Formative assessment Formative assessment is a process used by teachers and students during instruction that provides explicit feedback to adjust ongoing teaching and learning to improve students’ achievement of intended instructional outcomes. Formative assessment is a method of continually evaluating students’ academic needs and development within the classroom and precedes local benchmark assessments and state-mandated summative assessments. Teachers who engage in formative assessments give continual, explicit feedback to students and assist them in answering the following questions: Where am I going? Where am I now? How can I close the gap between the two? In order to show students how to close the gap between where they are academically and where they want to be, teachers must help students evaluate their progress in the learning process and give them explicit, descriptive feedback specific to the learning task. History of formative assessments Learning Progressions Learning Goals and Criteria for Success
3 Instructional Learning Strategies for Problem Readers As educators, we are always looking for new techniques to help our struggling readers. Our job is to find learning strategies that will not only help our students succeed, but that will make it easier for them to learn, and develop a love for reading. While on your quest to present the best learning strategies that will be optimally learnable for all students, try a few of the following activities in your classroom. Directed Listening-Thinking Activity The Directed Listening-Thinking Activity (DLTA) is an instructional technique that was developed for students who have not yet mastered independent reading. Procedure Before Reading More than 100 nations have prohibited the practice of corporeal punishment.... Here are a few ideas to help you prepare and get the most out of an educational... The teacher tote is mandatory for being a teacher. Here are 22 strategies to use next year that will make your teaching life... Here is some encouragement for stressed-out teachers. During Reading
Formative vs Summative Assessment-Teaching Excellence & Educational Innovation Formative assessment The goal of formative assessment is to monitor student learning to provide ongoing feedback that can be used by instructors to improve their teaching and by students to improve their learning. More specifically, formative assessments: help students identify their strengths and weaknesses and target areas that need workhelp faculty recognize where students are struggling and address problems immediately Formative assessments are generally low stakes, which means that they have low or no point value. Examples of formative assessments include asking students to: draw a concept map in class to represent their understanding of a topicsubmit one or two sentences identifying the main point of a lectureturn in a research proposal for early feedback Summative assessment The goal of summative assessment is to evaluate student learning at the end of an instructional unit by comparing it against some standard or benchmark. a midterm exama final projecta papera senior recital
Helping Students Understand What a Test Is and Is Not We are facing a problem with tests in education. Students are strongly influenced by the implied messages they deduce from what is being tested, especially when the test is emphasized as high stakes in terms of their grades. Further, they can draw dangerous conclusions about their own role in the learning process by what is done with the assessment results. Putting the Assessment in Context We've all taken tests, and we've felt either proud or ashamed of the results, often following a tense waiting period. We can mitigate against students' acquiring this damaging mindset by helping them understand that any one test on a subject does not demonstrate all of the understanding and knowledge they have developed -- and then adapting our grading, scoring and performance reporting accordingly. We can also communicate -- both before we give the tests and when we return the scores -- the scale, purpose and limitations of this particular assessment. Preventing Assessment-Related Damage to Learning
OK zeszyt Pierwszy rozdział: Jak to się zaczęło? Szczere mówiąc, to nie wiem jak zacząć. Mogłabym zacząć od SPLO (Studia Podyplomowe Liderów Oświaty programu SUS), ale też dobry początek stanowi Facebook. No cóż, SPLO było pierwsze w tej sprawie, zacznę z tej strony. Profesor Jan Potworowski poprosił dyrektorów - słuchaczy SPLO (prowadzonego przez CEO, PAFW, OSKKO i Collegium Civitas) o przywiezienie na zjazd zeszytów uczniów. Nie jakichś specjalnych, tylko przypadkowe. Teachers are Learning Designers Late in 2012, I wrote a blog for the Huffington Post that articulated what I really feel should be and is a role of great teachers. Great teachers are "learning designers" who seek to create a space where all students are empowered to learn. I was further inspired to rearticulate this idea when I saw this video from Sir Ken Robinson: What really struck me is that great teachers create the conditions for success, just as gardeners do. You can't make a flower grow, but you can design and improve the condition for that flow of naturally occurring events. Empower Yourself For so long, teachers have been disempowered to design. Stop Blaming Kids There is one pitfall in Sir Ken Robinson's metaphor of teachers as gardeners and students as fruit. Revise and Reflect As I mentioned earlier, if students are struggling, it's a great opportunity to revise and reflect on the learning design. Are more voice and choice or self-directed learning needed?
