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Contents contributed and discussions participated by Wendy Arch

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Implementation in a Secondary Classroom (Articles) - 0 views

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shared by mpercy on 29 Feb 20 - No Cached
  • in each of the four major academic subjects, students are offered choice as a means to motivate them and to enable them to take charge, even in small ways, of their own education
    • Wendy Arch
      Wendy Arch on 29 Feb 20
       
      This is the ideal, but the logistics are insane. At a former district, the English department tried our own - very pared down - version of this. I like to believe it was a success. We scrapped all the old courses and created entirely new courses based on themes we thought would appeal to teenagers, divided them into 2 framework categories, divided all the 11-12 grade band standards between the courses, and let students choose. They had to take at least one course from each framework before the graduated, so we still covered all the standards. The curriculum and pacing were traditional, but we required at least one literature circle or free choice book per course. At least, in some small ways, students had ownership of their learning.
  • let go and allow the kids to experience the consequences of their choices. And maybe there’s a failure. Maybe a kid was trying to do a vodcast and he couldn’t get the video to work correctly on the computer. That’s a learning opportunity for that child. Because it was his choice, he’s going to try to figure out a way to make it work—sometimes with the help of a fellow student.”
    • Wendy Arch
      Wendy Arch on 29 Feb 20
       
      This 1000%! As a society, we are trained to fear failure, yet we learn most when we fail. Sometimes the difference between future success and failure is learning to cope with past failures in a healthy manner. We're going to keep failing in large and small ways our entire lives. The sooner we learn to cope with and learn from our failures in a healthy way, the better off we are as individuals and a society. The hardest part of this is justifying the "failure" to parents or administrators looking at numbers. As a parent and a teacher, I know how hard it is to tell a parent that their child has failed a course. As a parent, when my own children's teachers have communicated a failure on my children's part, it feels like I'M the one who failed. The same as a teacher, when a student fails my class, I feel like I failed them. Maybe we can relearn about failure and incorporate it into a healthier society for everyone.
  • I’m putting together a wiki where my students will have to respond a certain number of times a week to whatever they’ve read. I am going to give them a series of questions like I always do, but they don’t have to respond to those directly. The response will be very open. They can choose instead to respond to someone else’s views. Everybody will read each other’s responses. They’ll have to post a couple of responses—and post a couple of responses to responses— as part of the class.
    • Wendy Arch
      Wendy Arch on 29 Feb 20
       
      This seems like a great way to hear the voices that don't normally get heard. It also really connects with and promotes civil online discussion and discourse. THAT is something we desperately need!
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  • Another key piece in preparing personalized curriculum units and projects includes mandates, such as performance standards, standardized texts, and academy themes. If mandates are seen as “something we have to teach,” they become a discouraging burden on teachers. If they are seen as ways to inspire, inform, and lend coherence to planning, they can be seen as useful. Both vertical departmental discussions and horizontal grade-team discussions are useful in mapping and creatively incorporating mandates into curriculum designs.
    • Wendy Arch
      Wendy Arch on 29 Feb 20
       
      A phrase I hear a LOT is "If we aren't teaching what we're supposed to, then just tell us. Don't make us tie everything to standards I didn't write." Unfortunately it seems, that even as educators, we can't move out of the dislike of requirements. :-P. If WE as educated learners don't like mandates and requirements, why in the heck would we think students would? It always boggles my mind when teachers act like the very students they complain about the most.
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PLE Articles - 3 views

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shared by mpercy on 17 Feb 20 - No Cached
  • A PLE is the method students use to organize their self-directed online learning, including the tools they employ to gather information, conduct research, and present their findings.
    • Wendy Arch
      Wendy Arch on 23 Feb 20
       
      This makes a PLE sound more like an LMS or organizational tool - which I am in desperate need of! We assume students can work through a linear progression, but even adults struggle with that! I know I'm guilty of putting more emphasis and effort into WHAT students will learn rather than HOW they will learn or what the EXPERIENCE will be like.
  • facilitation of students’ “active role in the learning process” and teachers’ provision of the right balance between structured lessons and autonomy; let’s never forget it is an ongoing balancing act. 
    • Wendy Arch
      Wendy Arch on 23 Feb 20
       
