I returned from Portland on Friday night. I went to the Second Annual Assessment Training Institute conference. It was held in the Marriott (yes, la di da.) We even had valet parking and a newspaper in front of our door each morning. It was good and helped me understand some things that we've been talking about and trying at school this past year and a half. Some things that I've been learning:
-students need consistent, descriptive formative feedback (Sorry for those of you who are not teachers, for the teacher lingo. Basically that sentence means that they need to practice things that they're learning, and have lots of feedback from their teacher, peers, and even themselves.)
-those formative assessments should not count as marks in a final grade because they are practice. (How many people passed their drivers test the first time? But you still got a license, right?) This means that daily homework should be considered formative, and not count for a grade.
-late marks, effort marks, participation marks, and group marks all skew your assessments and should not be considered. (Does an excellent paper that's handed in late really deserve a C rather than an A? How can you really judge how hard a student has tried? What if one group member has done more work than the other group member? How can you really assess a student accurately based on how much they participate? What if he/she is just really shy?)
-Students should always know exactly what they're being assessed on, and should even be able to track their own progress in achieving what you have set out for them to learn.
-Our school systems have been about sorting our students into ranks--the ones at the top of the ladder have succeeded, and we've pushed the bottom ones through. School should be about learning, not jumping through hoops.
Well, that was mostly to organize my own thoughts. I hope you skipped it if it bored you. Now I have some work to do applying some of this stuff. Some of it I do already, but some of it I need to think about and work on. Like changing my grade book, for example.
It's snowing here again. Crazy B.C.
3 comments:
why is it crazy that it's snowing?
i'll tell you something crazy. it's in the high 30's! this is alaska in december, for pete's sake!
arg.
It's crazy because it's B.C. Where it's supposed to snow once a winter, tops.
I found the teacher lingo very fascinating - thanks Margaret. (And I'm glad that there are teachers like you around).
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