John shares some important links below, echoing a point made by Robert here recently. That John’s administrators responded positively to these articles is a testimony to his hard work over the past three years to change a deeply entrenched class culture at Berkeley High School, an effort that I find phenomenal. I can only imagine […]
Claire said: Summative assessments don’t help with instruction. They are important only for retention (determining who can go on to French II), but don’t help once kids are in the class. But Data Turds don’t … don’t understand assessments. Not really. If they had to do real formative assessments, they would have to give up
Here is my response to the data turd that I wrote to the vertical team: Some thoughts after our meeting: Since confidence in students is so important, when we ask them to produce writing or speech to align with some kind of desired outcome written in a document somewhere, in the form of either an
I’m reposting this post from a few weeks ago. I’m still working on an emotional level, trying to process it (being attacked in front of 11 colleagues in a vertical alignment meeting. (I will also post my written reaction to it next. It’s just a way to keep my mental health. I will put the
On the topic of sheltered vs. targeted we need to define the terms. Since we all have come to this work in different ways, we all may have different ideas of what they mean. Here’s what I think they mean, and in no way do I consider them some kind of “correct” definition: Sheltered language
Can anyone point to anything here that will help jen on this deal? …a lot of energy is now going into UNIT PLANS –which must all use the same template, all across the school. UGH. ALL OUR UNITS MUST BE SUBMITTED SEPTEMBER… Don’t we have any unit plans here for group sharing? Have they scrolled
Jen sums up: Off the top of my head…can I just define “formative” as everything I do daily? And then “summative” is where I see them trending at the end of each quarter? Would that make sense in my system? The problem with this, for how I see most kids now, is that if everything
Jen continues her reflection on Claire’s original articles: In summary at some point I will be accused of “grade inflation.” But I have the advantage of being the only Spanish teacher at the high school, and in fact in the whole district bc the middle school only has French. So I will keep doing this
In the previous articles jen described how she assesses and grades. In this one she describes how she gathers data: Data: we are required to submit our “benchmark data” at each quarter. This one cracks me up. First quarter I was shivering in my cowboy boots bc it seemed so daunting. Confession: my “benchmark assessments”
In the previous article jen described how she assesses. In this one she describes how she grades: Grading: most kids pass bc they demonstrate understanding in some way. even tho my CI classes are messy and contaminated with too much english. kids who fail are the kids who do not come to class. kids who
Jen continues: I’m curious what others do. I will be perfectly honest below about my current “assessment system”, “grading system” and my “data reporting.” Assessment: is pretty much what Claire describes, although having her describe it gives me more confidence to state what I do without fear. Whenever anyone asks “but how do you assess”
Jen responds to Claire in a comment which I divided up and made into four posts (easier to read): Wow! This whole series of articles 1-7 has gotten me even more fired up. I have not read all the comments yet, and will do that, but one of my burning questions is how to translate
