When you lose track of time, you are either living your best life or wasting it. - James Clear
What we learned this week:
From my own reading of Chapters 1 and 2 of Making Classroom Assessment Work and our first learning circle discussion, I was able to gather the following information:
- Assessment ( gathering information on student learning to inform our teaching and help students learn more) vs. evaluation (deciding whether or not students have learned and how well).
Assessment for learning is to collect information for the next teaching steps and learning steps. Students will receive lots of descriptive feedback (necessary information from many sources in order to adjust and improve). It also means accepting mistakes when learning, understanding feedback, taking time to learn, and recognizing success looks different.
Evaluative feedback is when the student’s work is compared to other students’ works or to a standard. Often seen as grades and other symbols.
More assessment and descriptive feedback than evaluative feedback can improve student learning. Give enough time for students to practice their learning before evaluating.
Learning to self-monitor is an essential skill for independent, self-directed, lifelong learners.
Giving samples helps students to see an expectation for the work and creates a mental guideline. However, these samples have to be carefully chosen, or else the learning connection is severed. Learning from others is one of the ways students can scaffold for future learning.
Repetition is great for practicing.
Make implicit expectations explicit,
“An event is not an experience until you reflect upon it.”
Spend less time grading and more time helping students learn.
Create a safe learning environment for students. Learn about each other. Vygotsky’s sociocultural learning theory that we learn from the interactions we have with others, self, and the environment.
Learning loop: we learn, we assess, and we learn some more.
I would consider our first learning circle a roaring success. I got to meet Jada, Rebekah, and Jozelle, and engage in learning together. When I reviewed the learning circle success criteria, I knew that we almost hit a perfect peer assessment with each other. Despite missing two other members and two of the present members not having read the chapters, we were hitting it off, discussing every key idea, and making many connections to ourselves and the world. Kudos to the two for engaging and inputting ideas. Reviewing the recording we had, I can tell that we had a really meaningful discussion. In terms of assessing this learning circle, I would give us "thoughtful" for everything. I chose this week's symbol by reflecting on how I felt during this learning circle-- happy. We were all smiling like we'd been great friends all along, and that made the discussion so much more pleasant.
This week's symbol is the smile.
As for non-learning circle stuff, I thought this week's class touched on more information that I can add to my toolkit. We talked and practiced making personal goals, which I thought was an important activity. We don't often realize the process of making goals, and breaking this process down through the SMART goal sheet, reinforces the importance of making attainable and beneficial goals.
Chris had also shared examples of ePortfolio submissions, and I realized that I needed to step up. Connecting to goal-making as I discussed earlier, I hope to improve my weekly reflections.
As a student...
I love that we have a sharing portion of our learning circles on Poll Guru that happens with the entire class. As much as I had a wonderful time learning from four amazing people, I was glad to hear from more people about their impressions of the first two chapters. Like the others, I was enlightened by the first chapter; it was a perfect introduction to assessment. However, as I was reading that second chapter, I realized that my answer to "What is assessment for you?" from the last class wasn't as true at the time. Of course, in a pre-service teacher mindset, I completed the "Why do we assess student learning?" activity, thinking that assessment is for student involvement in their learning and progress as well as an improvement tool for teachers.
If someone had asked me "What is assessment for you?" about 4 years ago, I would have had a completely different answer. In our Poll Guru, we were asked to describe Chapter 2 in a few words, and I wrote, "Parent involvement is not necessarily the best. Some parents are there only for the grades, and children are hurt." This is the only disagreement I've had with the book thus far, and it struck me really hard. Assessment was good and bad for me, growing up. My life at home was dependent on my success at school. I had a love-hate relationship with report cards in those brown envelopes sent home twice a year. My mother would ask, "Why did you only get ___ ?" Then I would spend the next year ruminating on that grade and ensuring she would never ask me again. When I was doing well with grades, I would be rewarded with some kind of gadget. An iPod, a MacBook Pro, an iPad Mini-- you name it. Along the way, I thought of assessments as opportunities for receiving rewards.
As a future teacher...
Assessment is not for receiving rewards. I would hope that my students believe assessments are for acknowledging their successes and progress (no matter if they are little or none according to the standards set by the curriculum), renewing a motivation for learning, and establishing connections to what they've learned to themselves, others, and everything around them. Grades don't define the learner despite an opposite preexisting notion. As Anne Davies discussed, with assessments done right, the students will understand the expectations, access prior knowledge, take ownership of their successes, give themselves descriptive feedback, and provide the teacher with information to support their learning (2011, p. 5).
Evidence of learning
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