Technology isn’t a teaching substitute, but a valuable aid that introduces children to new ways of thinking and working.
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Your kindergartner and technology | GreatKids - 0 views
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Many states base their technology standards on the National Educational Technology Standards for Students. But because children aren’t tested on their use of technology, teachers are typically not held accountable for teaching them. That means technology use varies widely from classroom to classroom. Your kindergartner may have one or more computer workstations in the classroom, visit a computer lab once a week, or not use technology regularly at all.
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To get the maximum benefit from technology, the best classrooms incorporate technology into regular lessons that develop students’ higher order thinking skills, promote creativity, and facilitate academic learning.
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Math concepts taught in class such as shapes and patterns can be extended with the use of technology. Your child may use draw and paint software programs to do a counting activity or create a pattern. He may use a computer template the teacher has created to group objects by attributes, such as size, color, and shape. Or he may be asked to extend a pattern, deciding which object comes next. Berthiaume notes: “The class may make a counting book using digital photos, numbers, and words.”
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What you might see in a well-equipped classroom Educational software that reinforces reading and math skills Interactive story books on a computer One computer or more in the classroom with access to the Internet and a printer Large-screen display connected to a computer used by the teacher to demonstrate a technology lesson to the whole class (If none is available, the teacher may have smaller groups gather around the computer to introduce a lesson or technology skill.) An interactive whiteboard, which is an electronic writing surface that can capture writing electronically
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ollie1reppert: Iowa Online Teaching Standards - 0 views
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Creates a learning community that encourages collaboration and interaction, including student-teacher, student-student, and student-conten
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Has experienced online learning from the perspective of a student
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I have sat through too many inservices in which I thought "there is no way I could teach like this and expect my students to learn" or similar thoughts. Putting ourselves in our students' shoes can only help our effectiveness.
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It is good to get out of our comfort zone every now and again. This helps to find the areas that may be difficult for students in the future.
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Understands the differences between teaching online and teaching face-to-face
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This will be difficult for many teachers--making this change from face to face into online. This is why it took so long for people to accept classes taken online as being ok.
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I wholeheartedly agree. Our school is going 1:1 soon and I am quite nervous about it for this reason.
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I have taught a hybrid class-which is a combination of both face-to-face and online. That is the way I have dipped my foot into this environment.
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Designs the structure of the course and the presentation of the content to best enhance student learning,
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Is knowledgeable and has the ability to use computer programs required in online education
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I sometimes feel that I am learning on the go and tend to learn along with the students. The way that works best for me is to jump in and learn the computer programs, otherwise I find myself wishing I could do it.
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With technology, I think it is ok to learn with the students or let them learn the program. Teachers don't necessarily need to know all the ins and outs of all the technology!
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Has experienced online learning from the perspective of a student
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Assists students with technology used in the course (Varvel III.C)
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Selects and uses technologies appropriate to the content that enhance learning
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Provides substantive, timely, and constructive feedback to students
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I took an online course where the instructor left audio formative feedback in MP3 format. It was great. I got to hear the instructor's voice for the first time and heard the inflection in her voice. It made our connection much closer. I had her audio messages saved for quite some time (maybe still do!). I hope to use this feedback technique in my courses.
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Utilizes a course evaluation and student feedback data to improve the course
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Provides and communicates evidence of learning and course data to students and colleagues
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Communicates with students effectively and consistently (SREB D.1, ITS 1.g)
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• Creates a learning community that encourages collaboration and interaction, including student-teacher, student-student, and student-content (SREB D.2, Varvel VII.B, ITS 6.a)
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• Demonstrates growth in technology knowledge and skills in order to stay current with emerging technologies (SREB B.5)
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ollie1reppert: Iowa Online Course Standards - 0 views
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Sufficient learning resources and materials to increase student success are available to students
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Having an online presence really makes this possible because you can easily increase the resources and materials available to students. For instance, on my Google site, I have links to other resources where students can go for help if they do not understand a concept, such as the textbook site, writing skills sites, and study skills sites.
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Academic integrity and netiquette (Internet etiquette) expectations regarding lesson activities, discussions, e-mail communications and plagiarism are clearly stated • Privacy policies are clearly stated. • The self-introduction by the instructor is appropriate and available online, and students are likewise asked to introduce themselves to the class. (CP) • The course provider offers orientation training.
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All four of these are very important, but I have to say that my course currently lacks each of these. I'm wondering if since my course is partially online and partially in person if all of these are necessary to have in the online component, or if it counts as long as it is covered at one point, whether it be online or in person.
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This is an area that often gets overlooked. It is a skill just like any of the technical skills--knowing the online etiquette, etc.
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The course makes maximum appropriate use of online tools outside of the CMS (including email, web 2.0, chat, videoconferencing, and whiteboard) to enhance learning
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So many times, you see schools that have their teachers use a CMS like Moodle and that is the extent of their technology use--it is only one way to utilize. There are many ways to deeply integrate these types of tools in the classroom.
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I have really started to think this year how to connect with students using my Promethean board at school.
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The course instructions articulate or link to a clear description of the technical support offered.
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The course is easy and logical to navigate, including self-describing links
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Technologies are chosen that are accessible to students
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Specific and descriptive criteria, including rubrics, are provided for the evaluation of students’ work and participation
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A clear, complete course overview and syllabus are included in the course
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Ongoing and frequent assessments are conducted to verify each student’s readiness for the next lesson.
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The course content and assignments are of sufficient rigor, depth, and breadth to teach the standards being addressed
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clearly state what the participants will know or be able to do at the end of the course
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Course instructions answer basic questions related to research, writing, technology, etc., or link to tutorials or other resources that provide the information.
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The course provides opportunities for appropriate student interaction with the content to foster mastery and application of the material.
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The course provides opportunities for appropriate instructor-student and student-student interaction to foster mastery and application of the material and a plan for monitoring that interaction.
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The course instruction includes activities that engage students in active learning.
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Instructions make clear how to get started and where to find various course components.
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This is one reason I truly enjoy utilizing a moodle with in my classroom. It limits handouts and creates a great opportunity for me to provide very detailed instructions about assigments, activities or projects. When students are absent they can access this information in order to be prepared for the next class.
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The course provides opportunities for students to engage in higher-order thinking, critical-reasoning activities and thinking in increasingly complex ways.
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ollie4_1: Building a Better Mousetrap - 0 views
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If rubrics were designed and implemented correctly students and teacher could see where the thinking of the student was on target and where they went wrong.
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I think if the rubric is "good" (that is a hard word to use but pretend it fits well), then you can have students assess themselves and together with the teacher 4 or 5 times in the writing process on certain aspects of the rubric to help with the writing process. The piece I wish I would have implemented more (and can but a little tricky as the teacher librarian) was to have families assess with the student as well and to ask a family or 2 BEFORE beginning if they understand what the big assignment & rubric is about and to assess whether the rubric means what it should from their perspectives. If they don't get it, redo it!
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Rubrics are a great tool to build self-assessment skills in all subjects. Two years ago I led my department in an effort to create a self-assessment startegy that builds the abiltity of students to self-assess their learning in math class. Part of this was creating a rubric that measures their progress from 6 to 12 grade. Now we have to go back and refine the rubric, because it is defintiely not to the "good" stage yet.
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I think it is good for students to be involved. They see that teachers change as well and aren't always right about everything.
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Moreover, rubrics can help the student with self-assessment; what is most important here is not the final product the students produce, but the habits of mind practiced in the act of self-assessment. However, for the student to successfully use a rubric this way, the criteria must be made clear to them and the jargon used must not only be understandable to the student but also be linked specifically to classroom instruction.
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Moreover, some teachers have noticed how students who were good writers become wooden when writing under the influence of a rubric. Dona Patrick, an elementary school teacher noticed that while her sixth grade students did well on their state writing test, those students who had been natural writers, those students who had “stylistic voices full of humor and surprises, produced less interesting essays when they followed the rules [as outlined in a rubric]” (Mathews).
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I think that writing with a rubric only becomes "wooden" if teachers present the idea and implementation of rubrics as a formula rather than a "guideline or set of criteria" that have been noted in effective writing.
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I think that the inclusion of minmum numbers of references/usages is the leading cause of this. If you give a student a minimum, it becomes the target and all they care about. Just tell them you will look for something done well and you get better and more natural results.
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Something else that might help to keep students' writing from becoming "wooden" would be to have examples of great writing and discuss how those pieces meet the guidelines of the rubric. I think this shows studnets that they can continue to use their own style when writing - as long as they also pay attention to the expectations of the assignment
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Rubrics can be designed to measure either product or process or both; and, they can be designed with dimensions describing the different levels of that “deep learning” so valued in WAC programs.
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cross the board; meanwhile, the teacher that uses specific rubrics is always composing new descriptions of quality work, but their students have cle
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Consequentially, when rubrics are published in the classroom, students striving to achieve the descriptions at the higher end of the scale in effect guide their own learning. We must keep in mind, however, that other aspects of good pedagogical practice play into student success: rubrics that are outside of the students “zone of proximal development” are useless to the students.
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Usually a numerical value is assigned to each point on a scale. You can weight dimensions differently if you feel that one dimension is more important than another. There are two ways in which you can express this value judgment: 1. You may give a dimension more weight by multiplying the point by a number greater than one. For example, if you have four dimensions (content, organization, support, conventions) each rated on a six-point scale, and you wish to emphasis the importance of adequate support, you could multiply the support score by two. 2. You may devise scales of unequal length, which would mean that the shorter scales would count less than the longer ones. For example, organization, support, and content could each be rated on separate 6 point scales, while punctuation and / or spelling could be rated on separate 3 point scales. A paper that was well organized and punctuated would yield 6 for organization and 3 for punctuation. A paper that was perfectly punctuated but poorly organized might yield a 3-3 score.
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This paragraph about weighting certain parts of the rubric goes directly to what our group was discussing last week regarding our rubric we were creating. This is a kind of how-to.
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Yes, this explains how a multiplier can be used to show some criteria weighted. I would like to see examples of rubrics using weights.
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This is nice explanation of how to assign different weights. When we were discussing it lsat week, I think I was making the process more difficult in my own head! I would also like to see examples. I think that weighting dimensions of n ssignment differently can be very helpful in focusing on the most important aspects of an assignment.
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I agree that this weighting could help to fix one of the possible problems with rubrics. When you give the same points for various categories sometimes you are giving an easy way to get a grade without always doing the most important part of the learning.
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Or you can build your own rubric from scratch—convert existing revision or discovery heuristics into rubrics; convert comments that used to show up on A, B, C, D, and F papers into descriptive phrases, or start completely anew. The Chicago Public Schools web-site offers simple guidelines to follow when designing your own rubric. If you visit the web page I cut and pasted this from, you will find that each item is hyperlinked to a full explanation of the step.
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Clearly defining the purpose of assessment and what you want to assess is the first step in developing a quality rubric. The second step is deciding who your audience is going to be. If the rubric is primarily used for instruction and will be shared with your students, then it should be non-judgemental, free of educational jargon, and reflect the critical vocabulary that you use in your classroom.
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well-designed rubrics help instructors in all disciplines meaningfully assess the outcomes of the more complicated assignments that are the basis of the problem-solving, inquiry-based, student-centered pedagogy replacing the traditional lecture-based, teacher-centered approach in tertiary education.
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This is really where the Iowa/Common Core is taking us. How many teachers are going to be prepared with ways to measure how their students are progressing in problem solving before the students are being assessed with the new assessments? Since the new state assessments are supposed to emphasize these skills more, will more teachers need to use rubrics to meaure these skills rather than just thinking that rubrics are for judging the quality of writing or projects?
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they should articulate the vital features that they are looking for and make these features known to the student
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The result is many students struggle blindly, especially non-traditional, unsuccessful, or under-prepared students, who tend to miss many of the implied expectations of a college instructor, expectations that better prepared, traditional students readily internalize.
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This is true at all levels of education, not just high school. How often had you had a student who was struggling on an assessment and after having the expectations explained to them in a different way completed it easily?
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Absolutely, it is frustrating as a teacher for students to struggle with understanding an assignment and not perform well because of lack of understanding the directions and not the information. I find that in an online environment, this can be even more problematic. Directions and rubrics that I feel are clearly written, are easily misunderstood by others, and people who would have gleaned understanding from questions others asked in class, feel silly asking questions themselves.
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rubrics, in effect, dehumanize the act of writing. According to Thomas Newkirk, an English professor at the University of New Hampshire, “rubrics promote ‘mechanical instruction in writing’ that bypasses ‘the human act of composing and the human gesture of response’” (Mathews).
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if we have assigned ourselves the task of getting a good rubric to use, we need a rubric to judge our performance—that is, we need a meta-rubric to assess our rubric.
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When instructors do not explicitly delineate the qualities of thought that they are looking for while grading, they reduce learning to a hit or miss endeavor, where “assessment remains an isolated […] activity and the success of the learner is mostly incidental” (Montgomery).
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When instructors do not explicitly delineate the qualities of thought that they are looking for while grading, they reduce learning to a hit or miss endeavor, where “assessment remains an isolated […] activity and the success of the learner is mostly incidental” (Montgomery).
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When instructors do not explicitly delineate the qualities of thought that they are looking for while grading, they reduce learning to a hit or miss endeavor, where “assessment remains an isolated […] activity and the success of the learner is mostly incidental” (Montgomery). T
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Moreover, some teachers have noticed how students who were good writers become wooden when writing under the influence of a rubric.
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A rubric with two or more separate scales is called an analytical rubric, as it takes apart or breaks up the rating system for each trait; a rubric that uses only a single scale is called a holistic rubric. 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.
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A rubric with two or more separate scales is called an analytical rubric, as it takes apart or breaks up the rating system for each trait; a rubric that uses only a single scale is called a holistic rubric. 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.
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The issue of weighting may be another area in which you can enlist the help of students. At the beginning of the process, you could ask a student to select to select which aspect she values the most in her writing and weight that aspect when you assess her paper.
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I kept this private: oops: I am always amazed how students self-assess themselves. I was a language arts teachers and did a lot of writing. When I ask students today or in the past, how they think they did, I was floored how some of the writings/projects I thought were great, assessed themselves negatively, and the ones I thought needed more work, gave/give themselves exceeds. It takes a lot of good modeling and scaffolding for students to fairly assess themselves. For the ones that big time missed the assignment goals and self-assess themselves well, it really goes back to the teacher going back and reteaching again to help improve learning.
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Oops- I kept this private. How many teachers did I have that graded in red? I remember many especially in math and writing all over writing assignments. I used to think that the assignment was complete, it was time to move on, and I just had to accept what they said. Rubrics do give the student a voice when they self assess. I find it interesting it is rooted in the word red or reddish.
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While many educators make a compelling argument for sharing rubrics with students, others worry that doing so will encourage formulaic writing. That “rubric” is listed in most thesauruses as a synonym for “formula” does nothing to dismantle such fears. Well-designed rubrics, though, should not do this; unfortunately, most state issued rubrics used in secondary school standardized testing are poorly designed rubrics that list specific static elements encouraging students to simply make sure their essays have those features.
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The english teachers who attend Iowa Writing Project professional development are discouraged from using rubrics because of formulaic writing in students. These teachers are encouraged to only score a couple of criteria on each assignment instead of trying to "fix" all of the writing and discouraging students.
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I tok the Eastern Iowa Writing Project 8 years ago. Even when I taught, I told the kids, that I would give anything to not have to give them an actual grade. I followed the ideas and allowed them to write whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted. I saw huge growth in their writing, but I know I did poorly "grading" them. I told them over and over to focus on writing process, trying to improve themselves, and comments I gave to help them improve.
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This is my biggest concern with rubrics. I am glad to see it articulated because I have been a little reluctant to share this because rubrics are so popular lately that it seems like I am being negative if I don't care for them. In my highest level projects, I expect students to "wow" me to get an A. It is hard to do that if you are simply following a formula.
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Yes, rubrics can limit creativity. We re-learned this with our Ollie group rubric assignment this week with the powerpoint and audio files that did not match the "written" rubric my group designed.
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To begin with, rubrics can be either “general” or “specific.”
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I was in a class today sponsored by Intel. We discussed Habits of the Mind and how powerful it is for kids to self-assess their work & their learning.
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This makes assessing sound like a game between teachers and students. Kids are lucky if they guess what teachers are assessing.
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Do kids become so engaged in meeting the requirements of the rubric that they aren't as fluent in their writing?
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I wasn't aware that rubrics were grouped into holistic and analytic. After reading the descriptions, I'm not sure that I've ever used a holistic rubric.
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I usually get the best feedback from kids about various rubrics that I use. It helps me tweak it for the next time.
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Articles: Delivery - 1 views
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always remain gracious even with the most challenging of audiences
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30 minutes for your talk, finish in 25 minutes
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be passionate about your topic and let that enthusiasm come out
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First impressions are powerful
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A handheld remote will allow you to move away from the podium.
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press the “B” key while your PowerPoint or Keynote slide is showing, the screen will go blank
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Neither did I. I just witnessed this in our beginning of the year inservice and had no idea how the presenter was doing it. It kept the audience from reading the next slide or from dissecting the current slide. It was so fluid when she stopped to address questions not directly from the slides.
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This was new to me, too. Never even considered it, but many of the remotes even have a special button for blanking the screen!
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the temptation is to turn the lights off so that the slides look better. But go for a compromise between a bright screen image and ambient room lighting.
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be gracious and thank them for their input
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The first 2-3 minutes of the presentation are the most important.
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Turning the lights off
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Anticipating resistance forces you to really think about the people you’re presenting to, and that makes it easier to influence them
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break it into 10-minute chunks.
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The biggest item that separates mediocre presenters from world class ones is the ability to connect with an audience in an honest and exciting way.
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Removing physical barriers between you and the audience will help you build rapport and make a connection.
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courteously deal with such individuals.
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you’re not the star of the show. The audience is. It’s in their power to embrace — or reject — your ideas. You’re presenting because you need them to change their beliefs or behavior in some way, and people find it hard to change. So expect them to resist.
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the most engaging speakers have a simple secret weapon: "They practice much more than the average presenter."
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the Interlink remote as well
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ollie_4-fall14: Building a Better Mousetrap - 4 views
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rubric that tells students, as a typical example, that they will get an A for writing a 1000 word essay that “cites x number of sources and supports its thesis with at least three arguments” will lead students to perceive writing as a kind of “paint-by-number” endeavor (Mathews).
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ubric that tells students, as a typical example, that they will get an A for writing a 1000 word essay that “cites x number of sources and supports its thesis with at least three arguments” will lead students to perceive writing as a kind of “paint-by-number” endeavor (Mathews).
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ubric that tells students, as a typical example, that they will get an A for writing a 1000 word essay that “cites x number of sources and supports its thesis with at least three arguments” will lead students to perceive writing as a kind of “paint-by-number” endeavor (Mathews).
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es, I have seen this with my reflection logs in my classes. When we use quantity rather than quality indicators, we do seem to get minimum responses. I plan to respond to the logs frequently to encourage teachers to use them for self-reflection. That was not possible working face to face.
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My students reported not knowing what was being assesed was their biggest asssessment fear. Actual models and discussion about criteria is absolutely necessary.
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Barbara Moskal, in her article “Scoring Rubrics: What, When, and How?” insists that rubrics should be non-judgmental: “Each score category should be defined using description of the work rather than judgments about the work.” For example, “sentence structure follows current conventions” would be better than “sentence structure is good.”
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I believe some qualities must be defined using qualitative terminalogy. This is where student input and comparison of models of high and low quality criteira would help students define or picture the quality indicators that are "judgemental". Scampie1
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I agree. After being given a number I feel like they don't have a qualification equivalent. When I took a course much like this at Iowa State, our professor had a rubric based on the quality of the post, not how many. It was nice to be given credit for content instead of word count. It goes back to the days when we were forced to write 10 pages on pandas with at least 10 sources with only one of those being the WWW (which is how it was stated). I also don't like having such a high quantity because with so many students in the course it becomes overwhelming to read each one, let alone provide a meaningful comment or reflection. There isn't much text that left to highlight, back to "less is more".
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Indeed, since rubrics allow for widespread assessment of higher-level thinking skills, performance-based assessment is replacing or complementing more traditional modes of testing; this in turn means that teachers are changing their instructional modes to prepare their students for these tests. Kenneth Volger, in his study, “The Impact of High-Stakes, State-Mandated Student Performance Assessment on Teacher’s Instructional Practices,” analyzes the survey responses of 257 10th grade English, math, and science teachers and concludes that, since the implementation of such tests in public schools, there has been “notable increases in the use of open-response questions, creative/critical thinking questions, problem-solving activities, […] writing assignments, and inquiry/investigation.”
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Indeed, since rubrics allow for widespread assessment of higher-level thinking skills, performance-based assessment is replacing or complementing more traditional modes of testing; this in turn means that teachers are changing their instructional modes to prepare their students for these tests. Kenneth Volger, in his study, “The Impact of High-Stakes, State-Mandated Student Performance Assessment on Teacher’s Instructional Practices,” analyzes the survey responses of 257 10th grade English, math, and science teachers and concludes that, since the implementation of such tests in public schools, there has been “notable increases in the use of open-response questions, creative/critical thinking questions, problem-solving activities, […] writing assignments, and inquiry/investigation.”
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Indeed, since rubrics allow for widespread assessment of higher-level thinking skills, performance-based assessment is replacing or complementing more traditional modes of testing; this in turn means that teachers are changing their instructional modes to prepare their students for these tests. Kenneth Volger, in his study, “The Impact of High-Stakes, State-Mandated Student Performance Assessment on Teacher’s Instructional Practices,” analyzes the survey responses of 257 10th grade English, math, and science teachers and concludes that, since the implementation of such tests in public schools, there has been “notable increases in the use of open-response questions, creative/critical thinking questions, problem-solving activities, […] writing assignments, and inquiry/investigation.”
