Teachable Point of View
12/16/13
Leadership Series:
When teaching there is a balance of pacing of instructional strategies and formative assessment to inform the next steps instruction. The students must be the ones actively engaged in thinking, learning, and self-assessing their learning. In order for us to help teachers generate a stop doing list as that learning becomes the constant and the time becomes the variable. It is important to have teachers discuss and apply what they are learning through their assessment practices so that they can target their next instructional steps.
10/28 and 19/29
Leadership Series:
It’s important for our assessments to contain authentic, rigorous, and relevant tasks. We will need to set clear targets and be able to differentiate between strong and weak samples of work. This work needs to happen at the student level, the teacher level, and the admin level so we are doing the same work. Feedback will need to be specific, timely, and actionable. Learners must always be involved in the whole assessment process (data analysis, revision, goal setting, etc.) so they can move themselves along in their learning progressions. We must embed self-reflection into the process.
It’s important for us to articulate targets in learner friendly terms for every level of the organization. We’ll want to identify focused lessons to target improvement areas. As leaders we want to keep in mind that ‘less is more’ and really focus our goals. When we say ‘we’ we mean the entire organization from student ownership, to teacher, to administrator, and so on.
Teacher Workshop Series:
All assessments must have a purpose – related to the type of data/information we are trying to generate. Common assessments require team effort and they might not be exactly the same test, but they must assess the same targets at the same level of rigor and in the same way. Because it’s about collaboration, it requires trust. The work is about evaluating the learning – not evaluating the educator. Data must be in comparison to create information where we can find trends and anomalies. Data in isolation creates opinion. We must do the planning of the test/learning targets before we start teaching. Error analysis leads to strategic teaching. The work is about engaging the student, the ultimate consumer of the data. Simplicity is key and the process should still be student driven.
9/16 and 9/17
Leadership Series:
In a formative culture it is important to use assessment to promote efficacy and achievement and current practices don’t always accomplish that. We need to create a culture in which we use a common language around assessment that will ultimately be used to improve student learning, motivate students, and improve teaching. Assessment is not an initiative; rather, it is a lens through which both teachers and students can see where they are, where they are going, and where they need to be.
What gets monitored, gets done. We need a plan to look for and support the critical aspects of assessment literacy. As educational leaders, we need to be prepared with the right questions, prompts, and strategies to support moving in the right direction day by day, team by team, and moment by moment.
Teacher Workshop Series:
Classrooms need to be places where learners are working harder than the teachers. Learning is a social process and students need to be talking about what they are learning. Students and teachers need information that enables them to improve their learning. Mistake making is an inherent process while learning – it will happen for learners and teachers. We will need to grant ourselves gentleness in the journey. Averaging is antithetical to learning. We need to move toward mastery.
We need to reconceptual the process (and need) of homework. We want to teach students to be self-assessors. We need to ensure that we all understand our learning targets in order to do this work successfully. All stakeholders need to share the depth of understanding of our work. We should all be on the same page of homework as purposeful practice and not graded busy work.
Leadership Series:
When teaching there is a balance of pacing of instructional strategies and formative assessment to inform the next steps instruction. The students must be the ones actively engaged in thinking, learning, and self-assessing their learning. In order for us to help teachers generate a stop doing list as that learning becomes the constant and the time becomes the variable. It is important to have teachers discuss and apply what they are learning through their assessment practices so that they can target their next instructional steps.
10/28 and 19/29
Leadership Series:
It’s important for our assessments to contain authentic, rigorous, and relevant tasks. We will need to set clear targets and be able to differentiate between strong and weak samples of work. This work needs to happen at the student level, the teacher level, and the admin level so we are doing the same work. Feedback will need to be specific, timely, and actionable. Learners must always be involved in the whole assessment process (data analysis, revision, goal setting, etc.) so they can move themselves along in their learning progressions. We must embed self-reflection into the process.
It’s important for us to articulate targets in learner friendly terms for every level of the organization. We’ll want to identify focused lessons to target improvement areas. As leaders we want to keep in mind that ‘less is more’ and really focus our goals. When we say ‘we’ we mean the entire organization from student ownership, to teacher, to administrator, and so on.
Teacher Workshop Series:
All assessments must have a purpose – related to the type of data/information we are trying to generate. Common assessments require team effort and they might not be exactly the same test, but they must assess the same targets at the same level of rigor and in the same way. Because it’s about collaboration, it requires trust. The work is about evaluating the learning – not evaluating the educator. Data must be in comparison to create information where we can find trends and anomalies. Data in isolation creates opinion. We must do the planning of the test/learning targets before we start teaching. Error analysis leads to strategic teaching. The work is about engaging the student, the ultimate consumer of the data. Simplicity is key and the process should still be student driven.
9/16 and 9/17
Leadership Series:
In a formative culture it is important to use assessment to promote efficacy and achievement and current practices don’t always accomplish that. We need to create a culture in which we use a common language around assessment that will ultimately be used to improve student learning, motivate students, and improve teaching. Assessment is not an initiative; rather, it is a lens through which both teachers and students can see where they are, where they are going, and where they need to be.
What gets monitored, gets done. We need a plan to look for and support the critical aspects of assessment literacy. As educational leaders, we need to be prepared with the right questions, prompts, and strategies to support moving in the right direction day by day, team by team, and moment by moment.
Teacher Workshop Series:
Classrooms need to be places where learners are working harder than the teachers. Learning is a social process and students need to be talking about what they are learning. Students and teachers need information that enables them to improve their learning. Mistake making is an inherent process while learning – it will happen for learners and teachers. We will need to grant ourselves gentleness in the journey. Averaging is antithetical to learning. We need to move toward mastery.
We need to reconceptual the process (and need) of homework. We want to teach students to be self-assessors. We need to ensure that we all understand our learning targets in order to do this work successfully. All stakeholders need to share the depth of understanding of our work. We should all be on the same page of homework as purposeful practice and not graded busy work.