•Can help reduce the ‘free rider’ problem as
students are aware that their contribution will be graded by
their peers.
10 Tips for Your Best Flipped Learning Classroom Activities - Wabisabi Learning - 1 views
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Article(s): Self- and Peer-Assessment Online - 1 views
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This is one of the main reasons that I've tried to implement peer assessment in the past. In group projects, I incorporate some form of peer assessment to encourage students to be motivated and contribute to the group. I hate that I use peer assessment as a carrot to get some students to do the work, but I haven't figured out another alternative yet.
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•Students will have a tendency to award everyone the same mark.
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I have noticed that students will often give the same scores for all group members, even if it was clear during the process of working that not all students participated equally. I think this becomes less of an issue when the students are in groups that don't necessarily include their friends, but can still be hard for students to complete honestly.
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If assessment criteria for each element are set up and clearly communicated, your role will also change to one of facilitator.
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I think this is one of the barriers for teachers to using self or peer assessment in their courses. The main assessments need to be developed ahead of time, and I feel that too often, educators are throwing an assessment together after the instruction has begun. I believe teachers are getting better at this because of UBD and the focus on learning targets, etc. but unless the assessments are ready before starting the unit, it's hard to clearly communicate all of the criteria ahead of time. I see this as a barrier to implementing these types of assessment and a possible explanation as to why we don't see these types as often.
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They were required to submit their self-assessments with the completed work, but their assessments were not graded.
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I wonder if this would work as seamlessly with younger students? So many of my students do the work they need to because they assume it is graded and they worry more about grades and less about the actual pursuit of learning. If I asked my students to complete self-assessments and turn them in (but I'm not grading the self-assessment), I question how many of them would take it seriously and actually turn it in. I wonder if I would have to offer participation points for completing it or not, and not actually assign a grade, in order to entice students to complete it.
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These are real concerns. We have to at some point shift from a culture of grades to a culture of learning. Let's strike against grades. Think about, we all get together and delete infinite campus and shout, "Leaning Before Grades..." :)
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‘Forcing’ the individual student to assess their own behaviour, as opposed to others is more constructive – it supports the aim of developing collaboration skills, along with the knowledge component.
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I like the idea of having students assess themselves in terms of their contributions to their groups. Perhaps if they are asked to evaluate themselves, they will really be honest and learn more in the process about how they function as a member of a group. I also like the point about having the student provide examples of how he or she contributed to the group. In my class we emphasize making claims that are supported with evidence and reasoning, and this would provide another avenue in which students get to practice doing so.
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frame self-assessment as an opportunity for students to reflect on their own work with the goal of learning more, making the work better, and thereby improving the chances for a good grade. In this paradigm, self-assessment is not the same as self-grading.
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I like this way of framing self-assessment as it involves the students in doing some of the heavy lifting, thinking about their work and how they might improve, which helps them develop skills critical for many careers. The partnership created when student insights are used in conjunction with instructor assessments can lead to a much richer experience and deeper learning for the student.
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students reported that their ability to self-assess depended on knowing what the teacher expected
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We have read in other articles how important clear expectations are for this process to work and others have stressed the advantages of involving the students in the creation of those expectations via rubrics or checklists. I would hope that student participation in this way would help move students thinking away from just what "teachers" expect to thinking more along the lines of what do "I" or "we" expect.
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my preferred approach. I believe the learner will benefit far more by completing a self evaluation (that is well crafted to include focused self reflection questions) that forces him or her, to examine how he or she contributed [or did not] to the group process. The tool also encourages the student to consider actions that he or she demonstrated to support the team and to estimate what percentage of the work he or she contributed to the project.
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I would probably lean more towards this approach also as it challenges each person to honestly assess their own contributions and forcing them to put it into a percentage makes it more apparent if there is need for improvement. I am not sure "slackers" would be that motivated to change by a low assessment by their peers.
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At my high school, we are not allowed to give group grades. We must give each student an individual one. This definitely has made me rethink group work. I generally only use it for formative assessment, but I wonder if the grading policies need to be different in an online vs traditional class.
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The concept of peer review, which leaves for the most part the instructor out of the equation, aligns with the social constructivist learning orientation. There is strong support in constructivist theories for the peer review which is grounded in student-centered learning where students learn as much from the review process itself as from the final grade on an assignment.
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I align more with the Social Constructivist learning orientation because I do believe students can learn as much if not more by going through the review process then by a final grade. I do not how ever think that it takes the instructor out of the equation. Instead I think the teacher's role changes. It require that teacher's give more guidance and instruction on the front end so that students have the skills and confidence to do self-assessment well. I also think there are benefits in combining self-assessment and teacher assessment.
