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Book Drum is the perfect companion to the books we love, bringing them to life with immersive pictures, videos, maps and music It has been a great tool for close reading in my AP Lit class. Love Bookdrum!

Handing Assessment Over to Students I have been giving a lot of thought about how to give my students more of a voice in their learning and in our classroom. Initially, I was focused on increasing their presence on our classroom blog through podcasts, videos, and blog posts. I even gave thought to asking my district IT to unblock Twitter so that we could create a class account (which I am still going to do). But never would assessment have crossed my mind. Fortunately, I took my thoughts to my PLN. Janine Campbell (@campbellartsoup) responded to my tweet about amplifying students' voices with rich insights and a couple articles that got the cerebral wheels turning. If you like what you read here, be sure to follow Janine on Twitter. Assessment for learning is a pedagogical golden nugget. No one ever said that the teacher had to do it alone. Why not give your students a voice in how they are assessed? It might tell you more about where they are at than assessing your class conventionally. Rubrics are my favorite way to assess student projects. I'm even pretty good at creating them. By doing so, I completely understand the assignment and learning outcomes for any given project. But do my students? Is there a way to better utilize rubrics as assessment of learning where students' voices are intensified. Yes! Allowing students to create the criteria for assessment does just that. It doesn't just serve the purpose of better summative assessment. Student-created rubrics also provides a medium for formative assessment as well. If my assignment is for students to analyze the effects of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln on post-war America, I will be able to formatively assess the class' understanding of the main points of this event by the criteria that they suggest this assignment should be graded on. I will know that I need to reteach aspects of this event in American history if students believe that including a description of John Wilkes Booth's escape from Ford's The

Not all learning is created equal. Sometimes the learning that we achieve and the success generated through our engagement with a learning opportunity is spectacular. At its very best, our learning unlocks fresh understandings for ourselves and sometimes even for others. What conditions allow for such spectacular learning, and how might we bring these conditions into our classrooms?