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A high school math teacher I know tried to add writing in math as part of the Writing Across Curriculum program. Instead of using appropriate prompts for technical writing in mathematics, the rubric forced her to use themes and literacy criteria. Writing did improve in her school on state assessments but she didn't feel math scores were affected.
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Hopefully the students that took the math course that added writing were in a better position to be successful later in life by gaining more writing instruction overall, even if the math scores weren't impacted in the short term.
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The instructor’s comments on papers and tests are done after rather than before the writing, so they cannot serve as guidelines, compromising the value of writing comments at all
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This is key. The students must get the rubric before turning in their work to get the maximum value from it. Additionally, I have found that if students practice assessing samples using the rubric prior to turning in their own they understand the goal more fully.
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Deb, I think you are right having the students complete an exercise where they can study and grade samples prior to turning in their own work can be a very powerful tool in helping students reach mastery of a task.
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Perhaps the greatest potential value of classroom assessment is realized when we open the assessment process up and welcome students into that process as full partners” (qtd. in Skillings and Ferrell).
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This sounds great, but I can't imagine how long it would take for students to help create assessments. I taught 3rd and 4th graders, and I don't think I'd truly try this. Sounds great in theory, but I'm skeptical.
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Deb, I'm with you on this one. I would be very interested to see how an instructor set up a lesson to allow for student collaboration in developing a quality rubric. I'm not saying that it can't be done but it could be a very cumbersome task. I'm trying to imagine doing it with my 30+ sophomores in a World History class.
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I am also in agreement with the both of you. I have thought about doing this with my students after I do a demonstration. Asking the students what the learning targets should be. I am sure that some of them could do this with ease and it might allow them to take more ownership in their learning, but there just isn't enough time for this. It might be better for a small claass
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I once gave extra credit to a student who realized that without providing a shred of meaningful content she could meet all the requirements of a state writing rubric he posted in his classroom. As required she used the word “persuade” and two synonyms, composed a clear topic sentence and closing sentence, and made no spelling or grammatical errors. But she did it without saying anything coherent.
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That's a scary thought, although I have to say I've felt that kids met the letter of the rubric but missed the intent. Writing a good rubric is challenging. I have to honestly say that I've never truly felt like I nailed what I wanted with a rubric. However, I've had good luck with rubrics when kids used them to score samples. Then they understood the intent or goal of the rubric.
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I agree that "writing a good rubric is challenging". This is an area that will continue to be a work in progress as I continure to work towards a clearer message being shared.
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I thought this was interesting and scary too. A student could meet all the requirements and not really say anything.
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mitagate both teacher bias and the perception of teacher bias (
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I'm not sure I'd agree with this. I think rubrics are subjective by their very nature.
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My thought is that having a rubric generally makes for less subjectivity than not having a rubric.....though subjectivity can be present either way.
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I agree with Joyce. Unless a teacher is using rubrics at inappropriate places, she is usually measuring something that is subjective. The rubric helps put it in a more objective manner, allowing for more consistency between different assessors.
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extremely short scales make it difficult to identify small differences between students.
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Analytical or holistic
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Look at some actual examples of student work to see if you have omitted any important dimensions.
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So true - how many times have I created a rubric that I thought was good - that is until I looked at what I got from students and realized I missed something that should have been included in the rubric. 2nd iterations are usually better.
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I've done exactly the same and omitted a key point that should have been included. I agree with the second iterations being better.
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we need a meta-rubric to assess our rubric
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Moreover, rubrics can help the student with self-assessment; what is most important here is not the final product the students produce, but the habits of mind practiced in the act of self-assessment.
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When students receive the rubric for assessment prior to beginning their work this eliminates excuses a teacher may hear as everything is clearly stated and noted. A rubric serves as an excellent way for students to self assess their work and determining whether the goals have been achieved and at what level.
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Agree, showing students the rubric first allows them to know what to aim for, what standards are critical for a particular assignment, and gives students a goal.
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he criteria must be made clear to them
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When developing a rubric one must remember to clearly state what makes the final product exemplary, proficient and may need additional work. Students can then evaluate or self assess at a more accurate level.
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Sometimes as educators we can use a lot of jargon. We need to remember to keep it student focused if we are going to give the rubric to the students. It doesn't do the student any good if they don't know the meaning of the different criteria.
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“think more deeply about their learning.”
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When possible I believe we need to include students in the assessment process. This gives them a voice and buy-in to their learning.
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I can sure see how involving children in creating the rubric would require them to think more deeply. I wonder if students would suggest a harder or easier assignment than the teacher would. Sometimes just giving opportunity for input brings on motivation.
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well-designed rubrics help instructors in all disciplines meaningfully assess the outcomes of the more complicated assignments that are the basis of the problem-solving, inquiry-based, student-centered pedagogy replacing the traditional lecture-based, teacher-centered approach in tertiary education.
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This quote seems to answer the basic question of why we should worry about designing rubrics? It is one tool in assessing assignments that have the potential to be more meaningful for our students (problem-solving, inquiry-based, student-centered).
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Additionally, with these types of assignments without a rubric there is the possibility for subjective judgements. A quality rubric will remove the subjective aspect to grading.
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I think once we understand rubrics and why we use them we can better decide when and how to use them.
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along with supporting models of work
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A quality rubric is good for students but a quality rubric as well as supporting models or samples of student work can be much more powerful in helping students see what is actually expected from them. This is an aspect that I feel I could do a much better job of in my own instruction.
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I completely agree! As a primary teacher, I found models to be very powerful in giving students a visual of what different levels of quality work would "look like." Depending on the task, I would either post different levels of quality work and have them identify the criteria that matches each level or I would have them help me create models of what each quality level would look like. I fully recognize that this process is much easier in the primary grades where the tasks are often much smaller. However, I did find students were much more reflective on their work when we went through this process.
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from students is not only unfair and makes self-assessment more difficult,
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Moreover, some teachers have noticed how students who were good writers become wooden when writing under the influence of a rubric.
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It seems that some of these anecdotes show that the rubrics being used are missing categories to assess all the needed categories. The first example is missing a component on being cohesive and this one is missing the creative component. I have done this in the past, given a rubric and then realized it is missing something critical. This is why rubric building takes so much time.
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rubrics, in effect, dehumanize the act of writing.
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With writing assignments is it not best that students just write from their heart first, then see if anything needs to be tweeked to fit the rubric requirements? Teachers can encourage this, but once the rubric is there it does make it hard....especially for younger children. This article brings up many valid points.
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build your own rubric from scratch
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I'd probably take the build-it-from-scratch option. Sometimes it easier to come up with your own ideas than change somebody else's and you can then be more creative.
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I agree. It is fine to build one or two at the beginning, but then I find myself cannibalizing them to fit for an assignment. But, this builds consistency for the students as they can see what I am looking for and know that I have looked for that in prior assignments.
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“Meaningfully” here means both consistently and accurately
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When working on my second grade team we often spent time trying to calibrate the consistency and accuracy of our rubrics. On district wide assessments we would determine the assessments and rubric and each score separately. We would continue to do this and refine. It was always very eye opening to see how different we would score the same writings. The process was very important to the refining of the rubric to the point where it was able to be used consistently and accurately with similar results from all in the group. It sounds like we will be doing a similar project this week for our course.
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When I taught 2nd grade, our team did a similar process. I do believe that calibrating is a very important component to rubrics. Rubrics alone certainly do not guarantee that every member of a team will score a piece of writing the exact same way.
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It is interesting you both had this on a 2nd grade team. I have never done this, other than when I was a principal and I led inservice to do it. I wonder if any secondary teachers have experience calibrating.
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I struggle as a consultant to get the instructors to be sure when using a rubric, that they use quantifyable descriptors that have a quality spelled out specifically. It is either present, or not, or measured someway in between.
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Calibration is so important when you look at it from a district level view. When we have students moving from school to school or not even moving, but comparing data from schools, if rubrics haven't been calibrated or pieces commonly scored, the data really doesn't tell you what you may think it does.
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if they are shared with students prior to the completion of any given assignment.
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In my teaching experience, I found that many teachers skipped the process of sharing the rubrics with students. I felt that this was a huge missed opportunity with the children in our classroom. However, thoughtout my teaching career this became more of a focus in our district and it was amazing to see the transformation in student ownership of work when they had the criteria as defined in the rubric shared with them prior to their work.
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If we aren't sharing the rubrics with the students, they really can't take that ownership because they are guessing at what the teacher wants from them.
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others worry that doing so will encourage formulaic writing
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This is an interesting point, and one that I had never really thought about. I can say that in my 7 years in the 2nd and 3rd grade level classrooms that I did not find this to be much of a problem. However, I can see how some secondary level rubrics could put more of an emphasis on number of words, spacing, requirements for number of arguments, etc. could lead to more of a formulaic style of writing.
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I can say this is a big issue in writing, especially "writing across the curriculum", where it is assigned by non-language arts teacher.
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Feedback
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Our team of teachers in both 2nd and 3rd grade found great benefit from conversations with students about the rubrics we were using. It became easy to see how certain words of phrases in our rubrics were unclear to students, and how simple changes could make them more applicable and meaningful for our students. I think the feedback process is vital in creating a quality rubric for students.
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As both institutional enrollment needs and social pressures for access raise the need of remediation (Soliday), rubrics become increasingly important to student success. Gisselle O. Martin-Kneep, in “Standards, Feedback, and Diversified Assessment: Addressing Equity Issues at the Classroom Level,” reports that extensive use of rubrics can help minimize students’ educational disparities and bring fairness into assessment on numerous levels:
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imilarly, Heidi Andrade, in her study, “The Effects of Rubrics on Learning to Write,” has found that, while rubrics increased her students’ knowledge of the grading criteria and helped most of her students (especially the young male students) do well on the state writing test, many of the young female students, who had been more expressive in previous writing assignments, wrote poorly when writing, as we might say, to the rubric.
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Very interesting points about the negative side of rubrics for students who may be gifted in the area of writing. Because my career has focused on students who are struggling, it makes me aware of how "one size does not fit all." I guess the gifted student writer has to learn how to pass the State Assessment and then encouraged and mentored to grow in their gift of writing....interesting.
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I thought this was very interesting too. Rubrics may stifle creativity especially when we want students to be creative thinkers and writers.
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I thought this made interesting points as we are working so hard to create rubrics, we have to also think about those students whose work could be so much more but they are fitting into the constraints of the rubric.
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Steps in developing a scoring rubric
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How well is the rubric tied to instruction? That is, does the rubric use the same critical vocabulary used in our instruction?
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i appreciate the author stating that another criteria is that the rubric is tied to instruction and uses the same critical vocabulary. High stakes state testing is here. But, I prefer to put my energy into increasing student learning so that all students can feel successful in school.....closing the achievement gap.....and not just measured by state tests.
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This is a very valid point here- I find that when working with special education students, they tend to struggle when different vocabulary and/or sets of presentation materials are used in assessment.
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rubrics can be either “general” or “specific
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Pilot test your rubric or checklist on actual samples of student work
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I like the idea of a pilot test. This could be done during a students first draft and would give the teacher an opportunity to make revisions prior to the final being assessed.
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This could be another place where student involvement in developing the rubric could come into play. Having the students use a rubric to assess their own work but at the same time assessing the rubric to see if it could be more detailed or written in more student friendly language.
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The issue of weighting may be another area in which you can enlist the help of students. At the beginning of the process, you could ask a student to select to select which aspect she values the most in her writing and weight that aspect when you assess her paper.
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When instructors plan on grading student thinking and not just student knowledge, they should articulate the vital features that they are looking for and make these features known to the student.
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It certainly only seems logical to share rubrics with students when assignments are given, but I know this isn't always practiced. It shouldn't be a secret what features will be graded. Rubrics provide students with a clear vision of what is expected of them and helps guide their work.
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This does defeat the purpose, doesn't it? Go to all that work to set expectations, and then not give students those expectations.
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When I was teaching, I used rubrics as part of my instruction. When clear expectations are set for students, they know what to aim for- and performance is usually higher.
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understandable to the student but also be linked specifically to classroom instruction
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In the primary grades, I think it can be a challenge to find "understandable" language. I do believe that incorporating the language from the rubric into classroom instruction will help bridge the gap between being student friendly and also specific enough for adults to grade accurately.
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In the high school setting, I find that giving the students the rubric that I am going to use to grade them, when I give them the assignment, allows for transparency (I'm not playing "Gotcha") and allows for the students to ask specifically what I am looking for, which then allows them to gear their work to what I am looking for as opposed to just hoping that they got it correct.
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The argument against using rubrics
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First, you must decide whether you need a rubric. Consider what the purpose of assessment is.
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The second step is deciding who your audience is going to be. If the rubric is primarily used for instruction and will be shared with your students, then it should be non-judgemental, free of educational jargon, and reflect the critical vocabulary that you use in your classroom.
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While longer scales make it harder to get agreement among scorers (inter-rater reliability),
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Both types of rubrics benefit the teacher and the student in varying degrees: the teacher who relies on a general rubric does not have to develop a new one for each assignment and the student grows to understand fundamental standards in writing—like form and coherence—exist across the board; meanwhile, the teacher that uses specific rubrics is always composing new descriptions of quality work, but their students have clearer directions for each assignment. 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.
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assess outcomes in learning situations that require critical thinking and are multidimensional.
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“on what students have actually learned rather than what they have been taught,”
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contends that we ought to illicit student input when constructing rubrics:
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According to Thomas Newkirk, an English professor at the University of New Hampshire, “rubrics promote ‘mechanical instruction in writing’ that bypasses ‘the human act of composing and the human gesture of response’” (Mathews). This overly scientific view of writing, Newkirk and others argue, stunts the learning process. Moreover, Judith Halden-Sullivan sees a disconnect between the learning goals of Writing Across the Curriculum programs and the rubrics often designed to assess that learning. Assessment of this sort seems at odds with such concepts as “deep learning,” which implies a kind of learning that is beyond measurement, an elusive hard to describe enlightenment, but identifiable in the same way good art is: teachers know deep learning when they see it. Rubrics, Halden-Sullivan contends, reduce “deep learning” to “checksheets.”
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According to Thomas Newkirk, an English professor at the University of New Hampshire, “rubrics promote ‘mechanical instruction in writing’ that bypasses ‘the human act of composing and the human gesture of response’” (Mathews). This overly scientific view of writing, Newkirk and others argue, stunts the learning process. Moreover, Judith Halden-Sullivan sees a disconnect between the learning goals of Writing Across the Curriculum programs and the rubrics often designed to assess that learning. Assessment of this sort seems at odds with such concepts as “deep learning,” which implies a kind of learning that is beyond measurement, an elusive hard to describe enlightenment, but identifiable in the same way good art is: teachers know deep learning when they see it. Rubrics, Halden-Sullivan contends, reduce “deep learning” to “checksheets.”
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According to Thomas Newkirk, an English professor at the University of New Hampshire, “rubrics promote ‘mechanical instruction in writing’ that bypasses ‘the human act of composing and the human gesture of response’” (Mathews). This overly scientific view of writing, Newkirk and others argue, stunts the learning process. Moreover, Judith Halden-Sullivan sees a disconnect between the learning goals of Writing Across the Curriculum programs and the rubrics often designed to assess that learning. Assessment of this sort seems at odds with such concepts as “deep learning,” which implies a kind of learning that is beyond measurement, an elusive hard to describe enlightenment, but identifiable in the same way good art is: teachers know deep learning when they see it. Rubrics, Halden-Sullivan contends, reduce “deep learning” to “checksheets.”
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, “rubrics promote ‘mechanical instruction in writing’ that bypasses ‘the human act of composing and the human gesture of response’”
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Does the rubric relate to the outcome(s) being measured? Does it address anything extraneous? […] Does it cover important dimensions of student performance? Do the criteria reflect current conceptions of excellence in the field? […] Are the dimensions and scales well defined? […] Is there a clear basis for assigning scores at each scale point? […] Can different scorers consistently apply the rubric? […] Can students and parents understand the rubric? […] Is the rubric developmentally appropriate? […] Can the rubric be applied to a variety of tasks? […] Is the rubric fair and free from bias? Does it reflect teachable skills or does it address variables over which students and educators have no control, such as the student’s culture, gender or home resources? […] Is the rubric useful, feasible, manageable and practical? […] Will it provide the kind of information you need and can use effectively?
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using rubrics to establish “performance benchmarks” for the “behavioral objectives” appropriate to each year in the program.
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Rubrics for performance benchmarks that applicable to each year's objectives shows that they are not just using rubrics to use them, but that they are specific and aimed at the performance of the students.
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I have been working with my district on standards based grading. I think rubrics can shape the standards in relation to quantitative data.
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accurately measuring the specific entity the instructor intends to measure consistently student after student
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“Perhaps the greatest potential value of classroom assessment is realized when we open the assessment process up and welcome students into that process as full partners”
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In any case, withholding assessment tools (whether they are rubrics or more nebulous modes of evaluation) from students is not only unfair and makes self-assessment more difficult, it maintains the traditional gap between what the teacher knows and what the student knows.
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In any case, withholding assessment tools (whether they are rubrics or more nebulous modes of evaluation) from students is not only unfair and makes self-assessment more difficult, it maintains the traditional gap between what the teacher knows and what the student knows.
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Holding back rubrics and the way teachers are grading from students is kind of like giving the "gotcha" at the end of the assignment. I know when I am not clear on my directions, I get 500 questions about it. When I am clear and students know what they will be graded on, it is better for both of us.
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Be prepared to evaluate your rubric, using your meta-rubric and feedback—direct feedback from the students and indirect feedback from the quality of their work. Modify accordingly.
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This was a key "a-ha" for me. I think that rubrics are over used. Not everything can or needs to be assessed via a rubric. The key question for teachers should be first "What am I assessing?" then "Will a rubric meet the needs of what I am assessing?" So many times a rubric is used and it doesn't match what needs to be assessed.
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Implementation in Advocacy/Guidanace/Post-Secondary Preparation (Articles) - 1 views
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Over 60% of students who eventually dropped out of high school failed at least25% of their credits in the ninth grade, while only 8% of their peers who eventually graduated had similar difficulty.”
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I see this all the time with potential alternative school students. They are "on the radar" when they start their 9th grade year, then I can usually tell by the end of their 9th grade year after watching their progress and hearing from their teachers, who needs to be in alternative school. I find that if they fail freshman classes, it tends to snowball from there.
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This is very important when identifying students at risk and in need of a different setting to be successful. Focusing on 9th grade and what interventions are being used and what is working with students can be key to students graduating.
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Jessica I agree 9th grade is a very pivotal time to follow and address student issues. I always attend the 9th grade SAT meetings. It gives me look into which students I'll soon be seeing and the interventions they have tried with them. I've noticed many students at this age have already determined they are going to the alternative school. Some will even from this point on work at making it happen.
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Is there any research for the transition to 10th grade? Research I've seen refers to the transition to 9th grade. In our district, the 8th/9th graders are in the same building and 10-12 in another. For us, the 10th grade year seems to be more of a struggle. I'm wondering if in district's with a similar building break-down like ours if the drop-out rates get shifted to 10th grade class failures and not so much what takes place in 9th grade.
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the government would reap $45 billion in extra tax revenues and reduced costs in public health, crime, and welfare payments if the number of high school dropouts among 20-year olds in the U.S. today were cut in half.
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I wish the government and public would see this information and realize that investing in education really helps everyone. Maybe then, education would not always be the first place that budget cuts take place..
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I agree, Jessica! Investing in education is essentially investing in our future!
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Jessica you are definitely preaching to the choir. It's more important to have a billion dollar surplus.
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“When students have completed the attendance required in a course, and were unsuccessful, the options for earning credit towards graduation are often limited to using the same book, often with the same teacher, within the same seat time approach. Is this really the best way to invest resources of time and money in helping students succeed?
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“When students have completed the attendance required in a course, and were unsuccessful, the options for earning credit towards graduation are often limited to using the same book, often with the same teacher, within the same seat time approach.
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I fight a battle about this in my district because many teachers feel that if a student fails a class that they should have to take it over again with the same teacher, same material, etc and that being allowed to take it online is "the easy way out."
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I will more than likely be getting a student (senior) who has failed English 9 three times. Yes, THREE times! However, I know the teacher has modified and individualized opportunities for this particular student. She is GREAT about that. Some teachers do not adjust at all, but I know she does. This student has now put himself in a position where the alternative program is his only option based on the number and types of credits he has remaining. I don't think he necessarily wants to attend the alternative program. Students seem to do better in the program if it is THEIR CHOICE to attend rather than be placed by the administration.
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I agree that students definitely do better if they feel it is their choice to attend the alternative program. At times our role as teachers may be to encourage the student to make that decision knowing that it will be best in the long run for the student. New teacher, fresh start, usually smaller environment which will give the student more interaction with teachers. I think we can encourage students towards alternative settings while still making it their chioce.
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Jessica, I have struggled with the same attitudes toward online credit recovery. Many times, I see several students, who have had a particular teacher, who are in need of credit recovery. I sometimes question how much effort the teacher put forth to make a connection with those students. Some teachers take it personally if a student doesn't "care" about the class. Perhaps if that teacher focused more on the students' needs they might see that they must care before the student will.
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In such moments, teaching becomes a deeply reciprocal process by which we decide to learn not just from but with the students, embracing the risks that accompany students developing as independent thinkers and informed risk takers (K. Schultz, 2003). Moreover, when we offer choice, we model risk taking for them and demonstrate problem-solving skills, such as how to thoughtfully navigate uncertainty and address unforeseen obstacles.
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I feel like more teachers would be open to taking the "risk" of learning with their students and allowing students to play more of a role in their own learning, if teachers didn't have so much to "lose" in the process. We are expected to teach specific things, at specific times, and cover so much curriculum in a short time frame, and that keeps many teachers from taking risks because there is so much expected of us.
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Until there is a paradigm shift from the top down, I'm afraid we will remain where we are. Fortunately, I believe there is a shift occuring, but it is occuring very slowly.