      One thing I also do is forget that students have lives outside of my class. I set what I think is a reasonable amount of time for a task - but neglect to acknowledge that I'm basing that time estimate on my own abilities or on previous experiences in a face-to-face setting where students (and I) could get fairly immediate feedback on the learning (or lack thereof) occurring. While we have to balance between structured lesson and autonomy, we also have to balance between what can feasibly be done by students all alone versus students being actively guided in person.
  • Susan and I loved that students could organize their Netvibes portals in a way that made sense to them and that a page could contain a diverse range of information streams:  a webpage, an embedded document, a RSS feed, a database widget, the link tool that made a webpage “live” within the Netvibes page.  Not only could students organize information, but they could also publish content they were creating through tools like Google Docs and VoiceThread as well as original works, such as artwork and videos.
    • Wendy Arch
      Wendy Arch on 23 Feb 20
       
      Ideally, this sounds a lot like the WIki feature on many LMS. Our school uses PowerSchool, which offers a student Wiki option that allows students the same features. I can see Netvibes being a great alternative if a school doesn't yet have an LMS or uses a not fully featured LMS.
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  • What Are the Potential Issues With PLEs?
    • Wendy Arch
      Wendy Arch on 24 Feb 20
       
      An issue i don't see addressed directly below is the issue of students accessing or pulling inappropriate or inaccurate content. Maybe this falls under the "Not every student is ready for the responsibility" category. Depending on the age range, students could so easily get lost in "fake news" or general misinformation, so there would have to be appropriate media and tech literacy lessons provided.
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"Personalized" vs. "Personal" Learning - 2 views

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shared by Wendy Arch on 16 Feb 20 - No Cached
  • animates “competency-based progression,” “mastery learning,” and programs that tweak the “delivery of instruction.”
    • Wendy Arch
      Wendy Arch on 23 Feb 20
       
      Could this also be at the center of the difference between credit recovery online/personalized learning and more robust project-based/personalized learning? If a program's goal is to get students the bare minimum of credits for a basic diploma (ala GED), then this style might make sense. If we're thinking of a broader, system-wide approach, then this attitude it definitely at the heart of a lot of fears about the automatization of education.
  • Simpler strategies, such as having kids choose, read, and discuss real books from the library may be more effective
    • Wendy Arch
      Wendy Arch on 23 Feb 20
       
      This is what lives at the core of my department's belief in individual reading. Every Friday, students in English 9, English 10, English 11/12, and American Literature read a book of their choice. There are no assignments attached. This "simpler strategy" is based on Kelly Gallahger's work in Readicide.
  • By assigning the lecture at home, we’re still in charge of delivering the curriculum, just at a different time.
    • Wendy Arch
      Wendy Arch on 23 Feb 20
       
      THIS!!!! THIS 1000% times over! It takes twice if not three times as long to prepare a flipped lesson than a live lecture. This is a point most people don't want to talk about. We're still putting in the time and effort -- it just changes to outside of class time -- which puts the onus on us. Instead of completing the majority of my work during the school day, I'm completing the majority of it outside of school in the evenings and weekends.
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  • The assumption here is that curriculum can be broken into little pieces, that skills are acquired sequentially and can be assessed with discrete, contrived tests and reductive rubrics.
    • Wendy Arch
      Wendy Arch on 23 Feb 20
       
      Is this not what Standards Based/Referenced Grading believes? I am not at a SRG school, so I haven't gone through the process. My experience comes with a testing/data collection software our school is piloting called Performance Matters. All questions are tied to standards and wrapped up nicely-packaged in pretty color-coded data to allow teachers to quickly assess and regroup students based on ability or skill-demonstration. This sounds great - an easy to push students who already know the material and help students who don't - but it is testing actual growth or just test taking ability?
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Personalizing flipped engagement | SmartBrief - 1 views

www.smartbrief.com/...rsonalizing-flipped-engagement Read Later
shared by Wendy Arch on 20 Feb 20 - No Cached
  • "Personalized" learning is something that we do to kids; "personal" learning is something they do for themselves.
    • Wendy Arch
      Wendy Arch on 20 Feb 20
       
