My notes from the Anne Davies Presentation 2010 August 23-24
ALL Students - need to differentiate assessment (HOW?)
Really engaged students in assessment process - leads to more meaningful discussions @ report card time
The last word strategy: select a sentence or phrase
-group of 5: read your passage, others listen then make connections, take turn making connexions while reader is quiet
Give one get one: strategy for quick exchange (eg short oral presentations)
Hawaii Kindergarten
-the plans the teacher had already done resulted in her just being a intro and debrief guide. The student did most of the work! The student showed independence and competence. How long did this take?
Teacher had a guided learning centre - scaffolding
Teacher helped to get the student to express their interests and learning targets
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Teacher preparing HS students for PT conference Lynne Sueoka in Hawaii
-pathways to help students link to relevancy
-quarters
-portfolio is students way of showing what they learned
-YOW to describe standards and how their evidence supports the standards
-asks (checks progress) if they know how to match evidence to standard
-refers back to the rubric
-when doing the role play, she could just randomly pick a kid to get up and he did it with little resistance
-sounds like these porfolios were used instead of a test
-student liked that the audience is not just the teacher (since they used digital porfolio) - parents, peers etc are also in the audience
-this school uses digital portfolio over the 4 years of high school so that it's a historical record - the teacher noted that the students are more selective of what they document as they get older
Grade 6 students preparing for @home student conference March (rubric was from page 101 of her book)
-student describing portfolio
-if this stuff is just sent home, then the parent could organise the portolio for the student
-student was using the standards lingo, rubrics, goals.
-How did you know you did quality work? I did my best, I met the criteria, I followed feedback
-What needed to occur in order for students to be partners in the assessment process?
-student needed to learn the lingo and process
-student needed to know why they were making the porfolio
-teacher needed to organise the room so that these big portfolio binders could be stored
-noticed the other students were largely engaged in their work
Can you (LR) now see what was missing in your plans the last two years?
-portfolios
-more explicit teaching about WHY we do what we do
-more explicit teaching about how to match indicators to evidence
-need to get students to be more active in assessment (need to know more of the HOW)
I like how Anne emphasised that you have to teach to the learning outcomes (and indicators). I know this is not the case in the division with all staff - it's all over the place. Mentioned how one district had a teacher who told a parent the reason why her kid did poorly was because of her crummy attitude and the parent looked up the outcomes on the NET and complained to a superintendent.
Criteria - definition of quality; what is quality in terms of this product and process. Eg how to work as a small group, show what you know ...
Rubric -
Poor: Rubristar accuracy, frequency, support Has lots of errors, doesn't point them to success
Does your rubric provide specific next steps (needs to add periods rather than no punctuation)
Criteria with samples is the highest level of your rubric
Don't use numbers in your rubric (notice the examples in her book)
Developmental continuum
starts at birth and continues to death
we excerpt the section that makes sense for our learners
-this is part of differentiating assessment because a Gr 2-3 increase is celebrated as well as a grade 9-10 increase (in the same class)
When you start to see disengagement, find out why?
-as soon as marks show up, disengagement sets in
5 year old and developmental continuum
-student identified the level she was at by referring to specific details (space in front of words, neatness of letters, amount of writing)
HS clip Democratic AP English Scoring AP essays (developmental continuum)
-they (like the 5 year old) are very specific in the reasons for why the essay was ranked the way it was (metaphor, off topic etc)
Find the baseline from the start (before/after portfolio)
Ensuring status for every single student!
-build an expert sheet (flesh out what the student is good at)
-Alberta Chem teacher who does 3 terms of just comments and last term of marking everything (gets highest Diploma exam scores for last 12 years)
Google subject area exemplars and you'll get examples
Making mistakes on purpose is actually a great skill
Visual models to let students see how it's done (role play, have one student read, other checklist)
Kindergarten Edmonton Catholic
-notice that they always go back and revisit criteria and practice it
-rubric right on/ not yet
Manitoba (40 minutes in Sept, 8 minutes in May) Elementary School Gr 5?
This is what I have to do, this is why I have to do it, This is how I have to do it
Students
self/peer/student feedback
set goals
select evidence
communicate their learning
Chapter 6
Last word strategy
Vicki mentions consistent and logical (very true) This planning is not easy
What product or process fits with co-constructing criteria? Is there time to do this for so many things
-I've used it for labs in my class, for the VSF, they were fixed criteria, but I made the weightings (should I let them decide the weightings?)
Grade 12 Vectors Manitoba
-Beginning of class students said good to go
-did some examples on whiteboards and found out it wasn't good to go
-focussed on explaining criteria and how to meet critieria
How can you make it as simple as possible.
Anne Davies.com
Starting points
-one class, one group of students, one unit?
-think first of co-constructing criteria
-do it for only one process (eg group work, cleanup time)
-videotape classroom entry and then showed this to them (grade 9) - they were shocked (don't give them cues, let them do silent processing)
-non-judgemental feedback is what works
-freeze, lets go back and look at the criteria for ... (when things are about to go bad)
Conferencing & Reporting (purple book page 41-42-43) and page 101
-summarised curr into 5 statements
The evidence doesn't have to be marked or graded, it has to be present (you have to have a portfolio)
Write down and example (not just check off a box) Be as specific as possible.
Parents:
Students e-mail parents
Students blogging and two questions for parents
Students show parents evidence of learning
Students share learning destination
All learners need to be able to articulate what they are to learn (before they can be ready to learn)
Give students an opportunity to give others a chance to see their work (not just parents)
Building culture
-involve students
-start from beginning
-use the lingo
-spend a lot a time
-have them use their language
How to Efficiently Create Quality Assessment
-plan
-significant role for students
-Check reliability and quality
2nd last activity, write a letter to yourself
Dear _____: To get better at _________, I plan to
1
2
One way I'll know its working is ....
Reflections
Reflect on your learning journey and the ideas that have been shared. What lessons do you want to carry forward into your work in this area? Record your thougts. Incorporate these ideas into your plans.
REFLECTIONAfter going home and browsing some stuff on
AnneDavies.com, I can only conclude that I've been a surface adopter of AFL (I'm the 8 out of 10 teachers
in this study who tried AFL and it didn't work). I had read about this in a different article early on in my AFL journey. I've tried some of the O'Connor stuff and co-constructing criteria, but what's missing is the COMPREHENSIVE plan. So, the task now is to be a full adopter and I think these 2 days have helped, but there's lots to do and I'll start with
this handout from her site (
School Year Plan which was also handed out at the workshop).