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Over 60% of students who eventually dropped out of high school failed at least25% of their credits in the ninth grade,
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This is interesting. We've talked about this in our MTSS (Multi-Tiered Systems of Support) https://www.educateiowa.gov/pk-12/standards-and-curriculum/iowas-multi-tiered-system-supports meetings. This statistic has prompted my school to really focus on the 9th graders.
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Nearly one-third of all public high school students—and nearly one half of all African Americans, Hispanics and Native Americans—fail to graduate from public high school with their class
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Dropouts are more likely than high school graduates to be unemployed, in poor health, living in poverty, on public assistance, or single parents with children who drop out of high school Dropouts are more than twice as likely as high school graduates to slip into poverty in a single year and three times more likely than college graduates to be unemployed Dropouts are more than eight times as likely to be in jail or prison as high school graduates Dropouts are four times less likely to volunteer than college graduates, twice less likely to vote or participate in community projects, and represent only 3 percent of actively engaged citizens in the U.S. today
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A lot of our students who dropout stay in the area. They face the challenges listed above and aren't able to support the community in ways to improve it. The community suffers from the lack of people paying taxes, starting small businesses, creating jobs, volunteering, participating in community projects, etc. Our rural community needs active members to keep the existing small businesses and the school in the town. So increasing our graduation rate ultimately improves our community. Some move away; however, a lot of our students return after graduating from college. They are active in the community and helping our town.
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Breaking this cycle for students in the community is very difficult. They need to understand the risks and difficulties they will face without a high school diploma.
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Many of my former students were victims of generational poverty. As stated above, breaking the cycle is very difficult. Many students don't have the supports in place to be successful or to break the cycle. We, as teachers and schools, must reach out to not only the students but their families as well to establish relationships built on trust in order to help students reach their potential.
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Providing credit for work or community service allows students to be engaged in a valuable activity outside of school and to have this experience count towards graduation. It also motivates students to complete the program.
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I think credit for work or community service is an excellent idea. Why not use it for elective credit? If at risk students knew they had specific core classes they had to take and had more choices for their electives, perhaps graduation would be more attainable to them.
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I agree that giving credit for work or community service would be an excellent idea. It would create a sense of connection and pride in students.
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We provide elective credit for work. Our students provide a copy of their paycheck to prove they are working. The also write a one page weekly reflection. They usually complain about their job or celebrate accomplishments at work.
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“I have some things to say. First, all of you talked about Michael through your findings but do you really know my son? D
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Unfortunately, most parents won't have the courage to speak up here. They will leave frustrated and upset with the school. The members of the team need to realize this.
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So many parents had negative experiences in school that they are on edge even entering the school building. We as educators need to work with the parent and seek their input when working with their child.
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I agree that many parents' own negative school experiences create a sense of discomfort for them when working with teachers and administrators. We must work to break those barriers and create a welcoming, positive, family-friendly environment that shows them we value their role as a parent and advocate for their child.
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I see this kind of stuff on a regular basis. They send me students and are constantly telling me what I should watch for with them. What are their obvious strengths and weaknesses. I find it so often to be very inaccurate. I almost feel bad because I'll run into these same teachers at in-services and they are constantly asking me about these students. I feel almost mean telling them I'm not seeing any of the stuff they describe. I don't want to hurt their feelings but you just want to tell them maybe they should work a little harder to form relationships with these students.
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There were eight staff members from the school, and myself as a parent. It was quite intimidating.
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I have not experienced this; however, my sister-in-law described the same situation with her son. It was very intimidating. Fortunately, she was a teacher's associate in a different district as her son. She had teachers, counselors, and administrators there that she could use as resources and guidance. She had to be an advocate for her son. She knew how to do this because of the support from her friends in education. Not everyone has this support.
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I don't like to have too many teachers and faculty in meetings with parents for this reason. You could have a couple of the teachers write their concerns or ideas for the parent instead of surrounding them. It would make anyone uncomfortable.
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Although I have considered how a parent might feel outnumbered when attending an IEP meeting, I thought my presence would give them a sense of my support for both the student and their family. I want them to know I care and want the best for their child.
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I agree with you. When you have to many people there it almost feels like an ambush to the parent. I believe it's hard for them to voice opinions and concerns, especially dissenting opinions.
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I discuss my own experience with the difference between the PLPs used at the Met and the Individualized Education Plans (IEPs) that are commonly used for students with special needs. The importance of creating a supportive link between the student, their family, advisor and mentors in creating a challenging and personalized educational plan for every student is crucial,
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An environment without risk fails to prepare students for life outside the classroom, a world of risk taking. Allowing students to experience measured risks, in a supportive community, models the real-world paradigm where choices naturally entail risk.
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At the same time, these teachers are often pressured by school administrators, policymakers, and politicians to raise graduation rates. Too often, the pressure to “do something” conflicts with the need to actually arm students with the real skills they need to achieve success in post-secondary education or work. Instead of challenging students to raise their performance to the level they must reach to be successful, too often credit recovery “solutions” have lowered the bar for passing.
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If we think we should pat ourselves on the back for "helping" a student graduate, we are seriously mistaken. We all know that even though they possess a diploma life will still be difficult for them. Their choices will be limit. We need to look for ways to create career pathways, such as those we have discussed in this course, to provide students the skills (trade/vocation) they will need to be marketable and employable if they choose to enter the workforce instead of continuing with postsecondary schooling.
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I couldn't agree with you more. Several years ago when the graduation rate became an area of focus with NCLB, I saw a shift in the "quality" of credit recovery programs. The goal was to graduate, not necessarily provide the skills needed to be successful. In the end it is not only the community but truly the students who lose.
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Among the worst offenders in this regard are some products and programs that call themselves “online.” These are often programs that are low-cost, have very low levels of teacher involvement, and require very little of students. They are used primarily because they are inexpensive, and they allow schools to say students have “passed” whether they have learned anything or not.
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we build opportunities for choice, at age-appropriate increments, scaffolding the skills and habits of mind that are necessary to increase the independence and self-direction that students need as they progress. Our experiential approach is rooted in this concept: As freshman, students learn about and become part of a community; as sophomores, they explore what it means to serve within and through that community; as juniors, they use their service experience to provide leadership to younger students; and as seniors, they risk it all, moving beyond their immediate community to explore new ones.
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In recent years, an increasing number of online programs have begun focusing on offering credit recovery and serving at-risk students. In some cases, these programs started with this focus, while in other cases existing online programs expanded their focus beyond high-achieving students. Online learning is proving to be an important—and sometimes transformational—tool in reaching at-risk students. Goals related to credit recovery and at-risk students vary with each online program often they include one or more of the following: Help students make up credits to meet graduation requirements Meet graduation deadlines Prepare students for state exams Get dropout students back in school
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Online curriculum must be rigorous to ensure that students are learning the material, and not simply moving through the course. Diagnostic testing that allows students to demonstrate mastery of the elements of a subject that they learned in their previous attempt to pass the course, and to move on to the parts of the course that they need to focus on, keeps students engaged.
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If a student is struggling with a lesson, the teacher can focus instruction where the student needs the greatest support.
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This individualization and personalization allows students to feel a one-to-one connection with their teachers and engages them with the material more thoughtfully.
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This is a special part of the program. Teachers can see specific areas where students need help. It might have gone under the radar in a general class. It also points this out to the student. This gets the teacher engaged with the student instructing him/her in that specific area which makes it more personal. Human connections help to keep students feel more welcome, especially if they are more introverted.
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the real message of the Coleman and Jencks studies of equal educational opportunities: not that the school is powerless but that the family is powerful.
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About Us - Embedr, Create Custom Video Playlists - 0 views
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The first website in the known universe that allows users to create custom video playlists from all their favorite video websites and Embed them anywhere else on the web.
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Building A Better Mousetrap: The Rubric Debate - 7 views
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Latin for “red”
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reliably score
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this still takes time and practice...it won't happen instantly after the creation of a new rubric...having examples to refer to helps keep the scorers on the same level
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It also helps to have several people score a paper using the same rubric to check the rubrics reliability.
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We did an activity in a workshop I took where we all used the same rubric to score sample writings and even with the rubric in hand, I was amazed at how differently we all scored each of the samples. What I found acceptable, another educator did not and vice-versa.
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When I teach 6 traits classes, one of the most eye opening things that happens is when just as you described, Cindy, two people use the same rubric and they come up with different scores. That is why it is so important to practice scoring together and to have conversations around why you gave the score that you did.
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on what students have actually learned rather than what they have been taught,
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The instructor’s comments on papers and tests are done after rather than before the writing, so they cannot serve as guidelines, compromising the value of writing comments at all.
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raise the need of remediation
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state writing test,
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Rubrics, Halden-Sullivan contends, reduce “deep learning” to “checksheets.”
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I would argue that large class sizes do the same...rubrics helped me survive through having too many students and too many essays to grade. Keep class sizes under control and give teachers adequate prep time and we'd be more than willing to provide deep and reflective feedback to each and every student.
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That is so true. Dealing with lots of students is a huge handicap for great teaching. I also think that we can design rubrics that allow for the freedom to write, not restrict it.
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Again, I will maintain that it is within the space defined by a rubric that we have the freedom to create unlimited, reflective and insightful writings, artwork, power points, and other projects or assignments. Rubrics are only as confining as one lets them feel.
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A holistic rubric
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establish “performance benchmarks” for the “behavioral objectives” appropriate to each year in the program
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Rubrics I have used and built contain both performance and behavorial components.
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Being in special education, my first job involved teaching student with behavioral goals in their IEPs. I had to develop rubrics to effectively track their daily behavioral goals and then average the daily scores to post in the weekly updates within their IEP.
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well-designed rubrics help instructors in all disciplines meaningfully assess the outcomes of the more complicated assignments that are the basis of the problem-solving, inquiry-based, student-centered pedagogy replacing the traditional lecture-based, teacher-centered approach in tertiary education
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Rubrics are useful for all curriculums and as a support for projects. The connection to the Iowa Core is evident.
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This has a great connection to constructivism as we assess students' ability to solve problems and work through issues.
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Quite often, rubrics have helped me better define my goals and objectives for an assignment. In this way, the rubric has probably helped me more than my students.
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That has been my experience as well. Having the rubrics keeps me more consistent in my expectations, as well as giving the students more concrete guidelines as to what is expected of them.
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self-assessment;
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Getting students to think about their learning is what makes rubrics so valuable!
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So valuable. One of my personal goals of teaching has always been to facilitate my students out of their need for me. In other words, helping them learn the skills they need to evaluate where they are and where they need to go next.
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struggle blindly,
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Rubrics that are prescriptive rather than descriptive will promote thoughtless and perfunctory writing
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signify critical thinking
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Adapt
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Also see the INTEL assessment tools at http://www97.intel.com/pk/AssessingProjects
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they should articulate the vital features that they are looking for and make these features known to the student
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Leaves out the "guesswork" for a student in trying to figure out teacher/professor expectations.
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Agree - the clear vision of the desired results should result in attainable success. Can't imagine trying to meet the target without knowing what the rubric requires (or what the target is).
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As one of my colleagues says, we shouldn't play "Guess what is in the teachers head?" when it comes to assessment.
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I like that analogy. I believe it is very important that our students know exactly what we are expecting from them, without stifling creativity by expecting cookie-cutter results.
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IT is good to know we are in agreement with the use of rubrics and the sharing of them with students. I hope that more teachers will follow and use them, rather than drag their feet and remain using 30 year old methods...
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the criteria must be made clear to them
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A rubric that tells students, as a typical example, that they will get an A for writing a 1000 word essay that “cites x number of sources and supports its thesis with at least three arguments” will lead students to perceive writing as a kind of “paint-by-number” endeavor (Mathews).
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This is a good point. . .and one that I struggle with in writing rubrics. In efforts of not being too subjective and/or vague, it is easy to become very prescriptive and create "formulas".
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I don't agree that the rubric creates a 'paint by number' result. Coming from the art field previously, I have witnessed and created art that fulfills rubrics and 'requirements' for competitions. In a field that is highly subjective, the need for a rubric defines the space within which we are allowed to create. It is what we do within that space that defines the quality of our work.
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consistently and accurately
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student input when constructing rubrics
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I've found this works well when students have learned specific skills that will be used on a final product. They can determine which skills should be on the rubric and to what extent they should be able to show their skills while problem solving how and where.
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I've found that when students help design the rubric they may actually be more demanding than I would be.
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I had a colleague who constantly negotiated rubric content with her students as a central part of her writing instruction. When she left the district, I was surprised to see the "new" teachers take the rubrics as part of some sort of "prescribed" curriculum. These organic documents suddenly became canonical.
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it is no longer appropriate to assess student knowledge by having students compute answers and apply formulas, because their methods do not reveal the current goals of solving real problems and using statistical reasoning.
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In interviewing businesses a couple of years ago as to what they are looking for in future employees, we heard over and over again that they were looking for 1. team players and 2. problem solvers.
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I think the students are more motivated when they can see real-world uses of what they are learning.
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At our school when having these discussions, it is hard to convince teachers who have been teaching a long time to change from lecturing to more of a facilitator role in their classes. How do we make this change? Is this what is being taught at universities to the incoming teachers?
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‘some rubrics are dumb.’
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Wow, I've said those exact words. Some rubrics I've accessed online are worthless. Yet, just because they are online and easy to access, I am sure there are teachers out there using them.
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Denise, you are so correct. There are many things online that are not worthy of sharing or using in our classrooms, but yet because of the easy accessibility I'm sure it is still happening.
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general” or “specific.
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I greatly prefer specific rubrics. What thoughts do the rest of you have?
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Totally agree. Specific rubrics are much easier to hone in on the specific "skills" that are being sought. I believe that some people shy away from them because of the time factor however.
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I think it depends on the purpose of the rubric, but I tend to like specific ones better than general ones.
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In his article, "What's Wrong, and What's Right with Rubrics" Jim Popham makes a great case for why general rubrics better support teaching and student learning of important targets.
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facilitate, rather than obviate, student learning
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If we are just using rubrics to put something in the gradebook, we are losing the power of "facilitating student learning."
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The formative rubric is a good step in this process of facilitating student learning. If we give the student the means to improve their work with the rubric, we are giving them tools to work with.
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...if the rubric is not used throughout the project or assignment, it is of very little use in a quality assessment process
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five-paragraph essay
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guide their own learning
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and teacher improvement.
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instructors plan on grading student thinking and not just student knowledge
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it maintains the traditional gap between what the teacher knows and what the student knows
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Well-designed rubrics
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writing under the influence
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rubrics that are outside of the students “zone of proximal development” are useless to the students.
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Again, this gets back to the "kid-friendly" language that needs to be used in a rubric, so that students can use the feedback to improve their learning.
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Can a rubric be written to benefit students with special needs and the talented and gifted? What happens when we have multiple grade levels and performance levels in a classroom?
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. Rubrics can be designed to measure either product or process or
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This is key and perhaps why there is so much debate about rubrics. They are often developed to assess the final product and the process piece is often forgotten. If, especially in the case of writing, process is important, then criteria for assessing needs to be included in the rubric. . .or a separate rubric developed just for "process".
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Well said. I think any tool can be good or bad and cannot necessarily be reduced to a generalization. We need to take care that we write them to encourage rather than discourage creativity, and that we use them in ways that encourage rather than discourage creativity.
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jargon used must not only be understandable to the student but also be linked specifically to classroom instruction.
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Clearly defining the purpose of assessment and what you want to assess is the first step in developing a quality rubric.
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we need a meta-rubric to assess our rubric.
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the habits of mind practiced in the act of self-assessment
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For example, Illinois State Board of Education’s (ISBE) scoring guidelines for writing measures four separate attributes of composition: Focus, Support, Organization, Conventions.
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“Perhaps the greatest potential value of classroom assessment is realized when we open the assessment process up and welcome students into that process as full partners” (qtd. in Skillings and Ferrell). When students are full partners in the assessment process, as Mary Jo Skillings and Robin Ferrel illustrate in their study on student-generated rubrics, they tend to “think more deeply about their learning.”
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It is imperative to involve students in their own learning. While direct instruction has been preached in the field of special education, there is a missing piece of this practice. This missing piece is the involvement of the student to "own" their knowledge and to demonstrate how they have learned, what matters, and where they will utilize it.
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Addressing Equity Issues at the Classroom Level,” reports that extensive use of rubrics can help minimize students’ educational disparities and bring fairness into assessment on numerous levels: “In short, explicit performance criteria, along with supporting models of work, make it possible for students to use the attributes of exemplary work to monitor their own performance.”
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build your own rubric from scratch
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most important here is not the final product
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those students who had “stylistic voices full of humor and surprises, produced less interesting essays
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This same thing happened to me. A few years agoI started a commercial project for my Spanish 2 students. Over the years, my rubric has become more restrictive because of previous students' inapprpropriate content. What I have noticed is that the commercials aren't anywhere near as interesting and creative as they were when my rubric was less detailed.
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Does the rubric relate to the outcome(s) being measured
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category should be defined using description of the work rather than judgments about the work
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extra credit
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It is so enjoyable to work with those students who have the capability to see through the structure of the instruction. It can be aggravating as well when they point out the flaws in our own practices, but very beneficial if we can be humble enough to acknowledge it. How do we prepare more of our students to approach learning this way, or is it just a gift a talented few have?
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When instructors do not explicitly delineate the qualities of thought that they are looking for while grading, they reduce learning to a hit or miss endeavor, where “assessment remains an isolated […] activity and the success of the learner is mostly incidental”
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a system designed to measure the key qualities (also referred to as “traits” or “dimensions”) vital to the process and/or product of a given assignment,
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points along a scale
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Technically rubrics do not contain "points", as in number of items to count. The scale contains levels, also known as an ordinal scale. A Level 4 on the rubric is not necessarily twice as good as a Level 2, as it would be if the numbers were points.
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In my opinion, this is a case of us being sloppy with language, and it makes for perhaps the most misunderstood aspect and misuse of rubrics.
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“use an existing one ‘as is
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Works Cited
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Rubrics are fairly new to our schools and constructing a good one is still a challenge. As teachers we tend to make the rubric's verbiage hard for students to really understand. Rubrics need to be in student friendly language and with only the necessary categories 4-6 max. We tend to have 8 categories with 4 to 5 possible grades (4,3,2,1) which is extremely confusing to students so they throw out the rubric and do their best hoping it cuts the mustard.
spookycf10 - 1 views
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ollie1reppert: Iowa Online Teaching Standards - 0 views
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Has knowledge of learning theory appropriate to online learning, which may include (but is not limited to) age and ability level, multiple intelligences, didactic conversation, student developmental influences, constructivism, behaviorism, cognitivism, connectivism, and group theory
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Wow, this is certainly a sentence loaded with many educational concepts. It would take me a week just define those concepts!
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I need to add a few more words to explain my interest in this passage. This passage indicates why teaching and learning aren't only important, but they can be difficult, too.
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Online instruction is growing across the nation, the main reason in the lower cost, compared with the traditional classroom; experts indicate there is not enough evidence online instruction is indicated to all teenage students. I have seen many of them dropping online classes in Plato; kids need to socialize.
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Provides substantive, timely, and constructive feedback to students
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Hopefully, that is a aspect that can be achieved through online quizzes and tests. I wonder how else it coud get done?
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Can also get consturctive feedback through google docs where you could make comments right on the document the student is working on.
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I'm hoping to see the benefits of Google docs as my district pushes their use this school year. I the idea of a comment area.
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I am looking forward to providing immediate feedback to students using some of the assessment programs.
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There is a service called crocodoc.com that allows you to mark student work, written work I should say. This will be another alternative to marking. Glogster & kidblog allow you to make comments for the students.
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Last year my son had an English class that made use of googledocs and online comments. The teacher didn't always get back to him in a timely manner. Plus, even though they saw each other everyday in class, they didn't talk about the issues on writing the essay on googledocs.
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Communicates with students effectively and consistently
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This concept could be much more difficult than what it appears, especially when it comes to typing conversation back and forth between people.
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I find it interesting that this concept is somewhat buried in the list of items. To me, it is the most important one.
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Your first point is well-taken, Brian. Add to that the difficult task of a teacher trying to communicate with their elementary-aged students in person and now attempting to do the same thing online. Not for the faint of heart!
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Assists students with technology
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Teach students where to find help rather then spending all of your time showing them exactly what to do. This is where the real learning from technology comes from
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If I might add to your astute thought, Doug, to also guide the students in determining how the information they found will be used to assist in their learning. More times than not, kids seem to grab information for the sake of possessing it without taking into consideration their intentions on how to utilize it.
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I agree with you, they really lack that thinking skill. They are very accustomed to the grab & go answer and find it hard to take risks in delving deeper into a topic.
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I find that some of my students end up teaching/showing me! They are all so good natured about helping me when they know something I don't! My favorite part of teaching however, is collaborating WITH my students on research projects and sharing in theri excitement when they discover great resources in unfamiliar places.
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different needs of students, including different learning styles
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A different set of challanges in an online course. Harder to find out different student needs.
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Yes, but I think this will open up more alternatives for students to learn & get more involved in the learning process which should help eliminate behavioral issues.
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This is a great opportunity to incorporate youtube videos for visual learners, "guest lecturers" available through podcasts for audio learners and various "hands on activities" for the tactile learner. Having instant access to such a wealth of multimedia information/activities should make it easier to accomodate multiple learning styles. However, this will require additional research and time on the part of the teacher to find appropriate resources to include.
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student feedback data to improve the course
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This is an area I wish to improve this school year. Instead of a basic exit survey that doesn't tell me much, I'd like to either find or create something in the way of feedback that I could actually use to improve my lesson or unit in the future.
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I could improve in this area as well Mike. I don't like using tests because they are a quick view of what they know. Much of what my students do is very open ended projects and it's hard to grade these until you figure what a student is capable of.
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I have created a course evaluation that I use for students at the end of the year and I find it to be valuable. I'm sure there are better ones, but I would be happy to email/share a form I have created for students. Obviously it could be edited and should be to fit the changes I make each year to my class.