      This is a great way to look at/describe the differences to colleagues who haven't jumped on the blended/flipped/online learning journey. We hit this problem with Independent Reading. As English teachers, we view this time as "personalized" learning that prompts growth in reading as Kelly Gallagher describes in Readicide (https://www.stenhouse.com/content/readicide). We hope for personal learning, but the students frequently just see it as pointless down time since they would rather be on their phones.
  • If we can't engage our kids in ideas and explorations that require no technology, then we have surely lost our way.
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Hypothesis for Education - Hypothesis - 0 views

web.hypothes.is/education moodle_iowa ollie_iowa technology collaboration annotation
shared by Wendy Arch on 26 Sep 19 - No Cached
    • Wendy Arch
      Wendy Arch on 26 Sep 19
       
      This could be an alternative to Diigo. It offers the same idea of providing online collaborative annotation.
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Moovly l Online Video Editor and Video Maker for Business and Education - 0 views

www.moovly.com moodle_iowa ollie_iowa technology video
shared by Wendy Arch on 26 Sep 19 - No Cached
    • Wendy Arch
      Wendy Arch on 26 Sep 19
       
      This site works well for giving students options to create. They can add their own images, videos, and voiceovers or use the stock characters and images provided.
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ol101-f2019: Iowa Online Course Standards - 5 views

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shared by tboeckman on 18 Sep 19 - No Cached
  • The course structure has flexibility to accommodate multiple timelines
    • Wendy Arch
      Wendy Arch on 20 Sep 19
       
      Isn't this where different types of online education would come into play? Different course structures could allow for multiple timelines, but having no dedicated timeline for forum postings where participants are expected to interaction with one another just leads to frustration for all involved. Sometimes too much flexibility undermines rigor.
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ol101-f2019: Iowa Online Teaching Standards - 10 views

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shared by tboeckman on 10 Sep 19 - No Cached
  • Continuously uses data to evaluate the accuracy and effectiveness of instructional strategies
    • Wendy Arch
      Wendy Arch on 20 Sep 19
       
      As an English teacher, data isn't the first thing I think of, but the use of technology makes formative checks incredibly easier. GoogleForms and other quick check quizzes make sorting those who get it from those who almost do and those who are still out wandering the corn. My struggle is not in creating the data, but in having time to use it effectively. The turn around time needed to make the most efficacy of formative data is often so quick that I struggle to keep up.
  • Selects and uses technologies appropriate to the content that enhance learning
    • Wendy Arch
      Wendy Arch on 20 Sep 19
       
      I think sometimes, we jump onto a new technology because it's fun or interesting, regardless of whether or not it's effective. I know I have done this in the past. Just because something is new and great, it doesn't mean it's the best technology for every situation.
  • Understands student motivation and uses techniques to engage students (
    • Wendy Arch
      Wendy Arch on 20 Sep 19
       
      This is where the "gamification" of classrooms could come in. I have not experimented with this strategy as I have some qualms about embedding even further students' seemingly already ingrained desire to always be entertained, however, there is considerable research speaking in its favor. Johns Hopkins University studied and advocated the use of Gamification in education: https://ii.library.jhu.edu/2014/05/13/what-is-gamification-and-why-use-it-in-teaching/
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Article(s): Self- and Peer-Assessment Online - 0 views

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shared by rhoadsb_ on 14 Apr 19 - No Cached
  • it helps them control the classroom better by reinforcing their power and expertise,
    • Wendy Arch
      Wendy Arch on 19 Apr 19
       
      Or is it because it allows them to know whether or not students are getting the material? Yes, some teachers are power hungry and on constant power trips with grades, but if we aren't readily and regularly assessing and providing feedback, how do we know for ourselves whether or not students are learning?
  • Every time I did get a comment, no peer ever wrote more than three sentences. And why should they? Comments were anonymous so the hardest part of the evaluative obligation lacked adequate incentive and accountabilit
    • Wendy Arch
      Wendy Arch on 19 Apr 19
       
      Using different online tools such as Turnitin.com allows students to remain anonymous to peers but teachers can see who reviewed whom and what kind of feedback they left. This could provide more incentive to provide better quality feedback. If students know teachers will look back through what they wrote, then they might be more conscientious about it.
  • Students that fell into this group were physically and cognitively lazy, not contributing to the process as required. This phenomenon was referenced in several other research studies within the paper.
    • Wendy Arch
      Wendy Arch on 19 Apr 19
       
      This isn't just a feedback issue though -- this is a systemic issue throughout education. The "loafers and others" will do the bare minimum on any assignment, so to use that as a reason to not use peer feedback is a moot point.
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ollie-afe-2019: Article: Attributes from Effective Formative Assessment (CCSSO) - 0 views