Promoting a Culture of Learning Learning is a culture. It starts as a culture with the students as human beings needing to understand their environment. And it ends as a culture with students taking what we give them and using it in those physical and digital environments they call home. Even the practices that promote or undermine the learning process itself are first and foremost human and cultural artifacts. Literacy, curiosity, self-efficacy, ambition and other important agents of learning are born in the native environments of students' homes. Further, learning is ongoing, perishable and alive -- just like culture. Creating Culture But what about your classroom? The short answer is that a culture of learning is a collection of thinking habits, beliefs about self, and collaborative workflows that result in sustained critical learning. Or that's how I think of it, anyway. Can you cause this to happen? "Intentionally letting" may seem like an oxymoron. Use the Gradual Release of Responsibility Model 1. 2. 3. Sustainability
A Guidebook for Social Media in the Classroom Is Social Media Relevant? Take the Quiz Before we talk social media, let's talk about the relevance of social media by taking a quiz. Which of the following is most likely to be true? ☐ Should we teach letter-writing in the classroom? The Social Media Answer ☑ There's one form of writing that can arguably get someone fired, hired or forced to retire faster than any other form of writing. One form of writing is that powerful. If you guessed social media, you're right. The Social Media Myth The myth about social media in the classroom is that if you use it, kids will be Tweeting, Facebooking and Snapchatting while you're trying to teach. You don't even have to bring the most popular social media sites into your classroom. 12 Ways Teachers are Using Social Media in the Classroom Right Now Tweet or post status updates as a class. It's in the Standards Social media is here.
21C learners need 21C teachers "If your school, and your school day, is not about students collaborating, connecting, and building knowledge and understandings together, why would anyone come?" - Ira David Socol Collaborative knowledge building has been the path from which most innovation has emerged. Jonas Salk, whose work virtually ended the polio epidemic, began thinking about a cure when he was working with his mentor, Dr. Thomas Francis on an influenza vaccine. Architects, people in business, educators, politicians, all solve problems in concert with colleagues from the same and different fields. The research on learning reveals that "Studies of students' discussions in classrooms indicate that they learn to use the tools of systematic inquiry to think historically, mathematically, and scientifically" (Blansford p. 189). An immediate problem is the bias and emotion associated with the use of technology as a facilitator of learning. There are teachers as well as leaders occupying these two 'camps'.
Teaching Students to Embrace Mistakes For the last ten years, we've worked one-on-one with students from elementary school through graduate school. No matter their age, no matter the material, when you ask what they're struggling with, students almost universally name a subject: "math," "English" or, in some instances, "school." Doubting that all of school is the issue, we then ask to see their last test. To a teacher, this should be incredibly frustrating. The Science Behind Mistakes Telling students they need to take advantage of the feedback they get isn't just good advice -- it's established science. Picture a classical violinist rehearsing. Mistakes are the most important thing that happens in any classroom, because they tell you where to focus that deliberate practice. So why don't students view their mistakes as a valuable asset? Changing your students' perspective on mistakes is the greatest gift you can give yourself as a teacher. Credit: Hunter Maats and Katie O'Brien A Fresh Take on Mistakes
9 Digital Learning Tools Every 21st Century Teacher Should Be Able To Use The 21st century is a time of rapid change, and while the brain may not be changing (much), the tools we use to feed it are. This puts the 21st century teacher in a critical spot–of mastering constantly evolving technology and digital learning tools–the same tools their students use every day. So below, we’ve started with 9 such tools, but this is obviously just scratching the surface. And incidentally, it pairs nicely with a related post, 36 Things Every 21st Century Teacher Should Be Able To Do. Let us know what we missed on twitter or facebook. 1. While Google Reader is going the way of the dodo, social readers like Pulse and Flipboard continue to surge in popularity because they’re attractive, accessible across devices, and make it easy to skim large amounts of information at once. Why Every 21st Century Teacher Should Be Able To Use It Extracting data from the internet is like trying to listen to the subtle melody of a Korn song. 2. So what’s the big deal for educators? 3. 4. iTunesU 5.