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Sue it would be great to get a copy of that evaluation. It could be put into your moodle class as a survey through survey monkey.
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Our principal has begun to create a student exit survey that could be used school or department wide. This was created using survey monkey. The science department "field tested" it in the spring. The way that the questions were worded and the feed back provided was able to give us great insight into what was working and not working as well as what the students appreciated in terms of learning activities and levels of rigor.
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standards for student behavior
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Our district unveiling a new district-wide student-use policy this August. Though I know they're needed, the problem I see with these policies is that after you've spent the time agreeing on and writing up the rules it can already be considered outdated due to the rapid expance of technology.
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We also have a newly written AUP and it is hard to keep them updated so if well written it should be able to adjust for the times. Many districts don't revise these very often. I think they should be revisited a minimum of every 2-3 years to allow for changes.
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I might be wrong, but the policies probably need to be updated every six months to sort of keep up with new technology. That or the policies will have to be very broad, which has positives and negatives, too.
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Understands the differences between teaching online and teaching face-to-face
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This is interesting. There is definately things to consider in an online classroom that you don't in a face-to-face classroom. However, as a classroom teacher, adding an online compenent to my course has required me to be more thoughtful, organized, explicit, and available. All of which have helped me meet more of my students' needs.
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I don't know how to be an online teacher yet....I love what I do in my classroom and I think I'm a really effective teacher, but I'm always eager to improve. I think I have more to learn about the difference between the two. This is the first on line class I have taken and though it is frustrating when I don't understand, it is forcing me to stick with something longer/ problem solve more on my own!
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The more that I discuss online learning, the more I think about the face-to-face teaching. I feel that this tows a fine line as we all have a variety of learners in our classroom. Balancing the face-to-face and online instruction is an element of teaching that also depends on the age level you are teaching. I think that the older the learners are, the more content they be exposed to online.
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Designs the structure of the course and the presentation of the content to best enhance student learning, including using unit/lesson overviews and reviews, using patterns in lesson sequencing, and using appropriate visual web design techniques
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Promotes learning through online collaboration group work that is goal-oriented and focused
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This is one of the items that I am most excited about using with Moodle. I want to have a way other than my classroom observations to see how students are working through problems and learning from each other. Wiki's, Google docs and forums will allow me to see who is sharing their ideas and how other students respond to them.
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Creates a safe environment, managing conflict
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This is one of my concerns about online learning. I have found that students often are willing to say things in print that they would not have the nerve to say to someone face to face. I feel that I will have to devote some time in training the students on what appropriate feedback would include and not include.
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Is knowledgeable and has the ability to use computer programs required in online education to improve learning and teaching, including course management software (CMS) and synchronous/asynchronous communication tools (chat, email, web 2.0, videoconferencing, webinar, whiteboard, etc.) (SREB B.3, Varvel III.B)
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Is knowledgeable and has the ability to use computer programs required in online education to improve learning and teaching, including course management software (CMS) and synchronous/asynchronous communication tools (chat, email, web 2.0, videoconferencing, webinar, whiteboard, etc.) (SREB B.3, Varvel III.B)
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Are some school districts going to have to open up the restrictions on chat and remove some of their filtering to allow teachers access to some of these capabilities.
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Deb, I think that you are correct, school districts will have to "loosen up" a bit. The other concern is access to technology/internet for students that come from low income families or families that might be homeless and do not have regular access outside of normal school hours.
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Is knowledgeable and has the ability to use computer programs required in online education to improve learning and teaching, including course management software (CMS) and synchronous/asynchronous communication tools (chat, email, web 2.0, videoconferencing, webinar, whiteboard, etc.) (SREB B.3, Varvel III.B)
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uses techniques to engage students
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techniques for dealing with issues arising from inappropriate student technological use
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Teachers need to know the AUP and what administration will do when inappropriate action is discovered. All teachers should be in agreement with the course of action.
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I think the biggest obstacle for out district is Catching the little perps in their misconduct. lol --is that appropriate in an anotation?
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Provides and communicates evidence of learning and course data to students and colleagues (SREB J.6, ITS 1.a)
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I suppose this was one of the purposes of teacher portfolios, but I think evidence is growing in importance as NCLB continues to drive education and there is more pressure to prove student proficiency. This is going to require more use of technology, I suspect, to gather and maintain the data needed.
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Selects and uses technologies appropriate to the content that enhance learning
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This is the area I am struggling with. I am not a technology native and I am not well read or experienced with technology. I get overwhelmed by so many options, I freeze up. I need to have someone help me identify one or two tools that I can understand and use effectively in my curriculum and then focus on just those 2 pieces of technology until I gain more confidence.
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Demonstrates growth in technology knowledge and skills in order to stay current with emerging technologies (SREB B.5
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iNACOL
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Online Teaching
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There is a broad spectrum of independent studies and diverse mediums to channel them; distance learning, correspondence, hybrid classes, computers, teleconference, cell-phones, educational television, etc. I guess standards would need to be adapted to each type of class.
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Jorge, I agree with you that the phrase on-line teaching incorporates a broad spectrum of courses/means of delivery. Each type of course whether hybrid, distance learning, etc is going to have its own unique intereactions and pedagogy. As a result, it might be necessary to visit and re-evaluate these standards as times and technology change.
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Incorporates social aspects
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I like the rewording from "classroom management" to "incorporate social aspects", mostly behavioral ones; there is a lot less need for classroom management in the online instructional process; in eithe setting, it is crucial to count with the elements of engagement and social skills in order to accompllish the academic goals.
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Identifies and communicates learning outcomes and expectations through a course overview/orientation (Varvel IV.A, ITS 3.b)
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I think this is so important. I am curious how many district require this in a syllabus or something similar at the beginning of the year?
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That is a great point! My guess would be that there are not many requirements, yet. If there are, I am sure they are rather vague at the moment and will be getting more in depth in the upcoming years. Speaking from the standpoint of my district, I can say that most technology "extras" or resources are not required, but many are encouraged.
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Continuously 2uses data to evaluate the accuracy and effectiveness of instructional strategies (SREB J.7, ITS 1.c)
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Continuously 2 uses data to evaluate the accuracy and effectiveness of instructional strategies (SREB J.7, ITS 1.c)
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Understands and uses course content that complies with intellectual property rights and fair use, and assists students in complying as well (SREB E.5, Varvel I.B)
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Has experienced online learning from the perspective of a student
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I am finding a whole different point of view as I use Moodle as a student rather than as a teacher. I find I have more questions about where components of the assignments are, and kind of worry about keeping all the tasks straight. I really want to think about this as I design my own course.
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I'm struggling with those issues just for this one class. I couldn't imagine trying to keep more than one online class going on at a time. That may be the product of my non-digital native bias. Maybe for the present youth it will be no big deal. I struggle with the different technologies I'm expected to use as a teacher: Powerschool, gmail, igoogle, google docs, google class web site, Smartboard, etc. On the other hand, maybe having to learn and use new technology will help to prevent or slow Alzheimers. : )
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Demonstrates effective instructional strategies and techniques, appropriate for online education, that align with course objectives and assessment
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Creates a learning community that encourages collaboration and interaction, including student-teacher, student-student, and student-content (SREB D.2, Varvel VII.B, ITS 6.a)
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Creates or selects multiple assessment instruments that are appropriate for online learning (SREB H.1, Varvel VI.C)
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Demonstrates ability to enhance academic performance
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A key phrase in this is "to enhance academic performance". This means that we, as teachers, need to be utilizing these online strategies to help students learn and perform better than they would without access to these resources. Many times teachers attempt to try something new simply to say that they've tried a new activity, but our goal with doing something new should be to improve student learning over where it has been previously.
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including rubrics for student performances
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PLE Articles - 1 views
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Not every student is ready for this responsibility, so teachers need to have strategies in place to guide and support these learners. In addition, teachers must pursue training and be knowledgeable of how to utilize PLEs to enhance learning and ensure that students are using this e-learning tool in a meaningful way
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It is not enough just to have PLEs and use them in the classroom, a teacher needs to be able to provide intervention, conferring, and reteaching strategies to help the student understand the expectations. They need to know how to use the tool correctly.
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Having the opportunity to collaborate with, visit schools supporting PLEs, or receive support from other professionals already comfortable with implementing PLEs would prove valuable on my journey to create learning environments to best meet my student needs. I so agree with your comment of teacher role.
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This is a very powerful statement. I agree it is not just enough to have PLE's and use them. It is very important to have time to collaborate and have some professional development. Using PLE's teachers will be in a different role than in previous settings and will need the tools to support their students through this learning journey.
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Some instructors empower students to use their own mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones as a means to create PLEs. Others utilize sites such as Symbaloo or NetVibesas a foundation to help learners create and maintain their personal learning environments. Below is a video that shows how a 7th grade student uses Symbaloo as a PLE in her science class:
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How do students learn how to use their PLE? Do they take a class to learn how to correctly and effectively them or does each classroom teacher teach bits and pieces of it?
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I think this depends on the students. Some kids can naturally figure out how things work and others will need a tutorial. Ultimately the kids will choose a PLE that they feel comfortable with or already know how to use.
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Teachers, she explains, are no longer the primary or even the best source of information available to students, and our work must increasingly attend to supporting students in developing their skills and motivations for becoming themselves networked and sophisticated online learners.
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Are schools going to provide training for teachers so they know how to use all of these PLE tools? I feel I would want to fully understand how to use all of these online tools before I teach my students how to use them.
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We also need to teach our students to think and learn on their own. They are used to being provided with resources, graphic organizers, and other tools to guide their thinking. This is a big shift in processing and responsibility for our students. Because they have never done this in earlier education, some will really struggle to adapt.
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You pose great questions, "are schools going to provide training for teachers so they know how to use all of the PLE tools?" I agree educators will need more training to properly implement PLE's into their classrooms. The statement that teachers are no longer the primary or even the best source of information is a huge shift in thinking. Our jobs as educators will be to support our students on their on learning pathway.
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as an instructor, you can make a webmix quite interactive.
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PLEs place a large amount of responsibility on students and thus requires a high level of self-management and awareness.
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This definitely seems more geared towards middle and high school students. Are their ways to create PLE's in the elementary classroom?
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I read in one of our assigned readings/videos that a PLE sometimes looks like the homescreen on a smart phone. So an elementary student may have a variety of educational games that they have found/been provided that they would use for practice. Other kids' PLE may not involve technology at all, but instead be a manipulative, like counting blocks. I know my own children (by birth) have been practicing multiplication with their Pokemon cards? My first grader couldn't handle using the iPad for sight word practice and had to go back to flash cards. He learned what was acceptable and regained access. While this classroom isn't necessarily PL, I would think the same concept applies?
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We also discussed that as they begin to work in inquiry circles next week and to collaborate on their digital research projects, they can create, publish, and share their topic webmixes with their peers so that they can collaborate and discover information sources through this form of networking/information sharing–I find this possibility exciting for the students, and they seemed impressed by this concept as well.
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This networking in inquiry circles sounds like a wonderful way for students to share their learning. It would also give students a way to have a voice for those you are more hesitant to share in the regular classroom. I have a lot of questions about how it all works. How do we prepare students for this work? Do they have basic grammar structures so their writing makes sense? I am unfamiliar with the websites being used. Do we need to have inservices to get all teachers "up-to-date" on what students will be using? And lastly, what constitutes a finished project? How do students know when they are done?
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we are in a new era where information is abundantly available and professionalism is far more about the effective manipulation– access, evaluation, & application– it only makes sense to reorient learning toward 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.
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It is very clear the teacher and student roles are making a major shift. While we are changing the roles in the process, as educators, we need to have a unified understanding of what the balance needs to be or we will be giving students mixed messages. Students can quickly determine how to access what they need once they are given the tools but evaluation and process will require some lessons for the students AND the teachers.
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you can create tiles that link to challenges, quiz questions, polls, discussion forums, chat pages, and other types of content and media that will facilitate more student involvement and creativity
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Personal learning environments (PLE) are a new approach to personalized learning that allows students to direct and manage their own learning experience while pursuing educational goals.
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Every Wednesday my district has a late start for students while teachers are receiving PD. Just this morning a discussion at my table involved brainstorming how to move students past doing just what's expected of them. How do we get their thinking to move past, "How many paragraphs/sentences do I need to write?" PL could be a tool to develop that independent learner.
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I agree, this will be the hardest step for our students! They are used to the traditional model of education with clear expectations and guidelines always structured and provided for them. We are trying to increase opportunities for students to be independent and accountable for their own learning and many are resistant. They know how to "play the game" of the traditional model of a school, so change can be intimidating.
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Instead of a teacher providing resources that everyone uses, students can utilize their PLE to acquire information using preferred apps and resources such as blogs, YouTube, Pinterest, Ning or Delicious. The development of PLEs represents a shift in focus from teacher centered classrooms to more learner centered classrooms.
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As I have been talking to my kids about PL, I heard (and have feared) someone say, "So we're doing the teacher's job?" I think, like most changes in education, it's going to take some convincing/educating the parents as to what PL is and the role of the teacher. Of course, I feel that it's all about how it's presented. If you get the kids to understand their role and the teacher's role, you may not have these issues.
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This needs to start in elementary for it to be truly effective; I don't think we can expect secondary students who have not been taught how to learn in this environment to suddenly run with personal learning. While many of them think it sounds great, they haven't been conditioned to independence in their learning. They want everything provided for them and often don't know where to start when set off on their own. We need to teach students how to learn in this manner in order for it to be successful.
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those policies are not going to change.
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This is a systematic problem that needs to change in order to make PL work. Restricting access is not the answer, and I believe we'll get there as a society. If we want real life, the students need to understand when it's acceptable to do what. I already know my students will struggle with this issue, but if they're engaged in their PL, they may not need those distractions. As with any classroom management issue, expectations will need to be established and enforced when violated. We read that adults even struggle with using technology appropriately in the workplace, so of course this will need addressed with students.
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On that thought, will our lifting those access restrictions at the elementary through secondary grade levels assist learners beyond the K-12 walls with using technology appropriately? Would it reduce the occurrence of workplace and adult inappropriate use of technology which seems to be sadly common place today?
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We have so many problems with restrictions on our devices. At our school, teachers have the same filters as the students also! They give us no passwords for administrative access or even the WiFi. How can we teach students to think critically when using the web if we simply restrict everything? Especially when it comes to teachers, this seems a bit demeaning. People will always use resources inappropriately. Unfortunately, that's just the way it works. Why restrict everyone due to the poor actions of a few?
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ong have educators, from Aristotle to Dewey to Sizer, called for “learning by doing” and “student as worker,”
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I feel that this is where we are at as educators as well. We need to "learn by doing" because a lot of us are doing a job we were never trained to do...and I'm not even that old! I currently have a student teacher, and she's amazed (and a little scared) at what we're doing with our students with blended learning and also standards based grading. She hasn't even graduated and she knows nothing of either of them! Get ready, honey! :)
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The notion of a PLE for students, grounding them intentionally in an environment of information tools and productive applications, is a great way to seek, develop, and structure that balanced approach.
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Because you can link to an infinite variety of web pages and you can embed media
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The concept of PLE is not a way to replace classroom learning,
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This is an important declarative to use when persuading teammates or administration to support the personal learning environment in your school. Like any differentiation piece, collaboration, individual student consideration of needs, and building a rigorous, yet attainable structure to learning is included with that design. Creating the PL to include technology students are frequenting, motivates students buying in to the idea at first.
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I agree with this statement about not here to replace classroom learning but to enhance it. I also agree with your comment about how it is an important declarative when bringing the topic to co-teachers or administration. Education is always changing and administrators will want to listen if you have a way to enhance student learning.
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parents, email conversations, Facebook posts or even twitter hashtags. These interactions among their learning community reinforces learning and combats the often negative stereotypes associated with traditional learning techniques. Because PLEs are learner controlled, they are easily adapted to the learner’s day-to-day activities and interests both inside and outside of the classroom
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This all sounds great! I could easily believe my students would enjoy these social network interaction learning communities. However, it does form a question connecting to student safety. I'm wondering how districts already implementing PLEs are assuring students they are responsible for will be involved with a secure/safe learning experience?
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my main priority is for students to have a tool they can use to organize their information streams and to create their own topic webmixes, and from what I’ve seen so far, Symbaloo definitely will meet those needs. As we begin venturing into our research the next two weeks and students begin developing their Symbaloo webmixes, I’ll continue to collect feedback from students on how this learning tool is working for them and how they are using it for themselves as well as within their groups–I’m excited to see what will happen.
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ymbaloo EDU
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ruth be told, I could stand to be more savvy in my own organizing of online learning and networking: I’ve been slow to use tools and develop skills for managing online resource, such as the use of vehicles like Symbaloo, Evernote, or Diigo, and I want to take inspiration from the 7th grade student in the video above to move forward in this way and learn and practive better these skills and with these tools.
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I often feel the same - slow to utilize the tools available. It's always well intent, but priority address other items at hand. I'm hoping this evolves as I develop more understanding of PLEs and their use for enhancing learning opportunities of those I instruct.
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Not to mention, once we master one tool...another one pops up! I try to stay current in technology through classes and our PD opportunity, but it is tough to stay on top of things. I think the best way to do this is to stick with one tool and work to know it well. Otherwise we fall into the trap of "jack of all trades, master of none!"
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Learning isn’t germane to structured classroom environments alone; it occurs in both formal and informal settings.
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I think this statement is very important for the heading why PLE's are beneficial. Showing learning can take place in both formal and informal settings. Often with the push to meet the standards and standardized tests teachers feel the need to focus on the formal learning setting, however the informal learning setting can actually prove to be more beneficial in my opinion.
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ollie-afe-2019: Educational Leadership: The Quest for Quality--article - 6 views
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I thought this quote was interesting. I always believe that having more than one data point helps a teacher see more of a rounded picture of that student. Relying on just one assessment isn't fair to the student. I believe we should look at multiple assessments, formative assessments, check points to help our students grow. JN
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assessor needs to have a clear picture of what achievement he or she intends to measure. I
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Students learn best when they monitor and take responsibility for their own learning
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I really like this idea of having students take responsibility for their own learning, and putting the learning target in language they can understand would definitely help!
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I agree that students do learn best when they take on the responsibility but I also think this is the ideal situation and often does not happen. How do we motivate more students to do this?
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I agree with this, but it seems so foreign to students. I think we need to plan on a lot of modeling to shift the responsibility to them.
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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.
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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?
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There is truth in the challenge. But I know I have been guilty of knowing what I was looking for but not clearly communicating it to students. Then they are left to guess...which means they are likely to guess in at least some ways incorrectly. I think the more modeling we do, the more "anchor papers" we provide, the better students achieve our expectations. Putting those expectations into words and examples is its own challenge, but a worthy one.
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It is nice to hear from other high school English teachers about the difficulty of measuring such subjective skills. I always struggled. One strategy I did find helpful was assigning paragraph writing as an assessment and scoring them 1-5, with a 3 being adequate and a 5 outstanding Then we would do several together and discuss what constituted a 3 and the differences between 3-4-5. That did seem to help, and students personalized the challenge of getting at least a 3 to show competency and reaching for outstanding.
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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.
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minimizing any bias that might distort estimates of student learning.
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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.
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When I read through this about minimizing bias it made me think of the old ITBS/ITED tests and a student we had that was new to this country. The student was very bright but he did not perform well on the test because of bias. One example I recall was he had no idea what a fir tree was as where he was from there was no such thing.
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Will the users of the results understand them and see the connection to learning?
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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?
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That is a great point! How do we motivate kids to go back and look at the feedback and make changes. Many of our kids just want to know what do I need to know to pass the test or assignment and once they pass that's all that matters.
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You have mentioned before that kids always want to know what they have to do in order to get an A or pass...but that's what I want to know when I take a course. I want/need to know what the expected outcomes are. I feel that kids have so many classes, tests, and assignments that if they don't ask those questions or think in that kind of a structured fashion that they will crash and burn. I get that we want them to LEARN and be passionate, but especially in required courses, the passion just isn't always there and the class literally is a box to check off.
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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
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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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This is why common formative assessments can be so helpful. If some of your students aren't getting something, it's likely that others aren't either. If you look at the whole team's formative data, it could be that everyone needs to adjust rather than just you.
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And if your class is doing more poorly than another class, you can have conversations about the different instructional practices being used. We all do our best but it's ok to not be the best. Together we can do what is best for our students.
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Do the results provide clear direction for what to do next?
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A grade of D+, on the other hand, may be sufficient to inform a decision about a student's athletic eligibility, but it is not capable of informing the student about the next steps in learning.
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SBL and transitioning from all letter grades is a lengthy process but very beneficial for feedback purposes. MG
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I agree with you about the SBL and how it shows a student exactly what they know or what they need to improve on. A letter grade just give them a percentage of the time they have a correct answer. Doesn't give them any information at what they know or don't know.
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aim for the lowest possible reading level,
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I think this is also interesting because I know there are some tests that do this purposefully to "increase the rigor" of the test. For instance, AP exams notoriously use vocabulary to make the questions harder. This is saying it could be not just separating those who know less about the content, but also those who have different background, cultural knowledge, or just English as a first language. I, too, wonder how the ISASP will do with this.
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Are we challenging our top students and preparing them for their futures when we use low reading levels? Seems to contradict what we are trying to accomplish.
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This is so very important as we are seeing a dramatic increase in student populations that are not fluent in English.
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I have developed a system where I always read math tests out loud. That way students are not missing information due to not understanding the vocabulary.
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Jenn that's an interesting concept of reading the tests outloud....have never thought of doing that in a HS classroom but might help!
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The classroom is also a practical location to give students multiple opportunities to demonstrate what they know and can do, adding to the accuracy of the information available from that level of assessment.
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Most assessments developed beyond the classroom rely largely on selected-response or short-answer formats and are not designed to meet the daily, ongoing information needs of teachers and students.
