More Gifts! John Gardner - International Delegate from UK

 We are so excited that registration for the Canadian Conference - Assessment for Learning: Canada in Conversation with The World begins today! 
I hope you can join us!

For each day of this month of gifts and gift giving, I am going to feature an International colleague who will be part of the Canadian conference in Fredericton, NB April 11 (eve) and April 12, 2014. John Gardner is a member of the UK team.

John Gardner: Assessment and Social Justice

John Gardner was a founding member of the Assessment Reform Group and helped prepare many of their amazing resources, which can be downloaded here. Currently he is a member of the United Kingdom team to the International Symposium and works in Scotland, Northern Ireland, and England. One of the links he provides on his delegate page takes us to a paper he co-authored focused on Assessment and Social Justice. It examines the role assessment plays within a social justice context.

Another International Delegate - Dany is from Canada

Dany Laveault: University of Ottawa

Dany Laveault was selected for the first International Conference on Assessment hosted by Rick Stiggins in 2001. Since that time he has represented the Canadian perspective on assessment for learning at every International gathering including the one to be held in Fredericton, NB in April 2014. He, along with Ann Sherman, have been instrumental in preparing the application for a SSHRC grant. When you visit his delegate page you will find out more about him, as well as accessing his report to EQAO in Ontario, in French, as well as download a report on Early Reading Strategy (2003) for which he is a panel member. You can also watch an interview about his work and find out a little more about one of the Canadian team delegates to the International Symposium.

Lisa Rodgers: New Zealand International Delegate

You might want to explore some amazing resources from New Zealand. Lisa Rodgers is a member of the New Zealand team - you can find out more about Lisa if you follow the link. She is on the Literacy and Numeracy Task Force.

New Zealand’s Ministry of Education has a fabulous websitewith many, many assessment resources. You might like to view some of the Reports on formative assessment or view Exemplarsfor several different subject areas. Each section includes a description of what the work shows, relevant curriculum links, the learning context, and ‘where to next.’ For example, for dance, if you explore Level 3 you will see a progression of development, clip 5 shows students as they practise the Te Tangi a te Manu pattern. There are also many other resources to support educational leaders. These interviews with educators give us insights into how New Zealand is responding to the challenges that face us all. One example is Louise Miller’s interview about pedagogical leadership in mathematics as a mentor-teacher. Lisa Rodgers is a member of New Zealand’s team to the International Symposium and will be a part of Assessment for Learning: Canada in Conversation With the World.

Tagboard: https://tagboard.com/AforLConversation/160953

Be Careful... Self-Regulation of Learning? Behavior?

I've been hearing a lot about self-regulation lately but the conversation seems to have taken a turn. I'm used to reading research focused on self-regulation of learning. Assessment - particularly assessment for learning - is an integral part of self-regulation.

But the conversation and the strategies I've been hearing about don't seem to be comprehensive enough. So today I went looking to find out what was going on. It was interesting to see that the self-regulation that is being talked about in some circles arises out of the world of teaching self-management of behavior. This is certainly important and I know there are vulnerable learners who benefit an immense amount from this work.

On the other hand, I think we need to be careful not to assume that self-managing behavior is enough for all our learners. We need to go further - we need to teach students, in a very deliberate fashion, how to self-monitor their way to success. That is what we do when we show students samples, engage in conversation about quality, and co-construct criteria for important products or processes - evidence of learning. When we mindfully build the language of assessment in this way, we teach students the language they need to self-monitor their learning. We also teach students what quality looks like so they can aspire and achieve success! This is self-regulation of learning and assessment for learning is the pathway that will get us there.

If self-regulation is of interest to you, you might want to read this seminal article by Pintrich and DeGroot (1990). If you are interested in the shift from focusing on behavior to focusing on learning strategies, you might want to read this classic piece by Lorrie Shepard. It is titled, The role of assessment in a learning culture.

Rethinking Assessment of Learning

Teachers are working hard to make sense of grading and reporting structures in order to better reflect what students know, do and say. They are rethinking assessment of learning to better communicate their informed professional judgment about what students have learned. There was a powerful research study done by the Assessment Reform Group called, Teachers Role in the Assessment of Learning (2007). You can download a copy here. You might also enjoy watching this 17-minuteweb conference clip with your professional learning community.

All my best,

Anne

 

PS You will need to sign in but please know your contact information will not be used unless you sign up for a newsletter and in that case it will ONLY be used to send you the newsletters.


 PPS I am having a wonderful time with friends and colleagues in Yellowknife, NWT this week. Here is an unfinished painting I am working on... gosh those Northern Lights are so incredible! I'm trying to figure out how to capture even part of their beauty with watercolours:-)

Five Steps to the BEST SCHOOL YEAR EVER!

It’s the end of August! And we are celebrating a new school year! Beginnings are so fabulous – such a time of hope and planning for success. In honour of this time we’ve prepared a series of blogs to support your planning for success using assessment in support of learning.

Step One: Getting Ready for the New School Year

Step Two:  Planning for Evaluation

Step Three: Planning to Collect Baseline Evidence ofLearning

Step Four: Planning to Collect Evidence of Learning

Step Five: Planning to have students working harder than you– so they can learn more

This month we also celebrate the anniversary of the launch of our free Members site. 

We have over 5900 members. We’ve been digging through all the things there are to READ and to VIEW and refreshing the collection. Our selections have been deliberately designed to support educators as they engage in professional learning whether as a high school teacher, a middle years teacher, an elementary teacher or a leader at the school or system level. If you are new to our members site  then you might be interested in knowing we ask you to sign in because we have video of students and teachers and we want to provide a safe, sharing environment. 

I hope this is the best year ever!

All my best,

Anne

PS In the next few weeks we will be announcing our brand new online conference line-up! We are very excited. Contact Laura if you want some advance planning information.

The Better Choice? On line Grading Programs or ??

Like a growing number of teachers, Erin M. has a classroom blog. Sandra Herbst connected me to Erin and I am so thankful. I love the way her students use Voki to create avatars. Their avatars can now be their safe presence on the blog. Parents and others can listen, read and view their children and the rest of the class. It is a incredibly powerful demonstration of learning. Then, combine this with a student-parent-teacher conference and a written report that communicates the teacher’s professional judgement with regard to the students progress and growth. What do you have? Parents who are incredibly informed regarding how well their students are doing in relation to curriculum expectations.

I have to wonder why systems feel they have to use online grading programs especially since the commercially available options do such a poor job of informing others. Go to Erin’s class’ blog and then look at the information available through any of the commercially available on-line grade books. Ask yourself, which does a better job of communicating the richness of learning? I’m not saying a class blog is sufficient; I’m saying it communicates a whole lot more than an online grade book. In Canada, given our complex learning outcomes, we deserve better than marks and grades that push us towards inappropriate evaluation practices in our classrooms and tell parents so little about what really matters.

On a final note, Erin’s blog contributes to the larger discourse about public education. I was reviewing the stats the other day for one of my blogs I realized that on any given day it has more than 5500 views. Think about that! Not only do educators have an opportunity to engage in this conversation, we are also providing a way for our students to engage and demonstrate the kind of learning they are engaged in classrooms.