And, isn't that the purpose and job of the instructor to support the academic performance of ALL students.

This makes sense to me. It is sort of like a coach of a basketball team (especially beginning basketball.) The reason there is a coach is because they have knowledge beyond what the player does and is necessary for the player to grow. I do know that players can learn from each other, but there are situations when the coach or instructor is the expert and students will learn best when evaluated by the instructor.

How do we as instructors help students to understand that revising or self-assessment is just a means towards improvement and not a step to be skipped or resisted?

I have struggled with the idea of adjusting instruction on the fly or overnight especially when there are 125 kids to adjust for. But, I did appreciate the ideas in the lessons of this week that talked about having a bank of activities, videos, etc. at my fingertips to use just at the right time.

Jim Knight recommends something similar to learning progressions, learning maps. I haven't utilized that strategy enough, but I think I will make it a goal to do so.

I would add that it actually needs to be a school culture for students to become involved in their learning, not just a class culture. I think the annotations to this article about most students do not act responsible for their own learning support this. For students to become partners, they need much practice and opportunities to do so in numerous classes in different formats and structures as described in the first four attributes of assessments. Plus, the affective attributes of a school as described in #5 . .. respect, transparency, appreciation of differences have to also be present for students to feel like partners. That is so hard to get a whole school to exhibit these qualities. But, I submit that one classroom cannot do it on their own.

Descriptive vs evaluative is another way to think about this. It is difficult to keep evaluate words from our feedback and from rubric descriptions but descriptive feedback is more beneficial than evaluative feedback for students learning.

I have always disliked the notion of adults thinking a test score will determine a child's future, and then impacting that future by giving that child the message that their test scores are who they are.

This is difficult but important work. In my experience teachers are not well trained in creating assessments that are aligned in this way. I have attended some trainings in this, and as an instructional coach, I try to support quality assessment creation by teachers. However, in the long run, I think that it is better if schools adopt materials that include assessments that are aligned to common core and are already vetted by organizations such as EdReports to be of high quality. It saves times, and the models from these materials actual teach the teachers along the way of how to create tests aligned to learning targets

It is important to awknowledge that online instruction is to be aligned with Iowa Core standards. That is a good reminder not to use technology for technology's sake, but for a greater purpose.

Because the learning theories are specifically mentioned in the standards, one should review or increase their knowledge of these theories. It seems like these theories could be information that is added to the Ollie online courses.