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Five keys to assessment quality
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To summarize, the 5 keys to assessment quality are: 1. clear purpose 2. clear learning targets 3. sound assessment design 4. effective communication of results 5. student involvement in the assessment process
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Great idea on how to use an annotation tool. I can see this being very beneficial to high school students
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thats a really cool usage! Could see teaching my kids to do this when doing technical reading
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grouping the assessments
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Grouping assessments into levels: ongoing classroom assessment (daily work/observation), periodic interim/benchmark assessment (weekly quizzes/ group work), and annual state/district standardized assessments. I would add summative unit assessments (tests/projects) here also.
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Grouping assessments should give us a better picture of where students are at and help to identify where they need help.
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cannot measure more complex learning targets at the heart of instruction
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Our school district is doing the ISASP this year for the first time. This is a computer based test based on the Iowa Core. I worry how these results will be used to evaluate student mastery of content specific standards. How much effort will students put into the test and are there too many distractors that will bias the results?
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Those are legitimate concerns. On the other hand, what this quote makes me think of regarding the ISASP is that at least the types of questions are not only selected response. So many of the standards in the Core can not be measured by the only multi-choice questions in the previous test.
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Bias can also creep into assessments and erode accurate results.
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descriptive feedback
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We do need to make sure that our feedback is helpful. Telling students "fix this" or "revise this paragraph" doesn't help them learn, the feedback needs to be more specific and point to the learning target.
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I totally agree with giving feedback about why they missed a question or problem. If you just count it wrong the student might now have any idea why they got the question wrong.
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The assessor must begin with a clear picture of why he or she is conducting the assessment.
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I think a lot of times we default to "for a grade" but there are lots of other reasons to consider.
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I think this is very important sentence. I know I don't do the greatest job of outlining learning goals everyday and explaining value in each. It's same thing for test. Are testing because its end of chapter or because you want to assess learning goals from the chapter that were the most important from the chapter and meet the standards for your class.
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I agree Tom, I am not the best at covering learning targets with students. And maybe standards based learning will help focus my lesson designing and improve student learning.
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I think it is very important that we focus on the learning that is taking place within our classrooms and not on grading. Our assessments should be an avenue to strengthen learning and to inform the teacher what they need to do for learning to continue to occur.
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This reminds me of UBD, or working backwards. The teacher knows the outcome first, and then builds the learning and assessments.
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Selecting an assessment method that is incapable of reflecting the intended learning will compromise the accuracy of the results.
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I thought the assessment brainstorming we did at the end of last week with ways to assess face-to-face vs. online was an interesting way to think of all the ways we can assess. I think as teachers we often default to a couple content-specific norms and it would be good to open up to other alternatives on occasion.
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Many years ago I remember assessing my math students at the end of the year with a multiple choice test. None of my tests during the year were multiple choice, but finals were required and it was the most efficient way to get my grades done :( I'm sure it did compromise the accuracy of the results.
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This means that teachers need to write learning targets in terms that students will understand.
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common assessments.
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Teachers have choices in the assessment methods they use
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inform what decisions?
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This has been a large debate that we have been having at our district. We need some sort of feedback roll out that will say how we have managed the data and what the data is and will be used for.
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I think is important part for a teacher after each assessment to use results to maybe modify teaching topics that students performed poorly on. Maybe need an extra day to cover certain topics more in depth if students struggled with it on test or maybe we have a poorly written question on the test causing students to miss points.
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communicated
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This has been another large debate that we have had. We want to make sure that our assessments are given back in a timely manner but we also want to make sure that they have correct and accurate feedback as well as to help the student know what they did well and where to improve and all of that takes time.
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TIME! It's a four-letter word in teaching! The feedback we give students is WAY more important than the grade, and way more time consuming. How do we effectively give the feedback necessary for student growth in a timely manner? I'd love to hear strategies from others here.
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Summative applications
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Periodic interim/benchmark assessments can also serve program evaluation purposes, as well as inform instructional improvement and identify struggling students and the areas in which they struggle.
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Our math department has been looking at the AAIMS tests for Algebra students which could be used as data to support the learning taking place.
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This makes me think of the concept of scaffolding. Which I have used in my classroom when lesson designing. Now I need to do the same thing with assessing. Assess students periodically both formative and summative.
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minimizing any bias that might distort estimates of student learning.
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As teachers we do have to be careful of bias and making assumptions. When I read through this about minimizing bias it made me think of the old ITBS/ITED tests and a student we had that was new to this country. The student was very bright but he did not perform well on the test because of bias. One example I recall was he had no idea what a fir tree was as where he was from there was no such thing.
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I completely understand this. Teaching writing and reading at the secondary level is so very difficult.
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Creating a plan like this for each assessment helps assessors sync what they taught with what they're assessing
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Knowledge targets, which are the facts and concepts we want students to know.
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As our district moves toward standards based grading, understanding our knowledge targets is naturally happening during this process.
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We are working on Power Standards in our buildings. I think this would fit with those too.
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It all goes back to 1) what do we want them to know and 2) how will we know when they know it. We are working hard on choosing power standards. It is a long and exhausting process but a necessary one. Even after power standards are chosen, we need to break them down into learning targets our students can understand.
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students to track their own progress on learning targets
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I have seen this done throughout a unit of student with a Red Light, Yellow Light, Green Light rating for students to self assess their percieved understading of a learning target. This self assessment was revisited frequently and used to drive student to specific learning activities that they needed to work on.
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I think allowing the students to self-assess and set goals is really beneficial. I like the idea of using red light, green light, and yellow light for students to show the teacher their understanding.
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performance assessment or personal communication may be less effective and too time-consuming
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One dilema that teacher face is the factor of time which we all know. I have worked with teacher who have over 200 students in their classes and often default to a selected response assessment item even when a performance based would be more appropriate. It is challenging to assess and provide feedback in timely manner with this many students. This is not an excuse, but a barrier that needs to be explored.
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or making the correct answer obvious
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dependable data generated at every level of assessment.
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I wonder how much professional develoment or preservice teacher training is spent on looking at data to make decisions. There is most likely a range of understanding of what data should be used to design instruction. This is why is it good to have a strong PLC for teachers to work through data and assessment creation (which is really challenging in itself).
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It is amazing to me that data acquisition/analysis and student feedback/scores are largely two separate endeavors. In this day and age, these should be the same step. Without some automation, I don't think this can actually be done. At least not in a meaningful manner.
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track their own progress on learning targets
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I have seen this done throughout a unit of student with a Red Light, Yellow Light, Green Light rating for students to self-assess their perceived understanding of a learning target. This self-assessment was revisited frequently and used to drive student to specific learning activities that they needed to work on.
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if students will be the users of the results because the assessment is formative
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n the past, few educators, policymakers, or parents would have considered questioning the accuracy of these tests.
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Assessment literacy is the foundation for a system that can take advantage of a wider use of multiple measures.
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inform students about their own progress
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clear curriculum maps for each standard, accurate assessment results, effective feedback, and results that point student and teacher clearly to next step
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I believe that this is important because highlights the role feedback plays in the assessment process. I think we often forget feedback.
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I agree, feedback is really important. It also needs to be provided as quickly as possible.
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Feedback is most certainly key for something that can be so subjective like writing, but I also think providing feedback on LOT can also improve students understanding. I know that is something I struggle with - leaving the necessary feedback. There's always a time crunch, and sometime students that assessed well receive little feedback even though they could use it too.
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students can use the results to self-assess and set goals.
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learning targets represented in the assessment into a written test plan that matches the learning targets represented in the curriculum.
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Making decisions that affect individuals and groups of students on the basis of a single measure
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We're betting that the instructional hours sacrificed to testing will return dividends in the form of better instructional decisions and improved high-stakes test scores
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The goal of a balanced assessment system is to ensure that all assessment users have access to the data they want when they need it, which in turn directly serves the effective use of multiple measures.
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From a summative point of view, users at the classroom and periodic assessment levels want evidence of mastery of particular standards; at the annual testing level, decision makers want the percentage of students meeting each standard.
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assessment formatively
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I feel like we could do a better job of formatively assessing students. When students hear the word assessment, they think quiz or test and they get apprehensive. We need to change their mindset and show them how they can use formative assessments (exit tickets, class polls, one-minute papers, etc) to help them take control of their own learning.
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the use of multiple measures does not, by itself, translate into high-quality evidence
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At the level of annual state/district standardized assessments, they involve where and how teachers can improve instruction—next year.
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Who is the decision maker?This will vary. The decision makers might be students and teachers at the classroom level; instructional leaders, learning teams, and teachers at the periodic level; or curriculum and instructional leaders and school and community leaders at the annual testing level.
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or summatively—to feed results into the grade book.
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Effectively planning for the use of multiple measures means providing assessment balance throughout these three levels, meeting student, teacher, and district information needs.
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Reasoning targets, which require students to use their knowledge to reason and problem solve. A reasoning target in math might be to use statistical methods to describe, analyze, and evaluate data. Performance skill targets, which ask students to use knowledge to perform or demonstrate a specific skill, such as reading aloud with fluency. Product targets, which specify that students will create something, such as a personal health-related fitness plan.
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balanced system
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overflow of testing
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Yes. There is a lot of testing these days One of my friends mentioned that between testing and snow days she hadn't "taught" from MLK day to almost President's day. Needless to say she was anxious about how well students wee going to demonstrate learning when they hadn't had much instruction for over a month.
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schools now make decisions about individual students, groups of students, instructional programs, resource allocation, and more.
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We're betting that the instructional hours sacrificed to testing will return dividends in the form of better instructional decisions and improved high-stakes test scores
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about the overall level of students' performance.
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"Personalized" vs. "Personal" Learning - 5 views
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When that happens, the structures around the classroom leave little room for the kind of authentic, whole-child personalization many teachers dream of offering.
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This is a challenge for me. How do we personalize learning while ensuring that teachers are teaching and students are learning what is expected? I do not want online learning to become just something else they do in order to check a box on Yes! I have personalized learning for my students!
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Agreed. We have a lot of boxes to tick already. Where does the accountability lie when students don't achieve their goals/what is expected of them?
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It’s as if engaging them in learning without technology has become this impossible task.
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Whoa! Having kids engaged in school and in their learning is something teachers have been doing long before technology became an imperative part of education. (I realize he agrees with me. That anyone could feel this statement strongly is what I reacted to.)
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I thought this was interesting as well. It seems like an easy out for anyone that needs an excuse. Oh it's not the content we just can't compete with their video games.
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the best thing we can do for kids is empower them to make regular, important, thoughtful decisions about their own learning, what they learn and how they learn it
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How do we make this happen? I do not think that one teacher in a building can pull this off. I see this as being a monumental shift in an entire district to truly make personalized learning personal to each student.
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I think this is also one of my main questions, and something I hope to explore in this course. Does personalized/personal learning work in small doses? In the confines of a single classroom or a single unit?
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That is a total shift in thought, and I agree, how do we do it? Give me the manual!
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personalization is “not about giving students what they want, it’s about a recommended learning path just for them.”[
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This really sums up, for me, the difference between personalized learning and having personal learning. I think it is the learning path that educators get caught up on. The Oh! This program scales up the difficulty if the student answers the question right and scales it down if they miss it!, type of thing. That isn't personal to the student at all.
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This kind of learning allows students to work at their own pace and level, meets the individual needs of students, and perhaps most importantly, is not a one-size fits all model.
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What do you do with students that work at a slow pace and can't meet deadlines? That may lead to more of a teacher directed approach to speed things up.
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I think this would be a hard sell in the high school where the smarted kids would complain about having to do more than the other students. They would say that its not fair.
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I think you both bring up really good points. How can you even grade something like this when one student does twice the work of another?
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We can truly individualize the classroom by using data-driven platforms to continually assess and track progress through any given curriculum and provide the most relevant content or resources to any given learner based on specific needs or learning styles
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But I marvel how that, in many schools I work with, the prevailing narrative seems to be that we can’t engage kids without technology, without a smartphone, tablet computer or some other multimedia device or tool.
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There is a lot of truth to this. The problem is not only is this the truth in schools but households as well.
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We can't stop the technology train, nor should we. Tech, when used responsibly and effectively, is an invaluable tool in our society and schools. The key here is 'effectively.' Too many educators put kids on computers to look cool,"Hey, I'm using technology!" However, in reality, it's busy work and low-level thinking. What we ask students to do with technology is key to creating a truly PL classroom.
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Give them opportunities to learn personally, to create their own texts and courses of study, and to pursue that learning with others in and out of the classroom who share a passion.
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How would this work? The 3 most important things in my son's life are Fortnite, socializing with friends, and sports. Where would the balance be if they were in charge of designing their own courses?
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Depends on the topic, of course, and hard to motivate either way- but there is reading/writing/communicating in social media, Fortnite, and sports. There is history in sports. Math in sports. I'm sure your son uses our fundamental skills and builds new knowledge using the things he loves.
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I think to ensure that learning happens outside of the classroom, we need to shift education to a trade school model, where students are shadowing professionals, choosing apprenticeships/internships, etc. during normal school hours. These experiences would replace some of the traditional classes during the school day.
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2. Education is about the transmission of bits of information, not the construction of meaning.
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I disagree with how this statement is written. Education isn't entirely about the transmission of information, but information is still important and shouldn't be dismissed. Education can't be an 'either/or,' it must be a 'both.' Students need information in order to apply it, design, and create. Without information, there is a huge gap left in their learning called 'ignorance.'
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I agree with your statement- I had to re-read this section a few times to understand exactly what they were getting at. I think the idea here is that students should be choosing/finding their information, though, not having that information 'delivered' to them.
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same knowledge
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Every person/child is unique. I agree that skills, and to a point knowledge, should vary. However, there is a certain well-rounded nature we want children to possess to be successful in society. Hence why we created a common set of standards, like Iowa Core. There should always be certain skills and information we set forth for children to learn. Then, there should be an element to learning that opens up new experiences and opportunities for exploring interests. Balance is important, I think.
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Very true. I teach History and Government. There is some information that must be had by all. The method, delivery, way can be different but none the less some items must be covered.
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I unfortunately don't remember the source, though I'm sure it's something I could look up- but I was once taught/read that a lot of the things we do is just to train our brain to do more complex tasks. We may not necessarily use all the algebra and trig we learn, for example, but it builds new connections in our brains and helps us learn and think in new ways. That's sometimes difficult to explain to students.
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it implies moving away from the industrialized form of education that pumps out cookie-cutter students with the
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commitment to individualism yet experience a “relentless pressure to conform
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learning tends to nourish kids’ curiosity and deepen their enthusiasm
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it involves collaboration and takes place in a communit
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“Follow the money” is apt advice in many sectors of education
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‘We often say we want creativity and innovation – personalization – but every mechanism we use to measure it is through control and compliance.’
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The longer I teach (22 years) the more I find that the continued focus on test scores hampers a lot of learning. Teaching to the test, focusing on the test, etc. , etc. are sometimes a large waste of everyone's time. In this current era do we actually need to have state testing to decide if a school is functioning? When teachers are evaluated there is not a test.
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As a teacher its hard to give up some control of the classroom and give students the freedom to learn in whatever style fits them the best.
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I agree, it is hard to give up control of the classroom, sometimes it feels like giving up control the whole class will go crazy.
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First, ask just about any vendor of personalization technology what the intended outcome is and, with a little prodding, you’ll get to this: better test scores.
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The longer I teach (22 years) the more I find that the continued focus on test scores hampers a lot of learning. Teaching to the test, focusing on the test, etc. , etc. are sometimes a large waste of everyone's time. In this current era do we actually need to have state testing to decide if a school is functioning? When teachers are evaluated there is not a test.
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but meaningful (and truly personal) learning never requires technology.
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Very true. I have polled my students and at times they feel that there is an unnatural push towards using technology. They feel that some teachers/administrators push technology just for the sake of it. This did answer my question about In The Day Of The Life entry as my student will show the example that learning does not have to require technology.
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Agreed. I teach band. I sometimes have kids write on worksheets, counting rhythms, or reflecting on something they played or heard. Their handwriting is terrible! They don't spend any time writing anymore, it is all done on computers. This, I believe is a true shame. Technology is great for a lot of things, but when we are losing skills because of its use, that is frightening.
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authentic choice
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This is tough to implement. Students don't know intuitively how to do this on their own. There has to be coaching a feedback provided. I know that I have not implemented this to any degree of fidelity, but I am amazed at what students come up with on their own. They need to know they have that freedom, and that comes with the knowledge of how to use it.
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It is important for students to have the freedom to choose things that are meaningful to them. When that happens they buy into learning.
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I agree that this is tough to implement but I think it is a critical component. The freedom of students getting to play a key role in their own learning is so fun to watch. I am amazed when I see even a small taste of this, the difference in the students' attitudes and motivations.
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When students are given an actual choice, it does seem to make a world of difference in their efforts. It also seems like they are more excited for class, and sometimes even upset when the period ends.
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“Personalized” learning is something that we do to kids; “personal” learning is something they do for themselves.
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I love this line! We have to help students do things for themselves. I don't know about you, but implementing this for the vast majority of students takes so much time in getting them comfortable with the desire to learn. I know, I know, I'm just trying to pass the buck onto someone that "should have taught them that". How do I do it? I need to only consider reality, it doesn't matter if they don't know how. They need to learn how, and that is where I need to focus my attention.
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This is a powerful distinction. Teaching kids how to do things for themselves is something that I believe is important. The kids in my school lack the intrinsic motivation to do anything, except play Minecraft. As in many initiatives in education, I think that it is not necessarily that we should make a shift from one thing to another, but how can we blend the good from all? That is, how can we blend personalization and personal learning, not just follow one or the other.
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Wow! This really jumped out at me. I don't think many people would acknowledge the difference between personalized and personal learning. When described like this... it really makes me think of the key distinctions that must be made. The important part is not just that we are altering our instruction to what our students like but encouraging the development of personal learning experiences and helping set our students up for successful experiences when this is done.
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who knows each child well
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Who has the time for this? I say it sarcastically, but this is really a numbers game. 25 kids, 45 minutes, 90 class periods in a semester. That is 2.7 hours per student. That includes getting to know students, helping with personalization choices, decision making, monitoring learning, providing feedback, monitoring new learning, providing more feedback on dozens of standards. Our system isn't designed to foster personalized learning. We are trying to fit a square key in a round hole.
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It's true, this is definetely a system-problem. It's one of the questions I'm hoping to answer through this course. Can these concepts be used in smaller ways and have a significant impact? They do ask a lot of us as educators.
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Certain forms of technology can be used to support progressive education
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I think of this as adaptive learning. it can be a valuable resource in personalization. Going back millenia, personalization began with the socratic method from Socrates himself. He was able to adapt learning through questioning, but he didn't rely on technology. He also had groups of 10 students for extended periods of time. So maybe technology allows teachers to have a larger effective reach than without it. In today's world, do you think technology aided learning is essential?
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She cautions educators who may be excited about the progressive educational implications for “personalized learning” to make sure everyone they work with is on the same page about what that phrase means.
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My school is always looking to be on the cutting edge, looking for the new shiny thing that will catch people's eyes. "Personalized Learning" is the flavor of the year this year. It is frustrating as an educator in this situation because we feel we are doing something new ALL THE TIME. Our administration has not been clear as to what it will look like for us and our kids yet. While, in theory, I think that personalized learning will have many benefits for kids, I worry about what else it is going to pile on to us teachers.
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system of accountability in the U.S. educational system
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Standardized tests seem counterintuitive to innovative learning. How do we balance the two?
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If the standardized tests are on concepts/objectives that we think all students show know/understand as they progress through school, they should be general enough that students can approach them from different ways/their own ways and still achieve the objectives.
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Admin is always worried about test scores and rankings but if we want to give students the freedom to learn what they want the admin may be concerned about scores.
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Big questions, passion, personal interest are what should drive our use of technology, not the other way around.
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best student-centered, project-based education, kids spend much of their time learning with and from one another
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it implies moving away from the industrialized form of education that pumps out cookie-cutter students with the
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This made me think of our last forum post when we discussed the difference between "personalized and differentiation". This is what I was referring to when I said using them interchangeably doesn't necessarily work. It might... but often time personalized means student choice based and out of the ordinary.
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For many educators that’s not the true meaning of “personalized learning.”
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After decades of this approach, it is clear that all children don’t learn the same way and personalization seems to honor those differences
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“We often say we want creativity and innovation – personalization – but every mechanism we use to measure it is through control and compliance,”
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Our kids (and we ourselves) are suddenly walking around with access to the sum of human knowledge in our pockets and connections to literally millions of potential teachers
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content knowledge that, as we know from experience, never gets applied in real life.
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online1: Iowa Online Teaching Standards - 43 views
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Proposed Online Teaching Standards
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These standards are non-evaluative. They are meant to provide guidance in nationally recognized best practices for teaching online.
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I'm getting ready to work with a group of teacher librarians and we are starting by looking at our guidelines from Dept. of Ed for school library program. I think each year, as we add new tools, strategies, we have to not lose sight of the progress we are making on any standards or guidelines. Seeing how close we are to best practice, only helps us focus on what work we have to do. So, they may be non-evaluative, but maybe also not "optional". Does that make sense? Kristin
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I think that makes sense. There is a proper procedure (I'm assuming) inclusive of the BoEE, SAI, and ISEA on setting standards that would be evaluative... and therefore necessary for licensure. These haven't gone through that process. One of the best things about the standards is exactly what is being done on this page... they lead to good discussions about what is great teaching.
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Knows and aligns instruction to the achievement goals of the local agency and the state, such as with the Iowa Core (Varvel I.A, ITS 1.f, ITS 3.a)
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This is not unique to the online teaching standards. It would seem prudent to align anything we teach to students and/or adults with the Iowa Core or the newly adopted Common Core Standards in reading and math.
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I agree; with so much to teach these days, the classroom time needs to be tightly tied your Content Area Standards (in my case Reading) and Technology. My students will be in a world quite different from mine, so more Technology use is needed. They are already experimenting with Online usage but without supervision and guidance. The Standards will help me as a teacher to focus on ethics for Internet use and help in guiding them into the best pratices.