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shared by rhoadsb_ on 10 Apr 19 - No Cached
  • is to provide evidence that is used by teachers
    • Wendy Arch
      Wendy Arch on 12 Apr 19
       
      depending on what I'm looking for, formative assessment can sometimes be more effective for just me. Often my students don't really know (or care) where they are in the grand scheme of things, but I need to know so I can determine our course.
  • a process rather than a particular kind of assessment.
    • Wendy Arch
      Wendy Arch on 12 Apr 19
       
      This is where it gets difficult for me sometimes. The recursive aspect is difficult when dealing with a common course that is supposed to stay on track with other sections led by other teachers. Having the ability to be flexible with instruction is essential, but when "aligned" with other teachers, that flexibility can be constrained.
  • A teacher needs to have modeled good feedback with students and talked about what acceptable and unacceptable comments look like in order to have created a safe learning environment.
    • Wendy Arch
      Wendy Arch on 14 Apr 19
       
      Modeling is, of course, always the most effective, but how do we move students beyond just copying the model? I find most of my upper level, grade-grubbing, high-achieving students will stop taking intellectual risks the more I model. They don't want to be "wrong" so they play it safe.
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ollie-afe-2019: Building a Better Mousetrap - 1 views

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shared by mschutjer on 31 Mar 19 - No Cached
  • a set of standards and/or directions for assessing student outcomes and guiding student learning
    • Wendy Arch
      Wendy Arch on 02 Apr 19
       
      I see the confusion stemming from a linguistic debate about whether "directions" refers to the task requirements (e.g. write a persuasive essay using 5 sources) or the assessment criteria (cites strong and thorough textual evidence). Many times students ask to see the "rubric" when they really just mean the specific task requirements.
  • “performance benchmarks” for the “behavioral objectives” appropriate to each year in the program. E
    • Wendy Arch
      Wendy Arch on 02 Apr 19
       
      I find this interesting that they are assessing "behavioral objectives." Much of what our discussions around grading versus assessing have focused on is the need to grade/assess the demonstrated learning and NOT the behavior which lead to the demonstrated learning.
  • study on student-generated rubrics, they tend to “think more deeply about their learning.”
    • Wendy Arch
      Wendy Arch on 02 Apr 19
       
      I tried having students create their own rubrics for an independent learning project. They were all high achieving seniors near the end of their secondary academic career. And across the board, NONE of them said they enjoyed the process, calling it one of the hardest parts of the project as a whole. ALL said it was very eye opening. Ironically, these high-achieving, point grubbing seniors found it MORE difficult to define for themselves what a "perfect" project would be, then to just rise to standards already set by someone else (me). Having to set the bar themselves made them far more nervous about meeting it than if I had set a goal for them to meet. It does make sense, however. By setting their own standards, they would potentially be letting themselves down if they did not rise to their own challenges. Whereas, if they did not fully meet the criteria on a teacher generated rubric, it did not necessarily reflect badly on themselves.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • writing a 1000 word essay that “cites x number of sources and supports its thesis with at least three arguments”
    • Wendy Arch
      Wendy Arch on 02 Apr 19
       
      See, these seem more like task requirements rather than assessable rubric criteria
  • Of course, a teacher could have the best of both worlds here, by designing a rubric on a PC that allows for the easy insertion of assignment specific traits.
    • Wendy Arch
      Wendy Arch on 02 Apr 19
       
      Is there anyone who DOESN'T do this?
  • A holistic rubric is more efficient and the best choice when criteria overlap and cannot be adequately separated; an analytical rubric, however, will yield more detailed information about student performance and, therefore, will provide the student with more specific feedback.
    • Wendy Arch
      Wendy Arch on 02 Apr 19
       
      Interestingly, until the 2019-2020 school year, the College Board and AP programs have always used holistic rubrics to score the written essay portions of the exams (at least the English Language and Literature exams). These were used because, especially for the third free-response question, students could choose to respond to any aspect of the passage they chose. With the third free-response question, students had a choice about what text to use to respond to a very vague thematic prompt. Holistic rubrics were necessary to meet the needs of all these different approaches. Beginning next year, during the 2019-2020 school year, the College Board and AP program are replacing all holistic rubrics with analytic ones to "more specific feedback on your Instructional Planning Reports about your students' performance." Interestingly, this feedback is not to the students - students never see their rubrics - but to the teachers so the teachers can adjust their teaching. https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/courses/ap-english-literature-and-composition/course/updates-2019-20
  • In addition to these basic directions, you should consider your purpose and audience.
    • Wendy Arch
      Wendy Arch on 02 Apr 19
       