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I agree with your thinking here for sure! I think students learn so much through the review process and assessing where they are at, making changes, and moving their thinking vs just a final grade. Often times, my students look at a final grade and throw it away (both physically and mentally). They do not process at all how the grade was processed, what they learned, or what they need to do differently. The peer review and self reviews will definitely play a role in learning, along with the teacher feedback and assessment.
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Effective group collaboration begins with a well defined assignment that has clear goals and expectations. A well written rubric not only helps the facilitator score the assignment but it and can greatly increase the quality and effort put into assignments by giving students a clear expectations with knowledge that must be demonstrated.
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I feel like this is super important no matter which of the methods you might choose to do group grading. The expectations should be clear and direct with the project, and maybe even more so with a group project. When you have to get everyone to work towards the common goal, it should be laid out well. Team/group grades are hard for me because of things already mentioned and I have tended to shy away from them in general. I like the peer reviews but group work is so hard for me to grade to make sure it is "accurate" for all members.
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The successful use of student self assessment depends on three key elements: Goal setting Guided practice with assessment tools Portfolios
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The 3 key elements make this sound so simple. I really like the ideas behind this but I know that there is a lot of front loading that must be done in order to make this successful in my classroom. I have tried portfolios with classes before but I feel like I will go back to this as it is a natural way in my view to move students through the learning progression. This article has some great reminders in the 3 key points that I will refer back to for next school year.
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•Students are involved in the process and are encouraged to take part ownership of this process.
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Hopefully if this is set up well and the students buy into this process, they would take the ownership needed to contribute their part to the common goal. Too often students slack off during a group project unless the topic is a high interest level to them. Knowing peer assessments would take place might motivate them to do the necessary work.
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Students may be reluctant to make judgements regarding their peers.
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I also find this happening as students do not generally want to hurt someone's feelings so they are not comfortable in this situation. It is important to demonstrate how to do this properly and effectively so they can give constructive criticism and know how to handle that on the receiving end.
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I have done better with having students offer qualitative feedback rather than quantitative.
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Put simply, we see self-assessment as feedback for oneself from oneself.”
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I think this is the hardest thing. I teach middle school and to be honest, I don't know how productive this would be for my students. I love the idea that students are self reflecting for themselves, but I just have some concerns that it won't work. I almost wonder if cognitively, they aren't ready for that yet. Heck, even as an adult I think this a hard to do at times. I do think that I can begin to move my students in this direction though. Maybe if I was very clear on success criteria and tried some one on one conversations, I could get this to work. I think I would have to really model and scaffold this process. It's like looking into mirror and having a though conversation with yourself. It would be difficult.
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Students must feel comfortable and trust one another in order to provide honest and constructive feedback.
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In addition to checklists and rubrics for specific communication tasks, students can also use broader self-assessment tools to reflect on topics they have studied, skills they have learned, their study habits, and their sense of their overall strengths and weaknesses.
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This all sounds great, but is this task going to be graded? Many teachers are in buildings in which only the academic standards are assessed. I have many students that would benefit from these types of tasks that would simply skip them while working on an assessment. Sadly, these are often the exact students that need to do them the most.
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Grading is based on a predetermined process, but most commonly it is an average of the marks awarded by members of the group.
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Self evaluation has a risk of being perceived as a process of presenting inflated grades and being unreliable.
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Students in this sample reported that their attitudes toward self-assessment became more positive as their experiences with the process accumulated.
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The instructor must explain expectations clearly to them before they begin.
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One way to begin the process of introducing students to self-assessment is to create student-teacher contracts. Contracts are written agreements between students and instructors, which commonly involve determining the number and type of assignments that are required for particular grades.
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Measure each student's achievement while allowing for individual differences between students in a class
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The student participates in the selection of portfolio content, the development of guidelines for selection, and the definition of criteria for judging merit. Portfolio assessment is a joint process for instructor and student.
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lift the role and status of the student from passive learner to active leaner and assessor
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Most did not see the larger value of the skill they were developing. Most did not use self-assessment in their other courses.
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peer grading lay in the comments
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I am not surprised to see that the quality of comments was a concern. If you think about the amount of learning we've done in this course alone on how to provide a high quality comment that pushes the learner, it's not surprising to see that students would fall short. I think this is where it is important that the teacher model what feedback looks like and provide scaffolds for those that need it to learn to provide better feedback, as this will help them as well.
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6) Learners have a developed set of communication skills
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clear understanding of what they are to look for in their peers' work.
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What a great way for the students to become experts on a topic. They can also gather ideas from others to use in their assignment.
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This is the part of peer to peer assessment that I need to work on next year. I don't do a great job of explaining and teaching my students on how to do peer assessments. I am working on an entire lesson on how to do peer assessment at the beginning of the year.