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The teaching standards have always provided me with guidance when selecting content to teach my students. When I taught Art, Science or Social Studies. Technology knowledge is critical to everyone, including students in special education. I was unaware until taking this Moodle course, of the online teaching standards. I agree that it is a good tool for teaching.
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I have always had a strong interest in knowing and aligning the instruction with the goals. It is very easy to fall in to the practice of doing things because: "they have always been done", because I found an exciting new tool, or it is the catch phrase of the month, I feel it is good practice to regularly revisit the desired goal to better assure the alignment of that goal and the instructional opportunities to achieve said goal. I am glad this is here and glad it is at the top, intended or not.
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Aligning insturction with the goals is somethign I have always had an interest in. I think it is very easy to fall into the practice of: always having done it that way, or trying the new exciting tool, or jumping on the catch phrase of the month with out considering the learnign goal. I think it is very important to regualry revisit the learning and achievement goals to make cetian that the instruction is aligned to that goal. I am glad to see it mentioned here, and intendedl or not, glad to see it at the top.
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I would agree that aligning the instruction with the goal is an important and often over looked piece of instruction. Way to often instructional practice is done because; "that's the way it has always been done, or because we found a new exciting tool, or because of the catch phrase of the month. I am glad to see the 'goal-instructional alignment" piece mentioned and glad to see it at the top.
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I would agree and have always been a big fan of aligning instruction with the learning or achievement goals. Way to often I have used a particular instruction because 1. That's the way it was always done, 2. There was a new exciting tool or 3. There was a new or popular catch phrase going around. I am glad to see this listed, and intended or not, glad to see it at the top. I view it as very important to often revisit the goals to assess if the instruction is aligned to that goal.
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I would agree and have always been a big fan of aligning instruction with the learning or achievement goals. Way to often I have used a particular instruction because 1. That's the way it was always done, 2. There was a new exciting tool or 3. There was a new or popular catch phrase going around. I am glad to see this listed, and intended or not, glad to see it at the top. I view it as very important to often revisit the goals to assess if the instruction is aligned to that goal.
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I would agree and have always been a big fan of aligning instruction with the learning or achievement goals. Way to often I have used a particular instruction because 1. That's the way it was always done, 2. There was a new exciting tool or 3. There was a new or popular catch phrase going around. I am glad to see this listed, and intended or not, glad to see it at the top. I view it as very important to often revisit the goals to assess if the instruction is aligned to that goal.
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I too was unaware of the online teaching standards, but they make perfect sense. If we expect to bring students into the 21st century classroom, then using standards to guide that work will help all stakeholders. Otherwise, there is really no way to measure our effectiveness in the online environment.
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Is knowledgeable and has the ability to use computer programs required in online education to improve learning and teaching, including course management software (CMS) and synchronous/asynchronous communication tools (chat, email, web 2.0, videoconferencing, webinar, whiteboard, etc.) (SREB B.3, Varvel III.B)
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This one puts a bit of trepidation in my soul. I want to use technology well when I teach adult learners. However, I know that I still have a lot to learn in this realm.
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It's impossible to stay trained and current on all of the available tools. Just pick a few that work for you and work with incorporating those. You are better off knowing a lot about a few tools than knowing a little bit about hundreds of tools.
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I agree that it is impossible to stay current and trained on all available tools, but I don't think this is what the standard is saying. My interpretation is that it just encourages online educators to be lifelong learners and stay abreast of changes. I also agree that it is better to find the tools we like the best and learn to use and apply them to our course objectives.
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I think this goes back to the discussion we had last week. Knowing what tool will work best in a particular learning situation is important. I try to stay current, but that really is almost impossible. Just in the first week, others in class referenced many online tools that I wasn't familar with, but wanted to learn more about. Using Diigo is another example. I've used this tool for awhile and that is evident by looking at my bookmarks. However, I have not utilized the group function nor have I used the discussion feature. I think this would be a wonderful tool to use in the online environment!
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I think the focus here makes a good point. An online class will be by definition part of synchronous and asynchronous communication. So instructors and students have to work with tools such as Skype, meebo, Adobe Connect for webinars, videoconferencing, etc. In the case of Skype, this morning I worked with a partner in South Carolina and we used Skype to share screens, send messages, but we didn't use the web camera because seeing each other for this meeting wasn't necessary. We only needed to hear each other and see items on our desktops. And secondly, (although you have it listed first), if you are online, you need a CMS - in this case, Moodle to tie it all together. Teachers need to practice in this environment - set up a meeting with someone to use Skype, register for a free webinar, etc. Expand your learning! :-)
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I think the modifier "knowledgeable" and the "ability to use" instead of "has mastery of" is crucial. Those that wrote the national standards recognized what everyone here has said, that technology changes so much, mastery is not only impossible, but foolish to seek.
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As a Reading Teacher I expect myself to be knowledgeable and have the ability to use (though mastery would a goal), but are these Standards for the classroom teacher or the teacher of Technology?
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"has knowledge" is a beginning point. Some of our group members don't feel "knowledgeable" even though they have used many of the Web 2.0 tools. Those wise folks know exactly how big the "ocean" of technology is - that's why there is a bit of discomfort. When that discomfort or thirst for more knowledge leads one to a class like this, IT's a Very good end result!!!
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Like anything else, you can always find someone who is more knowledgeable, but you can always find someone is less knowledgeable than you are too!
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Too bad these standards are for online course teachers only. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we were moving to blended classes everywhere? It would be for me-I'd like to see a lot more use of online resources. There are so many simulations, games, virtual environments that students could be exxperiencing. And, then having conversation about outside of the classroom. Wouldn't that be an improvement on a worksheet for homework?
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This is a rather daunting standard at first glance. Keeping up with technology is not an occasional event. What it does say to me is that we have to be willing to make this an ongoing effort and not become complacent with learning just one or two tools, but to stay open to trying new tools. I think the key is matching the technology to the learning goal.
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I was wondering the same think as Bonnie, are these standards for the classroom teacher or the teacher of Technology. I feel that we should have some basic knowledge of a tool before introducing it into a classroom full of students, however being that we are all lifelong learnings it is a given that the students will find things within that tool that we didn't know about and be able to teach us something. I just feel that if I wait to master something before bringing it to my students they will never experience it.
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Understands and uses data from assessments to guide instruction
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Is this speaking to formative assesment/assessment for learning? How can we be sure that all readers of this document have the same definition of "assessement"? Lack of a common vocabulary sometimes leads to misconceptions and misunderstaindings.
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That's a very critical issue! There are way too many assessments "given" that are not used! And then who gets to decide which assessments should be privileged over others. Reliability and validity do need to count as major players in the decisions!
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Good points. Lots going on in this short sentence. I would hope that the intent would be around student learning and not just completion of tasks. This would lead the instructor to be a critical consumer of what data would help him/her accomplish teaching for understanding.
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I would agree this is an important and, for me, challenging aspect. I am guessing this is implied but I think it is crucial to use data from valid and reliable assessments (whatever that means) as many times I hear of decisions being made based on data that has little to do with the actual skills and abilities we would like the learner to have. Finding easy to use assessments that can provide meaningful data to guide instruction has been a challenge for me but one that I think can help to be addressed by the influx of technolgy tools and their ability to collect and provide graphic representations to aid in analysis of the data. On the simpler side I think it speaks to the importance of the instructor learner relationship. If learning is going to be advanced the instructor must have and use information of where the learner currently is and then instruct accordingly.
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Using data to guide intruction is another area that I have a great deal of interest in. I am a fimr beleiver that the single most important thing a teacher needs to know is to find out what the learn knows, figure that out then instruct accordingly, and this would need to be an ongoing process. The challenge, for me, is to find assessments that can efficiently provide that information but I think technolgy tools can can certainly help in that area with alll that can be doen to collect and organize data for easier analysis. A key piece to that being certain that I am collecting data that is well aligned with what the learner needs to know and be able to do, as I often see decisions that seem to be made based on data that seems to have little to do with what we really want learns to know and be able to do.
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I would agree that this is a key piece. I am a believer that the single most important thing a teacher needs to know is what the learner already knows and then to teach accordingly. Collecting and using that information is an important part of any learning process.
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Again this is something I am glad to see. I am a believer that the single most important thing a teacher needs to know is what the learner already knows. Then to take that information and teach accordingly. I think this standard speaks to the importance of that and the ongoing process that should be taking place with any quality instruction.
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Again this is something I am glad to see. I am a believer that the single most important thing a teacher needs to know is what the learner already knows. Then to take that information and teach accordingly. I think this standard speaks to the importance of that and the ongoing process that should be taking place with any quality instruction.
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Again this is something I am glad to see. I am a believer that the single most important thing a teacher needs to know is what the learner already knows. Then to take that information and teach accordingly. I think this standard speaks to the importance of that and the ongoing process that should be taking place with any quality instruction.
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Again this is something I am glad to see. I am a believer that the single most important thing a teacher needs to know is what the learner already knows. Then to take that information and teach accordingly. I think this standard speaks to the importance of that and the ongoing process that should be taking place with any quality instruction.
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Again this is something I am glad to see. I am a believer that the single most important thing a teacher needs to know is what the learner already knows. Then to take that information and teach accordingly. I think this standard speaks to the importance of that and the ongoing process that should be taking place with any quality instruction.
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Kim, you said, "I would hope that the intent would be around student learning and not just completion of tasks." I couldn't agree more! This is assessment FOR learning (formative assessment) as we know it in the Iowa Core characteristics of effective instruction. (I think denise mentioned it in an earlier sticky note, now that I look back at it...). Effective instruction in a face-to-face environment seems to be similar to an online environment, too...to some degree.
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Utilizes a course evaluation and student feedback data to improve the course (Varvel VI.F)
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This step is crucial. It's very tempting to set up a course and never touch it again. Given the constantly changing online environment, it is even more necessary to stay current with a regularily-scheduled course review process.
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I have been in online classes where the instructor has taken a course and just "refried it" from offering to offering. Links are no longer valid, dates are incorrect, technologies have changed, etc.
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That would be terrible. I'm spending so much time putting together my course. I want to be positive everything is in top working condition so participants won't face any frustration.
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"Refried it". I've never heard that term before... it's now part of my lexicon! Denise, what you mention is so true. There is a bit of pride involved in a course, whether online or F2F (at least I should say you can tell the teachers who take pride in their work very quickly). On the other hand, links expire without notice very quickly, and updates are made to Moodle servers behind your back that all of a sudden change the way your course looks. It's tough to keep up sometimes.
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Each year I have had the students reflect on units covered this year...It has always been for my benefit...interesting to see it as a proposed Standard now.
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I think "Refried" courses happen whether they are online or in the classroom. This standard should be for all courses, not just online ones.
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I agree, Sara. Our AEA has an online evaluation for courses with participants responding to Likert scale items and given the chance to add comments. Much depends on the instructor's willingness to honestly examine that feedback, consider patterns in the responses, and make adjustments that improve the course.
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• Assists students with technology used in the course (Varvel III.C)
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I feel that assisting online learners in a course is very important to keep them from being frustrated and spending too much on the technology and not enough time on the learning. I find that I have to deliver one-on-one help in my online class to teachers who are not as tech savvy as others.
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Leslie, I have been on the student side of this standard and totally agree with you!
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Leslie: I agree as well. If possible, I think it would be a good idea to have some F2F time. This might work well at the beginning of the class so participants will feel comfortable with the interface. I also think this might alleviate fears learners might have and consequently content will become primary and the technology secondary.
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Great point about the content remaining the primary focus and the technology secondary. I know I appreciate the tutorials in this course and in others I have taken when it has been provided. If I have to find my own online tutorial or read about it, it takes way too much time and I'm totally stressed before I even begin the actual assignment.
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Staying focused on the content is critical in reaching the overall goals of a course. When I first stated taking online courses I would often find myself double checking what I did to make sure a post occurred or paper uploaded. The more online courses I have participated in has yielded a comfort level with the technology tool and thus the focus can be on the content.
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I can strongly relate to this, I'm one of those less than tech savvy teachers. There are so many new and potentially very useful tools that it is hard to know which will be useful to me.
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I agree with that helping with the technology takes the stress off. I think that tutorials over the technology being used is a great way to help both student and teacher save time. This way if something is forgotten you can go back and see what the next step is.
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I know that when I have something that has to be done using technology I can get frustrated really easily. Having a tutorial like I have for the class I am in right now has been very helpful and that way if I feel like I am lost I can go back and watch the tutorial to see if what I need to do next.
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I agree with the comments. I know that when I have anything dealing with technology I sometimes get a little worked up. The more I am comfortable with what I am doing the better I do. I really like to the online class I am in right now because the tutorials really help me with the assignments. They allow me to learn the technology before I have to use it.
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But high expectations are really good for all learners! And if we aren't life-long learners as teachers, how will our students ever be life-long learners? (It's in most of our 35 school districts' mission statements!)
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Content knowledge is one factor that is very highly correlated with student achievement. At least in Math Eduction research...
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• Maintains an online social presence that is available, approachable, positive, interactive, and sincere (SREB C.3, Varvel VII.A)
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I know this is one thing I need to work on in my classes. Because I take online classes as well as teach them, it's easy to forget to check in with the classes I teach, as I'm so worried about deadlines for my own assignments.
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I've really try to maintain an online social presence by.... 1. weekly "check-in's" to post tips and suggestions, 2. to setup a calendar that will attempt to keep students "on pace" between due dates, rather posting an email that everything is due tomorrow. 3. always responed to student's posting with discussion forum. I know I could do more.... always looking for innovative ways to do it... even considered meeting in Second Life (keep in mind I teach college students online ;-)
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I think it's also important to think about the " positive and the interactive" that are built in through "community building". I've been in some on-line classes where many folks are working at the "minimum" level of participation and really don't even add much more than a sentence in response to a comment. (YES, worse than the kids when they want to know How Much they need to write!)
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Does this also mean actively participating in social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter?
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I sure hope it doesn't. As much as I am tied to the computer at both work and home, I have avoided the social networking sites with diligence. I don't have a problem interacting with others regarding work related items, etc., but I have a real hesitation to 'share my personal life and thoughts' with the cyber-world. Even the ability to select those 'friends' doesn't really give me any reassurance that a link can be made to those that I don't select.
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I have to believe it means some type of professional site, and not Facebook/Twitter. I've avoided social networking sites like the plague, mostly because I like to be off the computer if I'm not working. And I agree with Eldon, I don't necessarily want to put my personal life out there for all to read. But I have no problem maintaining a "professional" online presence.
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I have to believe it's not including Facebook/Twitter or whatever else is out there. I've avoided those like the plague, mainly probably because I don't like being glued to the computer when I'm not working.
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Identifies and communicates learning outcomes and expectations through a course overview/orientation (Varvel IV.A, ITS 3.b)
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I took the instructional design class this past summer. One of the things we needed to do was to create an overview/orientation for our learners. Before I took the class, I already had my course somewhat organized, but had neglected to include this feature in my course. Now, I realize how really important this is. One of my colleagues at work often uses the phrase, "go slow to go fast." I think that's so applicable here. It takes time to create the overview and you're really not having students learn content. However, by providing the necessary guidelines and instructions immediately, things will go much smoother in the class.
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I, too, like the "go slow to go fast"! because teachers need time to absorb the learning. That means that we have to begin with the end in mind or we won't make it to our learning destination. I often compare that to heading to Des Moines but ending up in Detroit, Michigan. They are both DM towns so that would be OK? It gives a "light-hearted" view of the necessity for the overview as you said Pam.
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How very true to "go slow to go fast". I would be one of those individuals who "absorbs the learning". I want to make sure that my skills are to a level that will benefit the learner and not cause confusion.
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I often struggle with the phrase 'go slow to go fast' as I am not quite sure how 'fast' benefits any kind of learning. And I don't mean to equate fast to speed; but rather to equate fast to skimming the surface. In the experiences I have had with online courses for adult learners I find using a landscape post to reflect back some of their own quotes helps them think more deeply about the essential question to which they are responding. That deep thinking results in much more conceptual understanding (and dare I say paradigm shifting).
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Has experienced online learning from the perspective of a student
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You know this is interesting. We most likely teach as we were taught, but in reality, we need to be teaching very differently today than in the past. Our students are motivated by different things. So taking an online class is a very good idea, but I think "living" and "working" more like our students is as helpful. If they are texting their friends to set something up, are we texting our students? That is their world. Something to think about maybe!
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I can remember not being happy with elementary teachers who had taught my father some 30 years earlier. These times have changed. That ship has sailed! Lectures and standing in front of a group delivering knowledge are not helpful in promoting learning that leads to application and creation!!!
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I think this is an important benchmark! I know I was very appreciative of what I had learned from the many online classes I had taken before I was asked to teach one. I "borrowed" the ideas that I really liked--especially organizational ideas, and embedded them in my classes.
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I heard a quote recently about this exact thing and it really made me think. It was a young student speaking. He said, "Don't prepare us for your world, prepare us for ours."
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As I jumped into online teacher over a year ago, all the material and books on the subject stressed this very point... to teach an online class it is best to experience it from the student perspective. This certainly was helpful when it came to design and implementation of my own course. I have recently join a peer review group called Learning Triangles - 3 instructors all enroll in each other's class for the purpose of furthering improve our instruction.
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This standard is certainly a big reason why I'm participating in this course. Trying to prepare to teach an online course through "traditional" methods seems a little like trying to learn to swim by reading a book.
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Once again - Jason speaks the right words! We think of how we offer PD - one of the critical pieces of teaching a new strategy or concept is to put the teacher in the student desk and allow them to experience the learning. As always - the best way to learn is by doing. "Sit and git" just doesn't make it!
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I think everyone who teaches online should first have taken an online course. You really need to see it from both sides.
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Selects and understands how to evaluate learning materials and resources that align with the context and enhance learning
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Is this the only place where we mention resources? I think the type of resources works with differentiation, motivation and learning in general. Are we adding content to our classes - digital video, access to print - online, online databases? This is very important, I think.
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Yes, selection of quality resources would be important. Online resources today are vast, and we want to have our students using resources that are age appropriate, MCGF, authoritative, differentiated for learning styles, and that will advance the learning goals of the class. Students should be evaluating the resources that they find online as to validity and usefullness. Lots of opportunities for teacher librarians to work with teachers designing online opportunities for their students in the area of resources!
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In answer to your question, Kristin, this is primarily it for the teaching standards and resources, as utilizing resources in online teaching heavily falls in the instructional design process (std. 3). Specific applications of resources are more heavily identified in the course standards.
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Designs the structure of the course and the presentation of the content to best enhance student learning, including using unit/lesson overviews and reviews, using patterns in lesson sequencing, and using appropriate visual web design techniques (SREB C.14, Varvel V.F)
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I feel that course design and presentation are very important. Using good desing techniques helps the student to become more focused on content and better able to organize thoughts. If a site is too hard to follow visually, it can be confusing, distracting and frustrating, especially for novice online learners or technology learners.
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It's funny how something like the design of your Moodle site seems so non-academic (or non-Iowa Core-ish), and yet you are exactly right.
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At times I have questioned if I have addressed all of the course requirements, completed the assignments, etc. Taking a course yourself is a good reminder that someone else is going to have to follow your train of thought and act upon it. If my students are confused by the structure, it will take away from their ability to comprehend the material. I am experimenting with color on my Moodle site to see if it helps younger students. For example, all assignments that have to be completed have blue text. Additional resources, tutorials, etc. have red text. Hope that helps them...
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I really like your color coding idea, Jenny. I have been shocked at how "un-linear" I have been in this class as I start in one place and don't necessarily go through the list. I have liked anything that says "you are done!" So anything you do to make those tasks more visible for students will be helpful!
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I agree--color coding sounds like a good idea! Might the Heartland Moodle consider some consistent colors? So as participants move from class to class, they colors stay the same?
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Leslie, I couldn't agree more with your thoughts on course design and presentation. I completed a hybrid online/f2f graduate program a few years ago at one of IA's regents institutions. One of the courses in the sequence was perceived by several in the cohort to be very poorly done. Why? The design, layout and navigation were much different (and perhaps less linear) than the rest of the courses.
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Tailors instruction to meet the different needs of students, including different learning styles, different interests and backgrounds, and students with special needs or whom are language learners
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Online tools provide lots of opportunites to diferentiate instruction, everything from providing resources at varying reading levels, text to speech capabilities, language translations, visual resources; technology can really be "assistive" for all learners.
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That's one benefit of online learning that is not mentioned enough. We stress flexibility in terms of time, pace, and place, but the flexibility of access to content using online tools is such an untapped benefit for students with different needs.
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We also should talk about student engagement. Many students are much more engaged in on-line learning than in the old traditional mode. So this meets that engagement piece as well. I would also agree with both of you as far as access to different types of resouces.
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Possibly one of the biggest hurdles to this is also the primary reason we use online instruction. The logistics of face-to-face are difficult to overcome, so we go online. We can offer many scenarios, but do we really know without the personal interaction how the participants are reacting to the instruction. Is there enough feedback opportunities to vary the instruction as needed? I don't want to seem too negative - just appears to be one of those difficulties without the f2f.
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Tailoring instruction online seems like it is much easier than fce to face. Purposeful planning is always difficult but an online environment allows the teacher to support those who need it when they need it and push those students to go beyond what they ever imagined they could do. I agree with cheryl that online tools provide teacher with many resources to differentiate for each and every student based on their needs.
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Even if instruction isn't designed for specific students' needs, it can be varied in ways that allow different avenues for students to gain understanding. The tenants of Universal Design for Learning fit in here beautifully.
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Understands and uses course content that complies with intellectual property rights and fair use, and assists students in complying as well
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We just held a workshop at our AEA this past week on Digital Citizenship for Today's Schools that addressed this topic. Our presenter emphasized the importance ot teaching students about ethical use of technology. It becomes especially important as student work moves outside of the 4 walls of the classroom and out on to the Internet and social media. This topic ties directly into the 21 Century Tech Literacy part of the Iowa Core - Promote and Model Digital Citizenship and Responsibility.
