Here are two videos of my teaching. I was hoping to get a discussion going about the effective and non-effective practices that are taking place in each of the videos. Be brutally honest about what you are seeing, that is how we can each get better.
Video 1 is a video shot last year when I was teaching a unit on The ideas of John Locke to an 8th grade class
Video 2 was shot today, and consists of a document analysis activity between two students and myself.
Last night we talked about the what makes an effective teacher. Lets keep that discussion going. What examples are you seeing around your schools that show effective teaching? What practices are you using that are effective for learning? What can you start working on this week to help you become more successful in the classroom? What are the five aspects of an effective teacher?
Also lets start a discussion about the book study. What are your thoughts on Focus so far? What do you agree and disagree with? What if anything are you already doing or want to put into practice in your classroom?
Earlier this week I was contacted by a teacher in the admin building of D11, asking if I had any tips for teachers, parents, and students that would help make them successful students. This is the list that I cam e up with. I was hoping to get some feedback from those of you reading this blog.
Comment on anything you think that I should add to the list. What am I missing. What suggestions do you have.
Tips:
Teachers:
Students:
Parents
Summative assessment represents the culminating experience of a learning segment. A learning segment can be anything, a chapter, a unit, a quarter, a semester. These are demonstrations of learning given after the students have had multiple chances to prove proficiency on formative assessments. However, unlike formative, summative are almost always graded and used to show learning progression because they represent students mastery and it is not used to inform adjustment to the teaching of content since that teaching has already taken place. This can however inform instruction on a more long term level such as next semester of year that the content will be taught. It is always useful to gather as much data about any type of assessment you give. How ones grades summative assessment is an individual teacher, school, and district decision, I will cover my grading practices later in this post.
In my classroom the key to demonstrating mastery on content is having a balanced approach to assessment. Having a clear, precise, thought out formative plan and tying those formative pieces and summative demonstrations together is how you can not only get students to master the content but allow them to show that mastery is my approach. As a teacher I separate the assessment for learning (formative) and the assessment of learning (summative). Through my backwards planning process I create all my assessments together so that the process is linked in a natural manner. During the unit planning process, create a set of criteria that students must master in order to show that they understand the objectives of the unit. After the unit and criteria have been completed I then move to my formative assessments and create a process that will be able to judge whether or not my students have gained the required knowledge and if I need to go back and re-teach any material in order to show mastery on the summative. I make both sets of assessment in the same sitting.
When I write a summative assessment I try to follow Ken O’Connor’s advice, “I recommend that teachers use a combination of assessment types, such as paper and pencil, performance assessment, personal communication, and writing assessments in order to gather as much data as possible to show student mastery.” (Connor 2009, pg 131) Most of my written assessments consist of multiple ways for student to show mastery of each individual learning goal. Multiple choice, T/F, constructed response, short constructed response, open ended questions, map skills, analyzing of documents, etc. I try to scaffold the assessment of each learning goal so that students are able to not only show proficiency on each learning goal, but are able to show advanced learning for each goal as well. I also try to implement a DBQ type summative as another stand alone assessment.
As far as grading in the classroom I have changed my classroom into a mastery classroom over the last two semesters, and it has not been easy. Now summative assessments count for 90 percent of the student’s grade in my class. If the students cannot show mastery of the content the student cannot pass the class. The students are given as much time as they need however to show that mastery. I hound students until they have mastered the content on a summative exam.
IN the end having so much riding on assessment is often very worrisome. Every measurement of education in America today is based on summative assessment. I kids don’t test well, it is a key factor in not only their success, but now the teachers success. Have students constantly show mastery in the classroom throughout the year will better prepare them for the high stakes summative evaluations the must complete during their academic career.
My have hits bumps as well. My assessment literacy is still growing. I am constantly looking for new ways to balance my summative assessments and make them more rigorous and relevant. I am looking for new ways of writing and grading assessments in order to differentiate between the comprehension of content (proficiency) and the evaluation of content (advanced mastery).
Some parting guidelines for summative assessment in a mastery based classroom:
1. Students must be prepared to take the summative by showing proficiency on all formative assessments
2. Summative assessment must be standards based
3. Make sure content is important and not cool
4. Must provide some sort of feedback (could be just a grade)
5. Should be able to re-do all assessments in order to master the content
6. Use summative data to improve future performance of the same standards
Resources
Kay Burke—Balanced Assessment 2010
Robert Marzano— Formative Assessment and Standards Based Grading 2009
Larry B. Ainsworth and Donald J. Viegut –Common Formative Assessments: How to Connect Standards-Based Instruction and Assessment 2006
Here are some pretty neat resources that I have come across over the last couple of days.
I am currently teaching a unit on the roaring 20s and cam e across this great resource on the Scopes Trial.
I have been pushing quite a bit of the use of primary source documents and reading like a historian this year and this lesson and collection of resources are really good.
http://historicalthinkingmatters.org/
A fellow teacher of mine sent me a link to Thinkfinity.org This is a website with discussion forums, strategies, resources, educational news, teaching ideas and opportunities for professional development. I have only begun to browse the website but it looks like it could be pretty helpful.
http://community.thinkfinity.org/index.jspa?showhomepage=true
For Social Studies teachers: I came across a cool website that makes pretty cool online timeline maker.
The Staff Meeting 