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I think peer feedback can be an incredibly valuable tool...both to not only help a peer, but also to deepen understanding for the assessor. It can only be quality experience and worth the time if the assessors have clear understandings of what they are looking for!
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As a group,
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instructors can use a framework like SMART goals
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Emphasize what students can do
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Students can also benefit from using rubrics or checklists to guide their assessments
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This is beneficial for assessments as well as assignments. Helping students to know what is most important and creating structures for these can help them to apply these structures as they continue to mature.
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I would argue that anytime we give students the rubric up-front, they have more success. I know that rings very true for anything I do/did as a student.
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tell the story of a student's efforts, progress, and achievement in specific areas
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Represent a student's progress over time
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helps them control the classroom better by reinforcing their power and expertis
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Prior to submitting the assignment, students used these assessment tools to judge their work.
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While I like this idea of checklists and rubrics before turning in work, it may still lead to students worrying too much about what the teacher wants and not so much about their learning process. In addition, I have always been a fan of asking students to rate their level of confidence with certain tasks/parts of the assignment. This reflection helps the learner to see patterns in their own learning process and areas where they might want to improve.
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teachers share expectations for assignments and define quality. Showing students examples of effective and ineffective pieces of work can help to make those definitions real and relevant.
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Rather than assessing whether the student learned from the assignment or not, this method seems geared to identifying any ‘slackers’ or those who sit on the side lines through the entire project, with minimal contributions.
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I have mixed feelings about peer evaluations, leaning towards not using peer reviews as part of the assessment strategy.
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I struggled with these same thoughts mostly because I chose not to take the time to show students how to evaluate each other. The times I have used it, I gave the criteria and altered it to be easy for the students.
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I also struggle with this. I like the idea, but I don't spend enough time teaching and showing my students how to do this. I think next year I will make this a priority and stick with it!
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Even so, the ability to self-assess skills and completed work is important. Moreover, it is an ability acquired with practice and developed with feedback. It seems like the kind of skill that should be addressed in college. And perhaps there is a way.
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•Agreed marking criteria means there can be little confusion about assignment outcomes and expectations.
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a practice session with it
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peer assessment frequently
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This kind of practice helps students to be aware of their learning
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Article(s): Self- and Peer-Assessment Online - 1 views
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One of the ways in which students internalize the characteristics of quality work is by evaluating the work of their peers. However, if they are to offer helpful feedback, students must have a clear understanding of what they are to look for in their peers' work. The instructor must explain expectations clearly to them before they begin.
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The whole time I was reading this article, I was thinking, but I never get it to work the way I want it. Then, as I was scrolling, I came back to this beginning statement. I think this is the real key that often gets lost. Every time I have had students do a peer assessment, I don't how clear I was on teaching students how to do it. I'm not sure I was clear enough on the look fors and the expectations.
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Portfolios are purposeful, organized, systematic collections of student work that tell the story of a student's efforts, progress, and achievement in specific areas. The student participates in the selection of portfolio content, the development of guidelines for selection, and the definition of criteria for judging merit. Portfolio assessment is a joint process for instructor and student.
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I have recently been looking into this idea. I really like the idea of students selecting what they think is their best work and uploading it to a portfolio. Then the student would have to explain how their artifact shows their understanding of the standard. I think it will make students much more invested in their learning, knowing they would have to explain how it matches a standard later. I had a college class where we had to select work and upload it to an online portal and describe how it was evidence of our learning. It made me much more aware of what I was doing, knowing that I had to justify it in the end.
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I like this idea. I use to have students create file folder portfolios but an electronic portfolio is very easy. I like the idea of having them write how the artifacts shows their understanding of the standard. We need anything we can to help them CARE and be motivated to learn.
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Student portfolios were a hot topic when I first got into teaching. It was this awesome thing where all of the students work is placed, reflection of learning, and posted for all to see. This is still a great idea... plus I love how it shows the students where you started, all the hard work, and where you are at now.
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Students may have little exposure to different forms of assessment and so may lack the necessary skills and judgements to effectively manage self and peer assessments. There may also be a perception amongst students that the academic is ‘shirking’ their responsibilities by having students undertaking peer assessments. I
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I have seen this with my own students. They often don''t like having to self assess as they see it as my responsibility. Like the softchalk lesson says, they have been schooled not to. I think they also don't see the real value. We tend to communicate to students that the work is for a grade not for learning. I think this is a huge cultural shift we need to make. Somehow we need stakeholders in education to understand that it is the learning that matters not the grade. I realize that we all think that, but how do our practices show that belief?
