provocation for the unit.
One that requires them to draw a structure or monument that has to incorporate certain properties? I have never tried this before, but I thought no harm in trying... First, I used the Teaching Student Centered Mathematics text (a wonderful resource), to find out what learning outcomes or big ideas that I need to address at a Grade 2 level. Here are some of the student going through the expectations. ... » The Power of Formative Assessment. What Meaningful Reflection On Student Work Can Do for Learning. The following excerpt is from “Authentic Learning in the Digital Age: Engaging Students Through Inquiry,” by Larissa Pahomov. This excerpt is from the chapter entitled “Making Reflection Relevant.”
Characteristics of Meaningful Reflection For student reflection to be meaningful, it must be metacognitive, applicable, and shared with others. Let’s look at each of these characteristics in turn. Metacognitive Although it’s something of a buzz word, “metacognition” is a state of mind that can be useful for all the core values presented in this book. When children are first learning to reflect on their work, their educators use simple prompts to get them thinking: Do you like what you made? Of course, there’s a danger of this metacognition turning into a kind of feedback loop: Am I reflecting adequately on my reflection? ➤ The digital connection. Applicable This kind of isolated, after-the-fact reflection dominates our understanding of the process. . ➤ The digital connection.
Shared. We Aren't Using Assessments Correctly. Published Online: October 27, 2015 Published in Print: October 28, 2015, as The Effective Use of Testing: What the Research Says Commentary By John Hattie Much of the testing discussion in the United States today is grounded on several widely accepted notions: that we first must get the actual assessment instrument right, that there is an important distinction between "formative" and "summative" assessment, that teachers need to understand the language of assessment, and that we should drop tests on schools like "precision bombs" for the purpose of measuring a student's performance and progress. These notions are misguided, as decades of research from around the world on what matters most in student learning demonstrates.
—Gregory Ferrand for Education Week So often we use assessment in schools to inform students of their progress and attainment. We hardly need more data—schools are awash with data. . • Did the teachers and school leaders interpret the reports correctly? Involving students / Topics / Gathering evidence / Using evidence for learning / Home. You are here: Assessment is done with the student, not to the student As is the case with teaching and learning, assessment is a collaborative endeavour between the teacher and the student – where both want to determine what the student knows and what might be learnt next. Therefore, a major role for the teacher is to manage the learning culture of the classroom in order to maximise students' motivation to engage keenly with assessment. If the student is not motivated to try with the assessment, it is likely that the results will not really show what the student knows or can do. Such a result will not help either the teacher or the student to plan next steps.
Teachers should always involve students in assessment decision-making Whether informal or formal, assessment should always involve the students in decision-making about as many aspects of the assessment as possible. Some tools lend themselves to greater student involvement than others, depending on how they have been designed. Learning Time Capsules – shifting the focus from achievement to progress – Making Good Humans. Here is an example of how one of our Grade 4 teachers is shifting his students’ focus from achievement to progress through the use of a math “time capsule”.
Diagnostic: This teacher looked at all the big concepts the Common Core outlined for fractions in Grade 4 and created open-ended questions to allow students to show what they already knew or thought they knew about each big idea. Students were encouraged to be risk-takers and try every question! The teacher then tracked students’ prior knowledge on an excel sheet.
This allowed him to plan full group, small group, guided and individual math inquiries based on needs. Formative: After a few weeks of inquiring into these fraction concepts, the teacher gave back the same task and highlighted questions that students were required to try (based on the concepts that had been learned over the past few weeks in class). When the focus is on achievement, students have no choice but to compare their achievement to the achievement of others. Edutopia. Parent-teacher conferences are one of the few opportunities for families to converse with teachers about their children's progress and needs. Lines of people wait their turn for these 15- to 20-minute interactions. One result is a conversation that establishes a relationship and delivers essential information about a student's progress. Teachers usually carry the burden of making the conference productive, yet if families were included more through communications and collaborative meeting planning, the experience could become more mutually fruitful.
To this end, I'll introduce each of my points with voices from families suggesting collaborative communication about their needs. Build a Team: Make Frequent Contacts Before Each Conference I hoped teachers would inform me between conferences if anything was amiss or pleasing about my children's progress, socially or academically, so that there would be no big surprises during the conferences. 1. 2. 3. 1. Have the student attend the meeting. How to Make Grades About Students Again. Our first semester ended last week. I have been working on grades, both standards scores and letter grades, for the past 3 days.
Pondering. Wondering. Pulling my hair out as I try to figure out which box to place my students in as we try to assess the growth that has happened. In the end of it all, I am reminded of how much I still hate grades. And yet, within this process of distilling my students down to a single letter comes an amazing opportunity for conversation. Within the very simplification of all of the learning they have done, we have had an awesome chance to change the notion of what that score or letter means. So how can we make grades and scores about the students again? Start with a student definition. Have them grade themselves. Have them do a semester survey. Ask them what they are proud of. Then discuss their grades. So while I work in a system that still asks me to define students through a score, we can reclaim that very conversation.
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