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And ethical use of technology needs to be DEMONSTRATED by all staff, all the time. It's hard to "condemn" students for plagiarizing when the teacher never gives proper credit for visuals or text that may or may not be in the public domain!
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This is a convicting criteria. I did not do a very good job as a f2f teacher citing my sources - even more important in an online environment!
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Selects and uses technologies appropriate to the content that enhance learning (SREB M.3, Varvel IV.D, ITS 3.e, ITS 4.f)
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We spent time discussing this in last weeks forum. How do you select the best technology to use in your class? How many different tools do you need in your toolbox so you have an adequate selection? In order to meet this criteria, I think we need to do our best to stay current. Obviously, that can't mean we are familiar with everything, because that would be impossible. We do need to be aware, however, about the different catagories of tools..wikis, blogs, screencasts, etc. This class will certainly help us in that endeavor.
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When I read this criteria, I thought of the TPACK framework and some of the work done on learning activity types: http://activitytypes.wmwikis.net/ When does it make the most sense to use a blog rather than a wiki? My guess is that an effective online teacher can answer these types of questions effectively.
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Ditto Ditto! I was very impressed, but also overwhelmed at all the tools available online. Being a 'dabbler' by nature, I have to force myself to pick a few and try to become proficient at those rather than be less than adequate at a large number of tools. A good carpenter is necessarily a good plumber!
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Demonstrates growth in technology knowledge and skills in order to stay current with emerging technologies (
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Some districts use a skills checklist or Atomic Learning-style skill inventories as a requirement for teachers (they post these in their portfolio). Others would include completion of a class, although the skeptic could say that's not necessarily showing growth. There is the actual lessons or technological artifacts produced from technology work (if you saw a copy of this class from 2 years ago to a copy of it today, you'd definitely see how I've grown in this area).
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My family's district had both students and parents fill out a technology skills survey. I'm not sure how it matched up to the skills of our teachers (we're a one to one district) but it was informing for me. My 7th grader was unsure of lots of the terms which indicated to me she wasn't using that technology.
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student self-assessment and pre-assessment
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Wow! Student ownership for self-assessment and pre-assessment so it's not the teacher who is always doing the "assessing". It seems like the learner is often "left out" of a lot of assessment systems!
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This aligns well with the Iowa Core's characteristics of effective instruction--being more student centered and using assessment for learning. Yeah!
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Peer and self assessment are important attributes of Assessment for Learning. They can help students develop life-long learning skills.
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Drinda, I agree that this one reflects the research about the benefits of assessment for learning lying in the students' owning the assessment process through peer and self assessment. Do you find that students you have worked with are reflective and skilled peer and self assessors of their learning?
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I was seeing the connection between this statement and the CEI as well. I think metacognition is woven throughout the attributes of the CEI. If you can do self-assessment well you can have a real start on teaching with CEI.
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Creates or selects multiple assessment instruments
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Communicates assessment criteria and standards to students, including rubrics for student performances and participation
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Students need to be made aware of the criteria established for assessment. The rubric provided should clearly identify what is considered to be above, below or meeting standards. Students will then be held accountable for the level or depth of individual learning.
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I agree. Rubrics provides a tool for students to compare their work against the acceptance criteria allowing them to better assess there work prior to submitting it.
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Promotes learning through online collaboration group work that is goal-oriented and focused
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Collaboration among students in an online learning environment needs to occur early in the course. Just we were asked to complete a profile that provided information as to position, interest, etc...the same hold true for other online courses. Students need to feel as contributing member on the group and fellow students need to be observant in responding to all over time so no single individual is omitted from feedback on their viewpoint of a question, etc...Successful collobration among students may lead to a richer discussion and depth of learning.
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No kidding. Working on line would be very important for students to get to know the other students in the classroom. Especially if they are to work together. I also think this is the way of the future and getting students prepared for the work place. Many corporations use on line meetings to cut expenses etc. If we don't start teaching this way, how can we justify that we are getting students ready for work place?
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These would be good for teachers to use to see if the students can explain some things in a way to peers that may help in the classroom. There discussions online could really help them see diffenrent ways the material was seen online or in the class.
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I particulary appreciate the opportunity to 'see' a photo image of the other learners as well as to 'hear' their voices through the threaded discussions when I am collaborating with others on a common online assignment/task/product.
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Provides and communicates evidence of learning and course data to students and colleagues
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This is right in line with collecting formative assessments. Not only do we need to collect this information, we need to share it with class participants.
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We are collecting so much data on students now but it's very important to communicate that data to the students too! I think we sometimes forget that they can learn a lot about themselves through the data too.
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This first standard (in it's entirity) really sticks out to me as crucial for effective learning. Formative assessment and data-based decision making is the only way for students and teachers to make changes to improve learning outcomes. Online learning adds a new element, in that the instructor must be incredibly purposeful in how data and feedback is provided. With no nonverbals to assist in our feedback to learners, online teachers must become very effective "words-only" communicators.
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I agree that this is formative assessment that not only informs our instruction but informs students about their learning and what they can do to improve their learning
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Creates a safe environment, managing conflict
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This safe environment is crucial for learners who may struggle. It needs to be a learning environment free from ridicule.
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Handling conflict in an online environment - that could be an entire course in itself! I'm interested to learn more about this one.
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Hopefully this is addressed in the course expectations - I'm noticing quite a bit of overlap between the teaching standards and the course expectations...I guess I shouldn't be surprised since the course design is so closely tied to how the course will be taught.
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I've heard college students complain about some on-line classes they took and conflict between participants was one of their main concerns. Instructors need to monitor conversations very closely but this can be hard to do when you have 25-50 participants and lots of discussions going on at once!
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It would seem this is why the community building as part of the course intro is so important - to reinforce that real people - not avatars - are on the receiving end. The illusion (and often the reality) of anonymity causes some people to lose all sense of propriety and decency in online discussions. Just looking at comments on news sites and blogs is evidence. I would agree with Matt: teaching this could be its own course.
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Handling conflict like this could be a whole new skill set for instructors. Before I read this statement, I would have assumed that this doesn't happen-that there is respect for everyone and their ideas-guess I need to be prepared and learn more.
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Demonstrates ethical conduct as defined by state law and local policies or procedures
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This needs to be a constant conversation. We recently debated for several days the difference between sharing something online in a webinar, and posting something online. What permissions did we have? Did the originator actually understand what permission we were seeking? What precedent would be set?
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Applies research, knowledge, and skills from professional growth to improve practice
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Part of this becomes bringing along your students, clients, and participants. Sometimes taking a risk with something online does not go as well as you'd like. Have you let them know what to expect? Have you asked them for feedback to improve your skills? It's not just about the teacher trying new things, it's about teachers and students as a community trying new things.
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This phrase reminds me of a phrase from the Iowa teaching standards. Very important to use research based strategies as we make decisions that directly effect the students.
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Has knowledge of learning theory appropriate to online learning,
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This is where I feel I am floundering. I am so glad to have OLLIE to begin developing these skills.
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Drinda, I'm right there with you. Online learning is a whole new world for me. It is definitely different teaching online than it is face-to-face.
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It is very difficult to know if a student "has knowledge" about anything, especially in an online venue. Best a student can do is give appropriate responses
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Meets the professional teaching standards established by a state-licensing agency, or has the academic credentials in the field in which he or she is teaching
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This criteria may stifle innovation a bit, but at the same time could make the standards more credible. What does everyone else think?
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Matt, would you elaborate on how you feel this criteria could "stifle innovation"?
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"meeting a standard," in my mind indicates aiming for a baseline proficiency. If moving towards the status quo is the end result (rather than above and beyond), it may be setting the bar too low and in turn stifling innovation. I think I'm overanalyzing it a bit, but that was my gut reaction.
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Understands the differences between teaching online and teaching face-to-face
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This understanding is certainly enhanced by 7.1 - "Has experienced online learning from the perspective of a student" Having taken an online class, I am more aware of challenges students might face and have a greater appreciation of how skillful instructors anticipate and address potential challenges.
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I agree with you, Mary, that having had meaningful learning online is helpful to an instructor in both designing and facilitating an online course!
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Provides substantive, timely, and constructive feedback to students
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Not meeting this standard is one of the biggest criticisms I hear about online classes. When instructors and students are not in the same room at the same time, the nature and timeliness of feedback takes on a whole new dimension.
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I know that sometimes we need to get immediate feedback and this can't always be the case with online classes. We have to find a happy medium so that questions and feedback gets back in a matter that it's still important to the students.
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Demonstrates techniques for dealing with issues arising from inappropriate student technological use
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I would be interested in understanding how some of this might be dealt with. This would be something very new to me. Dealing with behavior is one thing...dealing with inappropriate behavior in an on-line class...if it's written down, students certainly can't deny it, can they?
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We have went to one-one laptops in our school. We are in our second year of having laptops for our 6-12 students. We have boot camp for all new students that come into our district. In that boot camp we address appropriate use. We now have a page in our handbook dealing with our laptops. It is still new and our policies will be forever evolving with technology. We do have a scripted policy for inappropriate use and the consequences.
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I think that one of the issues is that what is written down is there and can't be erased! I think this addresses "bullying" - am I right or is that addressed somewhere else?
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effective instructional strategies
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When I see "effective instructional strategies" I think of the Characteristics of Effective Instruction from the Iowa Core.
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That is what I have been thinking of lately as well, but I have to wonder what role specific strategies in literacy, math, science, ... will continue to have for Iowa educators. I am worried that this leads to a pendulum swing to only focusing on these and possibly neglecting subject specific things.
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connectivism
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Continuously uses data to evaluate the accuracy and effectiveness of instructional strategies
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I think we often use data to judge student achievement but often fail to use it to look at the effectiveness of instructional strategies. I think that may be a belief system change for some teachers--what I DO may have to be changed instead of "I taught it, they just didn't get it."
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I think you really nailed one of the real problems in education today - teachers expect the students to learn how they learned and how they teach. It is very difficult for them to believe that much of the problem is the effectiveness of the instruction that is delivered. I don't think this is any different that f2f instructional needs.
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I agree with both of you. I have heard a lot of people say well they they just don't get. Well maybe it's not them that's not getting it, maybe they just need to try to deliver the material a different way. I know that sometimes I can get my mind set that my way is the only way and that I need to remember that students learn a variety of ways.
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I think the information we use to judge the effectiveness of our instructional strateiges is often misaligned. We may be using a test of pure content knowledge to judge the effectiveness of our science instruction, when Inquiry instruction has so many more goals than content attainment.
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Creates a learning community that encourages collaboration and interaction, including student-teacher, student-student, and student-content (SREB D.2, Varvel VII.B, ITS 6.a)
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understands how to teach the content to students
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This is important because we are always talking about content with standards...here this document is talking about how we teach...what have proven practices produce results.
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I think this is truly essential for online learning (for all learning, really). We've all been in classrooms, presentations, etc. in which the teacher/presenter was highly knowledgeable in the content but did not know how to teach the content to others. I believe online teaching requires additional precision in the "how" to teach. We must be cautious in the tools, methods, applications, etc. we utilize to best enhance participants' learning.
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Mike, I am curious if you see a difference in the pedagogical content knowledge a facilitator must have in a face to face classroom environment and that required in an online classroom environment?
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good point, Mike. we can't forget the "how." This is why I like the Iowa Core framework...both "what" and "how."
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engage students
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Important here that we not only engage their "doing" but also engage their "thinking".
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Glad you brought this up as I can often see the 'thinking' in the online venue; but struggle to see the 'doing'. This is where we want to learn to upload videos as evidence.
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I feel that motivation of students through online teaching is somewhat of a different animal then direct contact instruction. How do you really know what motivates some when it is impersonal to some extinct.
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appropriate
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I think that "appropriate" is a very key word to consider for online learning. The technologies introduced need to make sense and have a purpose. For example, just because so many people have ipods and they are "cool", the use of ipods would need to make educational sense and not just because they are cool. I was a computer programmer in the corporate world and I all too often saw applications that had eye capturing "bells & whistles" but did not contribute to the objective of the application. All too often these things were added because they could be done, not because they served a purpose. So the question that needs to be asked when introducing a technology is does it serve its purpose?
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Demonstrates growth in technology knowledge and skills in order to stay current with emerging technologies
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Demonstrates growth in technology knowledge and skills in order to stay current with emerging technologies
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Demonstrates growth in technology knowledge and skills in order to stay current with emerging technologies (SREB B.5)
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Demonstrates growth in technology knowledge and skills in order to stay current with emerging technologies (SREB B.5)
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• Demonstrates growth in technology knowledge and skills in order to stay current with emerging technologies (SREB B.5)
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Demonstrates growth in technology knowledge and skills in order to stay current with emerging technologies (SREB B.5)
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• Demonstrates growth in technology knowledge and skills in order to stay current with emerging technologies
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cognitivism
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I was curiuos about this term...so I looked it up and found; "Cognitivism often takes a computer information processing model. Learning is viewed as a process of inputs, managed in short term memory, and coded for long-term recall. Cindy Buell details this process: "In cognitive theories, knowledge is viewed as symbolic mental constructs in the learner's mind, and the learning process is the means by which these symbolic representations are committed to memory."
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models clear expectations for appropriate behavior and proper interaction (SREB D.6, ITS 6.b)
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Establishes standards for student behavior that are designed to ensure academic integrity
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I'm guessing it's pretty easy for students to copy and paste from a website and thus end up plagerizing something. I think that is what this is addressing. I taught math and didn't have my students write papers, but I'm wondering what kinds of standards (and penalties) other teachers have when a student has obviously plagerized something.
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Networks with others involved in online education for the purpose of professional growth
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appropriate for online learning
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techniques
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University of Illinois (Virgil Varvel)
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Implementation in a Secondary Classroom (Articles) - 0 views
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choice serves as a motivator
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When I give some of my kids choices on what they want to do, they have a tendency to ask me for suggestions. I would think the students would need experience with choices to feel confident enough to go make their own.
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I have found this as well, in language arts/my writing classes. Giving them an umbrella topic- How-To Essay, and the world at their finger tips, they'll try to take one of my simple examples (how to tie your shoes) instead of choosing their own. I wonder a good way to teach students how to make choices- seems like a valuable lesson!
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I've also witnessed this in many things.Most the time I try to put a similar assignment on paper as on chromebook and allow the students the choice on how they would even like to do the assignment for that day.
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You have to have a principal who understands that when he walks into a room and it’s not silent, it’s okay.
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I have to get over this at times. We do a lot of collaborative work and if a visitor came into my room they would probably say it is noisier than most classrooms. Once they sit in there for awhile they see the students working together and learning from each other. It is a great thing to experience.
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I had a principal that once told me he loved when he'd walk into a classroom where the noise was coming from the students working together. Learning can be noisy and people need to understand that, whether that is in a library or a classroom.
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It kind of bothers me nowadays when I walk into a room where students aren't talking. It can be hard to get students to know the difference between just 'socializing' and working together, but I often see the most learning happening in my classroom when the students (rather than just me) are discussing.
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I used to always get nervous when an administrator would come into my room, and it wasn't quiet. Now that I've been teaching for a couple of years I have figured out most learning seems to be occurring when students are talking.
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One of the things I had to learn recently was to 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.”
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Such a real life skill. Learning to fail and work through a situation is such great lesson to learn. As teachers it is difficult to watch a student struggle. Knowing that it is part of the process of becoming better at something gives us a little more patience.
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This is a difficult thing to convince parents about in my school. They are looking for perfect scores and don't like it when we "let the kids fail". It will take time to make this shift in thought in our community. I agree that this is a very real life skill that is important for kids to learn how to work through.
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Eighth grade math teacher Julie Ison describes a project her classes worked on that involved graphing. Working with Excel, the students went to a few websites (preselected by the teacher) and picked data about whatever they were interested in—flavors of ice cream, baseball statistics, basketball statistics, whatever they wanted. They sucked in all the information, put it in Excel, manipulated it, made graphs out of it, and figured out what graphs went with that data, what graphs didn’t go with that data
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We use Schoology as a learning management system, which many students access on their own phones if there aren’t enough devices to go around.
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This flipped learning setup frees up my students to use classtime to practice their skills.
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One of my goals before the end of the school year is to do a flipped lesson. I'm excited to try it.
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Given that we only see our students twice a week in PE, the use of blended learning is very beneficial to making the best use of face to face class time.
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I think we need to do more flipping as it would also help parents, especially in math. Often times I hear parents say well I can't help them with their math, so this way they could see how the teacher was doing the problem and help their child easier.
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fantasy football stats during class, their motivation began to soar.
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The more meaningful an activity is to the person engaging in it, the more likely he or she will be motivated to continue doing it.
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This is definitely the case in History/Social Studies. Some students will come in and out of interest based on the time period/unit/activity. Finding a way to keep interest would help.
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I was thinking the same exact thing about my Social Studies classes. Some time periods/events are more exciting then others but if you can relate it to current day things or to how it still impacts students today they seem more interested in the topic.
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This is a very valid point. Technology does give way for more student engagement.
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But when the teacher started to use the students’ questions rather than her own to frame discussions, motivation began to rise.
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They became more motivated and less fidgety when the teacher allowed them to find a comfortable place to read.
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I have loosened up on this as well the last few years. I wouldn't want to read on the dusty floor but some really enjoy it.
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Our school is moving to more flexible seating in most classrooms. I think in some cases it works well, in others I think it can be an issue. I think it's important to at least allow students to stand up as opposed to staying seated as they literally sit all day.
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Certainly, giving choice to students often means that teachers need to allow students to make their own decisions, and it can be difficult to give up this control.
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While choice can be a powerful motivator, on some occasions it can also have an adverse effect
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However, if tasks are perceived to be too difficult, motivation is likely to suffer.
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For example, when a teacher assigns a research project, some students will prefer to have a broad range of topics, others will prefer a small list of options, and yet others will prefer to be told what to do. Giving students a short list of topics with an option to create their own topic, with the teacher’s approval, often works well.
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This just described just about every class I have ever taught. Some kids like endless options, some want a few, and some want to be told their only option.
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I agree Tom, but I think it's because they have lacked choice before they get to HS and then once they get to HS they worry about grades and want to know how to get an A.
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Not every program lends itself to choice
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So far the teachers have talked about choice in terms of curriculum, but choice can also, surprisingly, come into play in relation to discipline
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This is so true! I have started using this in my classes, "these are your options....you choose" Many times I have used, "Would you like me to help with the situation or do you think you can settle it yourselves?" Sometimes they do actually want my help to settle a conflict and other times they are able to do it on their own. This of course is for small disagreements, not big blow outs. I think it is important though to give them the chance to sort things out on their own if they feel they can do so. Most of the time they can and it is a good skill to practice.
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We have done a lot of PBIS training recently, and this is one of the big things they tell us.
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They could be two ‘bad’ choices
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Show us what you’ve learned,
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differentiation of instruction, assessment and expression of learning as well as the collection of student data.
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I think that automating what you can in these categories makes teachers more effective.
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This is key to the Physical Education world especially as they tend to have twice as many students than other teachers.
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Pretty much anything that gives you more data is brilliant in my book- particularly if it's a technology that gives the student data that they can reflect on as well!
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Now they have access to the full unit from the beginning
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Having a unit ready to go from day 1 of the unit is tough. When students see that though, I think they have confidence because that means the expectations are all set out at the beginning. They just have to navigate each expectation. It is the difference in running a race and knowing where the finish line is and running a race and not knowing where the finish line is.
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I am thinking this is the way to go but I worry that if changes need to me made midstream how that will affect the students who may moved ahead.
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Your class is easy. I don’t mean simple — I mean it is easy for me to learn because I can pick assignments that let me do my best work.
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It is the purposeful design of instruction to combine face-to-face teaching, technology-assisted instruction and collaboration to leverage each student’s learning style and interests for deeper learning.
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There is so much to be learned about the design of instruction for all teachers as we move forward. All teachers need more PD on this to get us into the 21st Century of Learning and beyond. There are so many exciting things that can happen when this is done well for students. I really think that our students would be more motivated to come to school if we would move out of the industrial era!
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I totally agree. We need to change the way school is structured so we can motivate students.
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require students to work in groups
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I think we need to work on getting students to collaborate with different people but they tend to want to be with friend groups especially in MS. I like the idea of giving one "buddy" in their group.
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My system of group selection works as follows- I draw names randomly, and students jump into groups as they are called. It very rarely happens that an entire group of friends gets together, as some other students will jump in. For this to work, though, there usually has to be a topic set up beforehand, so they know what they're getting into.
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“One of you needs to move. You decide.”
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I'm surprised I haven't heard much/seen much on this fairly simple concept. Maybe it doesn't work as well as they mention here? I could forsee, if I have two students causing issues, and I ask one of them to decide who moves- they would just get in another fight and/or both refuse to move. Nice in principle though!
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I feel the same as you. It seems like when you give two or more students a choice they start arguing about it.
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The journey from old school to new learning paradigm was bumpy at first.
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And our classroom is often noisy and active as we play a round of Kahoot
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This year I create experiences to expose my students to a range of real-world issues, review the fundamentals of research and help them discover authentic ways to research their issues using a wide variety of digital tools.
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When it is time to take the standardized tests at the end of the year, your teachers use your project portfolio to help you identify the standards you have already met and rehearse the test with you but don’t otherwise find it necessary to do extensive test prep.
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Here’s a list of choices. Choose one. As long as you follow the steps in my rubric, you’re fine.’”
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As a result, instead of lecturing to students and showing them a PowerPoint during classtime, I give them screencasts or videos to watch at home.
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Just three short years ago, my AP students would each have produced their own 10-page research paper. This year, they will select social justice issues that they will research with a team. Each team will collaborate to create a presentation for the board of a philanthropic organization in competition for a hypothetical grant that will be awarded to the program or event most likely to deliver real change. I will bring in administrators and community members to serve as the “board” and choose a winner. The students won’t get a real grant, but they will receive public recognition for the winning project.
