Group items tagged

"Used mainly for Y7 personally, use the ticket throughout lessons so students can see and share improvement. Can use traffic light colours to also show progress."

Wiggins Advice, evaluation, grades-none of these provide the descriptive information that students need to reach their goals. What is true feedback-and how can it improve learning? Who would dispute the idea that feedback is a good thing? Both common sense and research make it clear: Formative assessment, consisting of lots of feedback and opportunities to use that feedback, enhances performance and achievement. Yet even John Hattie (2008), whose decades of research revealed that feedback was among the most powerful influences on achievement, acknowledges that he has "struggled to understand the concept" (p. 173). And many writings on the subject don't even attempt to define the term. To improve formative assessment practices among both teachers and assessment designers, we need to look more closely at just what feedback is-and isn't.

Effective Feedback - Grant Wiggins

This website discusses the standards of effective teacher leadership. It also outlines and defines the role of a teacher leader. Progressive perspective on the teaching profession and its potential future of differentiated pathways. 

This work was developed over a two-year period by the Vermont Superintendents Association to define a quality education - see the attachment at the bottom of the page. The work is a synthesis of Vermont progressive education thinking mapped to a contemporary design blueprint.  It is intended to inform educational leaders and other interested parties in how to move forward in the post NCLBA era.

A superb e-safety resource with separate sections for primary and secondary students to work through. Choose to sign in to save progress or use without signing in. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/ICT+%26+Web+Tools

Education, as with all aspects of culture, is greatly impacted by the forward progress of technology. Several blogs are maintained by well-known individuals in the field of education. These top 10 technology blogs address technological developments as these innovations relate to education.

Describes how Scootpad can be used for students to practice CCSS skills and teachers can keep track of student progress.

An excellent adaptive learning site that provides online tutoring, interactive tools, and challenges in a fun and engaging way. Students need to use "yoops" (a virtual currency) to progress through activities. This does eventually require students to pay their way through the course as free yoops become increasingly difficult to acquire.. which is the largest drawback.

Great progressive learning organization - join us!

Professional Development is a life-long  learning process that  involves different activities including individual progress, continuing education, inservice education, peer collaboration, study groups, and peer coaching or mentoring. The importance of professional development lays in the fact that it is closely related to the overall quality of education and students achievements. Teachers who stop learning and suffice themselves with the curriculum content soon turn into hard working students only a step above their actual students.

A Web 3.0 teaching tool for a wide variety of languages includes student progress achievements and pratice drills. The free trial is definately worth checking out with your students if you teach languages.

This document is based on an analysis that determined the sub-skills students need to achieve in each of the Foundational Skills (K-5) in the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). It contains five sections, each targeting one grade level in: Print Concepts, Phonological Awareness, Phonics and Word Recognition, and Fluency. It also includes instructional examples aligned to the sub-skills, giving teachers samples of activity types that facilitate acquisition of the sub-skills. Each chart includes up to three grade levels to inform instruction for students who are either struggling and need extra support or intervention, or for students performing above grade-level expectations and require enrichment, to allow a teacher to see which skills should have been mastered in the previous year and what students are preparing for in the upcoming years.

A teacher's rating depends on how much progress her students make on state tests in a year's time, and is known as the value-added score. Ms. Allanbrook, the principal, has another name for what's going on. She calls the scores the "invalid value-addeds."

"This year, my letter focuses on the catalytic role that measurement can play in reducing hunger, poverty, and disease. Setting goals and measuring progress are obviously not new ideas. But over the last year, I've really been struck by the impact this can have improving the lives of the poorest."

Interesting discussion of survey results regarding the impact of digital tools on writing. The question for me is: what is making the greater impact the digital tool or our progress in adapting our writing curriculum to match the current state of how language is presented to and consumed by our students?

"In the nearly two years since Google began testing its augmented-reality eyewear, public reaction has progressed from "that's amazing" to "those look stupid" to "if you wear them, you deserve to be physically assaulted." Google always said people would need some time to adjust to the concept of smart glasses, but this probably isn't the evolution the company had in mind. "

Taking Yourself Seriously: Processes of Research and Engagement is the working title of a book by Peter Taylor and Jeremy Szteiter that assembles the tools and processes from research and writing courses taught in the Graduate Program in Critical and Creative Thinking. The most up to date version of the book can be viewed at http://cct.wikispaces.umb.edu/TYS (and associated links, including a link to a full pdf of the book). "For your research and writing to progress well, your questions and ideas need to be in alignment with your aspirations, your ability to take or influence action, and your relationships with other people. Shorten these items to head, heart, hands, and human connections. Your efforts to bring these 4H's into alignment is what we mean when we invite you to take yourself seriously." Some comments from former students looking back on the influence of the research courses out of which this book has arisen: Jane, a healthcare professional and story-teller: I learned is to 'hold my ideas loosely', which means accepting my own idea as a valid one but always leaving the space open to take in the counterarguments. I learned to give myself permission to be circular and come back to previous steps or thoughts, and I actually became more comfortable doing so. I was able to get engaged in a project that I was able to actually use in work, which was extremely satisfying. The whole process encouraged me, and I felt very empowered as a change agent, which could be an exhilarating feeling.