      I mentioned this above, but the College Board and the AP program are changing their use of rubrics from holistic to analytic to provide TEACHERS with a better understanding of student performance and comprehension. It's interesting that the audience for these new rubrics will not be the students who are being assessed, but the teachers who taught them. Who is really being assessed here?
  • we need a meta-rubric to assess our rubric.
    • Wendy Arch
      Wendy Arch on 02 Apr 19
       
      While this makes complete sense and would be a great use of PLCs, my instinctual response was "Oh Geez. Yet another thing..."
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ollie-afe-2019: Educational Leadership: The Quest for Quality--article - 6 views

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shared by mschutjer on 25 Mar 19 - No Cached
  • f we don't begin with clear statements of the intended learning—clear and understandable to everyone, including students—we won't end up with sound assessments.
    • Wendy Arch
      Wendy Arch on 26 Mar 19
       
      While this seems like a straightforward idea, in reality, making a learning purpose clear and understandable to everyone - students included - can be difficult. Especially in English, the skill were teaching is not clear cut. CCSS Reading Literature 11-12.6 asks students to "Analyze a case in which grasping a point of view requires distinguishing what is directly stated in a text from what is really meant." However, there's no "right" answer to this skill. Student analysis of "what is really meant" could encompass a huge range of ideas. Crafting an assessment and teaching/learning opportunities that clearly delineate "proficient" analysis from "poor" analysis can't always be put into clear and understandable language. How can you quantify the qualitative?
  • t also helps them assign the appropriate balance of points in relation to the importance of each target as well as the number of items for each assessed target.
  • minimizing any bias that might distort estimates of student learning.
    • Wendy Arch
      Wendy Arch on 26 Mar 19
       
      This is where I know as an English teacher, I can get bogged down in the details. All of my writing assignments have an assessment category for "M.U.G.S." as we call them (mechanics, usage, grammar, spelling), but those aren't actively taught and retaught every unit. We just expect students to have a certain level of proficiency at this point. However, that isn't always the case. There are MANY students who have not internalized the "rules" of writing. Their mechanics (punctuation) seems haphazard, grammar atrocious, usage nonexistent, and spelling like they fell asleep on their keyboard. However, a complete lack of those skills might not prevent them from being able to distinguish "what is directly stated in a text from what is really meant." I have to be careful to not allow my internal bias against poor writing ability to distort an accurate estimate of a student's learning and demonstration of the skill.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Will the users of the results understand them and see the connection to learning?
    • Wendy Arch
      Wendy Arch on 26 Mar 19
       
      This is also where I struggle. Our department uses the online program Turnitin.com to give students feedback on written assessments and grade almost all work. This is partially to alleviate issues with plagiarism, but mostly because it gives students and teachers a one access point to communicate feedback. The program allows users to submit rubrics that students can see. We've started assessing rough draft using the final rubric so students can see where their work is in the rough draft stage so they know which paper criteria need work. They also can view my feedback on the paper that tells them how to fix what they need to fix. My frustration is when students aren't willing to go back and look at the feedback on the paper or rubric so they know what learning skills they still need to work on. How can we motivate them to look at the results, see the connections, and make the progress in learning?
  • From a formative point of view, decision makers at the classroom assessment level need evidence of where students are on the learning continuum toward each standard
    • Wendy Arch
      Wendy Arch on 26 Mar 19
       
      This is another area where I personally struggle. The time and flexibility needed to be truly responsive is astronomical. I currently teach 4 of the 10 sections of English 10 at Indianola High School. As a class cohort, we try to be within a day or two of each other in content delivery. However, if my students don't get a concept, it's difficult to take a day to reteach since that throws off my alignment with the other teachers. It also means that I would have would have different periods at different places. I'm hoping the flipped and blended learning opportunities will help with the time and organization issues I currently have. If I can break groups up into smaller cohorts based on skill, then use flipped/blended methods for each group, I can (hopefully) accomplish more within the time frame. It makes organization more complicated, but allows more flexibility.
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