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"Personalized" vs. "Personal" Learning - 1 views
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but every mechanism we use to measure it is through control and compliance
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This is such a true point. We emphasize wanting to produce independent critical thinkers, but most of our whole educational system is aimed at producing compliant students who have all mastered the same things.
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Do we have a need for students in society that haven't mastered the basics? I just feel we need both worlds. We need a traditional classroom with traditional standards and we need personal learning aspects to benefit the individual.
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As teachers, we think of adding choice or creativity is a simple way to differentiate and personalize learning for students. Yet, we are still in the mindset of assigning grades. How do you grade someone on creativity and innovation?
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I think it is difficult for teachers to offer a more personalized approach to learning when the state demands rigorous and frequent assessments on our students.
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crystalseier: "Yet, we are still in the mindset of assigning grades." I agree 100%. The realm of personalized learning is hindered by the current reality that we have to grade students. I see progress in this area because some schools are going away from class rank and some are even getting rid of GPAs. I think standards-based grading is progress towards being able to have more flexibility in the classroom and not being restricted by grades, both as a teacher and also in the minds of students (and parents!)
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Personalization is often used in the ed-tech community to describe a student moving through a prescribed set of activities at his own pace. The only choice a student gets is what box to check on the screen and how quickly to move through the exercises. For many educators that’s not the true meaning of “personalized learning.”
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This may not be "personalized learning" based on the definition, but I feel this is a common stepping stone for most teachers to move in that direction. I feel it would be very hard to move from traditional teaching to completely PL based on how it is defined.
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I think there can be a place for these tools in a classroom. However, they are definitely not personalized. My first graders use a math program like this. It adjusts instruction based on students' answers. I use it as part of my math stations, but I do not see it as the entire instruction by any means. I also do not see it as personalized learning. Students do not get to choose interest areas. It does not even really allow for solving math problems in unconventional ways. However, I do find it to be a useful resource for a small part of the school day.
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personalization only comes when students have authentic choice over how to tackle a problem. A personalized environment gives students the freedom to follow a meaningful line of inquiry, while building the skills to connect, synthesize and analyze information into original productions.
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This particular section revealed some real fears I thought I didn't have about relinquishing control.
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It seems like technology will be controlling the classroom instead of the teacher.
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When teaching very young students, how can the make an authentic choice to tackle a problem?
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Facilitating opportunities for 'authentic choice' for each student for every concept is an overwhelming thought. Students need to have the skill of being self-motivated.
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I love the idea of personal learning and kids would be more engaged in authentic work. But how do we give them the skills we are still required to teach while allowing this type of environment.
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However, in order to navigate the system of accountability in the U.S. educational system, many school district leaders require public school educators to teach a specific curriculum that will be evaluated on standardized tests, while at the same time telling teachers to be innovative and creative within their classrooms.
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It seems that the older generation is more reluctant to change the way students learn. I feel that a large percentage of people that have been in education for quite awhile want standardized tests, data, etc. That is what they know. Changing to a personal way of learning is going to take many years for everyone to buy into that concept...in my opinion.
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Agreed. I think even the new generation of teachers out there are behind the pace of what students need nowadays because the conventional ways of education have been so slow to change.
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Yes, it's going to be slow change.... I think what complicates this is the rate at which technology changes things. We just can't keep up!
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From what I’ve seen, flipping doesn’t do much for helping kids become better learners in the sense of being able to drive their own education.
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I had a friend that taught HS English/French for over 30 years. She retired last year because she said her school was using more and more technology. Her exact words were "I have no desire to learn all that new technology." My first thought was "that's too bad. Maybe she would have really enjoyed the new changes."
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Her style of learning was having the students read the material at night and discuss the material during class.
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It really is a shame at what some of these teachers that are near retirement age are missing out on. I understand that change is not always fun at first. However, when we see the engagement and joy in the students' eyes with these new and exciting resources we have to offer them, that's when our jobs are most rewarding!
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That can be true, but I know students who feel the opposite. In some foreign language classes, they are being inundated with technology (videos, interactive sites, music), but they hate the courses because they aren't learning anything! No grammar, no sentence structure, no parsing, just parroting sounds pretending technology is giving them an education. Sometimes too many resources can be detrimental.
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Certain forms of technology can be used to support progressive education, but meaningful (and truly personal) learning never requires technology.
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Therefore, if an idea like personalization is presented from the start as entailing software or a screen, we ought to be extremely skeptical about who really benefits.
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It seems we can't do anything without technology. Does anyone think technology has went too far? I struggle with that question.
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I also struggle with that question. Is technology great? Yes. Is technology changing the way we think and teach at times? Yes. Should technology always be the main focus of our teaching/learning. I don't necessarily think so. I feel students need foundation skills (reading from print books, basic mathematics understandings, etc.) before they have the potential to be distracted by technology. Can a child learn to read on an iPad-of course! Can a child learn their numbers on an iPad-of course! But there is something about a child holding a book in their hand and flipping the pages as they are learning to read. There is also something about a child using counters and manipulating them to help them get a better sense of numbers.
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I think we need to think in terms of what works best for the student. I have students that hate getting on computers to do their work and would prefer just to work out of a workbook or have a worksheet with manipulatives. Part of personal learning is letting the students choose how to do the work, at a minimum.
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I agree that we need to think about what works best for each student. Even in preschool we have technology requirements and I have students that could care less if they ever had tablet time. I feel bad trying to force technology on them when the information could be learned a different way.
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I agree with you mogrena. Looking at education through a developmental lens, I do not feel that allowing young children large amounts of technology use is appropriate. Young students need to manipulate objects. It can't be done exclusively with a software program.
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I’m not sure we as a community are spending enough time digging to parse what those words really mean, especially in the context of what deep learning now requires in a connected world.
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In a world where we can explore almost every interest or passion in depth on our own or with others, it’s crucially more important to have the dispositions and the skills to create our own educational opportunities, not be trained to wait for opportunities that someone else has selected for delivery.
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pumps out cookie-cutter students with the same knowledge and skills.
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I found this analogy very intriguing and have never thought of education in this way. However, now that I read this, it totally makes sense to me.
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It's a good thing to keep in mind as teachers, definitely. I have a senior doing her senior thesis on the failings of the Industrialized Education System, and it's hard to argue against her.
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It’s as if engaging them in learning without technology has become this impossible task.
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As educators and the rise of technology, I feel this is typically listed as one of the top 5 ways to engage students today. They are used to technology. However, it is our job to make the content engaging without ALWAYS having technology at our finger tips.
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We will never be able to keep up with the kids' access to latest technologies, so we just embarrass ourselves when we try to impress them with technology. We should focus on teaching them how to use it - kids don't know how to indent papers or format block quotations anymore!
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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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That strikes me as a crucial point. Why are we embarrassed to say "take your library card to the library and personalize your learning in there for a few hours a day"? Is reading books old fashioned and not "real learning" anymore? Surely with all the brain research coming in about the deleterious effects of starting at screens all day, we can't continue to advocate technology as the only solution for "real" education.
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Finally, it seems like everything is being “flipped” these days
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f the point is to dump a load of facts into children, then it may be necessary to adjust the style and rate of dumping – and to help teachers become more efficient at it.
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But is this not, at least in part, what is actually meant by "education"? Are we saying a third grader does not need to learn multiplication skills or division skills if he'd prefer a personal learning path of video games and potato chips all day? I'm bemused by the embarrassment over the history of human learning as if someone it is wrong for us to pass it on to the next generation. (Would we allow our children to create their own personal eating plan simply because their hearts tell them to seek out ice cream and tootsie rolls instead of vegetables and fruit?) Someone help me understand this, please.
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kids spend much of their time learning with and from one another.
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Some of the best "test answers" I've gotten over the years are from group tests, in which students are wresting collaborative ideas and interactions with the material out of each other in a much more engaged way than they would individually. And surely quality interaction with ideas is the goal? at least one of them?
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Some of my best days in my career have been days when my students are working with partners on a topic and I get to see them helping/teaching each other and fixing each others misconceptions!
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The main objective is just to raise test scores
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But when the Administration and the Board declare this is the only objective (to use the adjective) way we have to measure classroom "success" ... how do teachers counter that? Especially when SAT averages and college acceptance lists are the main selling points on the promotional material?
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Agreed with the premise that there are some serious issues in what counts as "success" in our school systems. Risk taking is fine, encouraged even, as long as the research behind it says it will help scores go up.
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This is a sad truth in teaching today. As a reading interventionist Fast score have a large influence in what I am to be working towards and what is considered success. However, my success is when students are becoming better readers. Good readers is a much larger picture than how fast they read. Are they monitoring their reading, do they understand it? These are skills that matter greatly as well.
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You want to really engage kids? Give them opportunities to learn personally, to create their own texts and courses of study, and to pursue that learning with others in and out of the classroom who share a passion.
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the best thing we can do for kids is empower them to make regular, important, thoughtful decisions about their own learning, what they learn and how they learn it
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new dispositions to take advantage of it for learning.
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The idea of personalized learning is seductive
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Follow the money” is apt advice in many sectors of education
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Personalized learning entails adjusting the difficulty level of prefabricated skills-based exercises based on students’ test scores. It requires the purchase of software from one of those companies that can afford full-page ads in Education Week.
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“Personalized” learning is something that we do to kids; “personal” learning is something they do for themselves.
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As a former special education teacher, I am very familiar with personalized learning. I'm just beginning to learn how personal learning is different.
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I agree, I too have been a special education teacher and feel that all I have done is personalized learning, but am on board with you that I am just learning about personal learning, about how it really includes the student, where my IEP's, although tailored to the student, didn't involve the student in decisions.
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As a reading interventionist I feel we are always giving personalized goals for our students and working towards them. Personal learning sounds exciting but will take a great shift in mindset. How do we allow for personal learning while still meeting kids goals in areas they need support in?
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Big questions, passion, personal interest are what should drive our use of technology, not the other way around.
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I think this is true- so many times it feels like we are using technology just to use technology. We should start with what we want to learn and then decide what technology will work best.
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I think teachers who aren't comfortable or well versed in all the latest technology feel incompetent, which is sad, because we can engage students without technology, but the current drive is to use technology all the time! If you're not using it, you're an old dog that can't learn new tricks.
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Education is about the transmission of bits of information, not the construction of meaning.
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"Learning" through rote memory is not learning. Students must understand the principles behind what they are learning to actually learn.
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A professor of mine in college called this "binge and purge" teaching, where the students "binge" on the content the night before a test, then "purge" it back out for the test, and then it's gone, not thought of again!
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most of the content knowledge that, as we know from experience, never gets applied in real life.
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that all children don’t learn the same way and personalization seems to honor those differences.
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The traditional education system is seen in a very negative light. While personalization helps build students interest in their learning and make their learning efficient, I would argue there is some value in learning to conform or be held to the same standards as peers. This is what they will face in the workplace and throughout life.
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Instead, the common view of personalization focused on giving agency for learning to the student and valuing each individual in a classroom.
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Our kids (and we ourselves) are suddenly walking around with access to the sum of human knowledge in our pockets and connections to literally millions of potential teachers.
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This is very true. Educators in today's world need to teach how to think and process information and skills to create and be critical thinkers instead of rote memorization. This is so much more complex for students and nearly impossible for teachers to teach in the traditional model. Personalization is needed for all students to be successful in the new world environment.
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I agree. We also need to teach students how to best make use of those little computers in their pockets. It's not realistic for them to tune out from their phones during learning. Students need the tools to use that technology to their advantage in order to be successful in the future.
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Digital literacy is a huge component missing from today's education. It is such a vital component to daily life, it needs to be addressed. The amount of time spent on rote memorization of facts that students will not necessarily need to have memorized, could be devoted to teaching evaluating internet resources.
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[10] Personalization is an even more disturbing example of this phenomenon because the word has come to be equated with technology
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When that happens, the structures around the classroom leave little room for the kind of authentic, whole-child personalization many teachers dream of offering.
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free up time for in-class problem-solving and discussion
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The idea of flipping can be a great concept, however, if you are truly giving the student the opportunities they need each student would be in different places in their learning. It seems to be impossible to teach all the different learning possibilities in a flipped classroom if you are going to allow students to learn at their pace or interest.
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Implementation in an Elementary Classroom (Articles) - 0 views
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the children “do science.”
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Will the students be taught how theorize, test, analyze, or experiment? Or without telling the students this is what they are already doing? Is there any pre-teaching to the unit about rocks or exploring on their own?
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It seems like in large group sharing, the teacher would want to introduce those important terms. I wonder, too, if the rocks unit was in the curriculum or if it came up in classroom discussion as a new area to explore. When a band listening example led to a lot of student questions about African drums, I made sure to change some of my concert plans and found a new piece of music and utilized the expertise of one of our other band staff members to build on the kids' enthusiasm and inquiry.
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nvite women
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I think this is a great idea to invite scientists who are women! It makes the nation's stereotypes decrease and women in the science field increase.
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I also think this is a great idea. It is interesting in my classroom this past year as we were talking about community helpers.. we had a discussion of can a garbage man be a garbage woman and talked about different roles. It was so interesting that even at a young age some students have already stereotyped different jobs to different genders. I think that the more that students see the more they will be able to be interested in a subject and career. Science is something that is slowly fading and becoming less important in classrooms. It is important as educators to give our students these opportunities.
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thinking about thinking
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helping children gain active control over the process of thinking so they learn how to learn, which will serve them well throughout their lives.
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I think Personalized learning is easier to do in a classroom with science and social studies because they are more exploratory subjects compared to reading and math. Anybody have good ideas on how to make reading and math personalized without using technology?
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I like this idea also. I feel like this is a skill that students will use all throughout their lives- at college, in real life, and in their careers.
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I love this. I believe that if students learn how to love the process of learning that they will continue on to be life long learners!!
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I love it, too! If kids are enjoying the process of learning, I think they're more willing to try new things and learn more even in areas that may not be their strengths.
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Ms. Moore understands the reluctance of many other teachers of early grade students to employ this method because it requires “unlearning” many of the lessons of traditional teacher-preparation programs. She must, she says, continually resist the temptation to lead her students through lessons.
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She is exactly right. Teachers have been taught to lead their students through lessons. This process is very uncomfortable for many of us as we have not been taught how to "teach" or "facilitate" this way.
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I think about this when we're always asked to post our learning targets for students. It seems counter productive to tell kids we're going to learn a certain skill when we want our students to discover the skill through the lesson we created... I have found that instead of telling kids fingerings on their instruments for new notes, if I lead them to the fingering chart, they get so excited about using their fingering chart to learn more than that one new note.
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During this first instructional phase, noise and activity levels sometimes reach eardrum-piercing levels and
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Many of us are not used to a lot of noise in the classroom either. Some students may struggle with a classroom that is overly loud. How do we ensure the noise level is comfortable for all to learn?
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The noise level during this phase should be stated in the rubric during discussion. I agree not everyone is immune to loud voices.
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This is something that I know I would/will struggle with when implementing personalized learning. I completely agree and believe that students should be conversing with one another...however, I struggle with all of them doing this at the same time. 25 voices going all at once is sometimes a lot to handle!..and something that I would learn to get used to :)
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Most teachers know the classroom is the perfect place for children to play, but opportunities to provide those benefits are on the decline. Reduced recess, cuts to physical education
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This really hits home for me as I have a daughter who was in PRE K (transitional kindergarten) last year and the preschool teachers are now required to implement so many minutes of reading/guided reading into their curriculum. Are these preschool aged children getting enough play/social time?
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It is scary that we are asking you're asking if preschool is getting enough time.. I hope so!!! They aren't even to elementary school yet. I am told time and time again that kindergarten is the new 1st grade. It seems that the more demands that are put on us as educators, the more play time we have to cut. I am lucky in a way that I have a team of teachers who refuses to give up that free time play at the end of the day. We believe it is so important. I am not sure how many more years we will get away with it but for now, we will let our students be little so that they can play and explore like they should!
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I always laugh when I share with parents that I learn so much from observing their kiddos playing games (either at recess or indoors). It is truly where they have more authentic experiences learning how to communicate and solve differences.
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What about developing the small muscles thru play-dough? In the last few years I have noticed that 3rd graders can barely hold a scissor properly and much less cut a simple figure.
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What about developing small motor skills thru play-dough? I have 3rd graders who can barely hold a scissor properly much less cut a simple figure.
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I firmly believe that students learn by playing!! There are ways to set-up classroom situations where students are playing but also digging into concepts as well!!
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tudents who miss time to play miss opportunities to let their minds soar and connect the dots between what they do at their desks and what surrounds them in the world
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As a kindergarten teacher, I believe that that play is key to learning! This past year I was amazed at what my students were able to connect through play to what we were learning in the classroom. In my classroom, it is key to provide students with those opportunities to play and explore.
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Play IS key to learning! Especially when we can't assume our students are given opportunity to play and create and imagine with other kids outside of the school day.
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But when you're staring out at 20 or 30 students as individual as snowflakes, you may find yourself asking that ever-daunting question: "How?"
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As good educators, we want to make sure that each of our students needs are met. The daunting question that we all ask is HOW?! How do we make each of our student feel cared for, important, and set them up for success? I continue to find it interesting how students have so many things that are similar and different about them. I think this article does a nice job of laying it out and showing what we can do between five minutes and five years!
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when she answers students’ questions straightforwardly instead of asking questions to help the students find the answers themselves, she’s actually interfering with the learning process.
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Yes!! I must remember this always! It's so easy to answer questions for students. However, if I keep questioning them, it will allow them to learn on their own.
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This is something that I am continually trying to work on. It is so easy to help a struggling student but your really are doing them a disservice.
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encouraging and allowing students to discover fundamental principles on their own.
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I'm a visual person and I know I like to "see" things for myself. Allowing our students to discover conclusions will be something that they will remember longer than if a teacher "told" them what happens.
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Yes! I agree! As I read this I remember learning about gravity as Billy Nye threw objects off the top of a building... watching this video was better than listening to the fact ... but participating in the activity would be even better than the video.
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free play is how children learn about themselves and the world around them. And, if they’re not playing, they’re not learning in all the ways that count most.
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A simple take-home survey can give you quick insights about a child's hobbies, interests, strengths, or struggles. Arts and electives teachers in your school could offer insight on certain students, as well.
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I loved receiving a parent survey from our child's teacher at the beginning of the year. It was a great way to introduce our child with details he may have never shared with his teacher. What a great way to set up some personalization at the start of the year.
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I have been doing this since my first year and I love it! It gives me so much valuable information before I start to learn about them but I also feel like if gives the parent a space to let me know things they may not feel comfortable sharing in front of other people or their child.
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I do a parent survey at the beginning of band, and it really helps me get a feel for a family's background experience with band, and also what they're hoping for their kids for the year.
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If you add and master just one at a time, refining the best techniques as you go, eventually you'll have a big arsenal.
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Thinking Maps, which help children categorize information in visually coherent ways
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I remember in junior high being required to answer the essay/critical thinking questions of our science tests through the use of thinking maps. I didn't realize at the time how much it helped me organize my thoughts. I wonder how I can be begin applying them in my reading and math courses at the elementary level. Graphic organizers are so important to consolidate and organize information.
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I have never heard about Thinking Maps before. I explored the website and definitely see how this can be beneficial for children of all ages.
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Thinking maps! Kids love them and they're great tools for brainstorming and digging in to new learning
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Share planning duties with a fellow teacher
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This is so important! I love planning with gen. ed. teachers because often there are more students than just my IEP students that need the lower level differentiation in the gen. ed. setting. We don't need to reinvent the wheel, but work together to create shared resources. Our problem is, how do we create time to plan together on a weekly basis?
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We run into these same issues! We are five gen. ed. teachers but one of us coteaches with sped. and one of us with ELP. We also cluster group our students...and this is where we hit the wall. Our classroom make-ups are so different and our kids move at different paces. How do we work divide up the work and still respect the pacing in each others' rooms?
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a unique item of jewelry
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What a fun conclusion to the unit!! I wonder how the teacher completes her summative assessment for the unit? The students have their journals but what does she use to prove that students have retained the information and met the state standards?
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As a 4th grade teacher, we work with rocks and minerals as well. It would be fun to create videos of their learning as a summative assessment. Students could also share the videos with their parents when they are finished!
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when I supply an answer or even suggest a method for finding an answer, I’m not truly helping.”
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It's so tempting to scaffold them to the right answer, but I realize that's not helping them be independent thinkers. I find that my students then rely on me to always be there to help them figure out the challenge.
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I agree but others need prompting to be able to focus on the right direction therefore differentiation is needed.
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“Kids are not blank slates.”
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It's easy to assume this, but they've had years of being influenced by their peers already and are soaking in the information they hear. This might be from daycare/preschool or home.
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Agreed...not to mention home life, family make-up, and outside influences. They have preconceived notions when they walk through the door.
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Yes! What a simple, yet profound way to put it. I agree. No matter where a student comes from they do have a background. There is always something to build upon and connect with!
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in their hearts they may not believe it.
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“The first thing we do is begin an ‘I see — I wonder’ exercise,
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I teach in a school with a lot of focus on inquiry based learning, and it's amazing how the kids gain confidence with this kind of thinking and growing as the year goes on. When I play new music, I have kids record what they hear, what they think, and what they wonder. The class discussion leads us to a wonder that we can explore together, and modeling this as a teacher is important.
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Plan assignments with choices.
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her trust in the inquiry process is tested, when she must practice patience and restraint.
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Thinking Maps, she explains, help students gain control of the process by offering them eight distinct ways to organize their inquiries
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“I introduce one Thinking Map per week during the first eight weeks
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Play is, after all, the way children are wired to learn, especially in the preschool and kindergarten years.
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guided play is a good alternative.
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each procedure needs to be practiced 28 times to stick. When you introduce a new activity, such as independently listening to an audio book, give students enough practice to become adept at it