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“Professors in the trenches tend to hold their monopoly on evaluating their students’ work dearly, since it helps them control the classroom better by reinforcing their power and expertise,”
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So I don't know if this is the best reflection to make here, but when I read this, a thought came to mind. A few years ago I was taking a class taught by Brian Hand (educational researcher). He asked us on day one, who was in charge of the learning in your classroom. Most of us said, we are. His reply (and I don't mean to be crude)"...and that's whats %$#@ wrong with education. You're students are in control of the learning, even if you aren't aware of it or want it that way." It was a bit abrupt. As it was the first time I've ever been sworn at in PD, I always remembered it. I also think that it's spot on. I don't own the learning as I don't chose who actually learns it. For learning to occur, I need to create a culture where students are in control of their learning. I think otherwise the best we can hope for is compliance. Which isn't the same thing.
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type of evaluation is to give students a practice session with it
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students develop trust by forming them into small groups early in the semester and having them work in the same groups throughout the term.
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I have to help students build trust because they are nervous to be completely honest. They have a lot of social and confidence issues that can get in the way of great peer editing. If keeping them with the same partners for a given amount of time will help, it makes sense to do it. I will try this next year.
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It is helpful to introduce students to the concepts and elements of assessment against specified criteria in the first weeks of class when you explain the unit of study outline.
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The break down in peer grading occurs when the learning environment cannot provide the conditions as mentioned above.
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I can see some of these factors are not being met in my classroom when I have peer editing or peer feedback assigned. Some of these factors will be hard to reach which is depressing.I think with practice, explaining expectations, a positive culture for my students we can overcome many of these factors but not all.
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Over and over again, students rejected their own judgments of their work in favor of guessing how their teacher or professor would grade it.” (p. 168)
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They also recommend that teachers share expectations for assignments and define quality. Showing students examples of effective and ineffective pieces of work can help to make those definitions real and relevant.
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Students do not learn to monitor or assess their learning on their own; they need to be taught strategies for self monitoring and self assessment.
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lift the role and status of the student from passive learner to active leaner and assessor
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the loafers— students that cannot provide feedback due to the lack of necessary skills, whether it be education background or language.
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Students in this sample reported that their attitudes toward self-assessment became more positive as their experiences with the process accumulated.
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this method seems geared to identifying any ‘slackers’ or those who sit on the side lines through the entire project, with minimal contributions.
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once the students have more experience, they can develop them themselves.
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Students must feel comfortable and trust one another in order to provide honest and constructive feedback.
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Goal setting is essential because students can evaluate their progress more clearly when they have targets against which to measure their performance
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Represent an emphasis on language use and cultural understanding
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required, and to provide guidance on how to judge their own and others’ contributions.
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majority of students-as-graders are not able to provide quality feedback that can help students develop their writing and critical thinking skills.
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students are looking at their work and judging the degree to which it reflects the goals of the assignment and the assessment criteria the teacher will be using to evaluate the work
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It seems like the kind of skill that should be addressed in college.
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saw self-assessment as a vehicle for figuring out the teacher’s expectations.
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Most did not see the larger value of the skill they were developing
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self-assessment need not necessarily be about self-grading
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ollie-afe-2020: Article: Attributes from Effective Formative Assessment (CCSSO) - 3 views
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Formative assessment is a process used by teachers and students during instruction that provides feedback to adjust ongoing teaching and learning to improve students’ achievement of intended instructional outcomes
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Formative assessment is not an adjunct to teaching but, rather, integrated into instruction and learning with teachers and students receiving frequent feedbac
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In this type of classroom culture, students will more likely feel they are collaborators with their teacher and peers in the learning process.
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This collaboration is important. Students need to feel like they have respect and "own" their learning. I teach Special Ed, so I always give students a way to own their instruction and opportunities to improve.
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I agree. Not all kids are risk takers so when they feel supported they are more likely open up with the others in the learning process
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This is the direction I really want to go in my classrooms. It is transitioning my students from passive to more active learners. The part that I have work on is building the class norms and modeling them properly in my class.
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A classroom culture where there is collaboration between teacher and students in the learning process would be so exciting. I think it would hold students more accountable when they are part of their own process.
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Because the formative assessment process helps students achieve intended learning outcomes based on explicit learning progressions, teachers must first identify and then communicate the instructional goal to students
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This is an important statement. Students need to know the instructional goal. I do think this is missed. It is a good reminder for me moving forward. I feel like I do this, but what does that look like?
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Agreed! However, I struggle to find that most students don't "care" about this goal unless you make it relevant to them right now. (And even with this some don't care.) I would love for students to buy in to what we are all doing in our classrooms and understand the bigger pictures, then they would understand the learning progressions.
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The communication of the end goal is something that I need to do a better job with. I think I will have better outcomes from my formative assessment when my students see there purpose rather than just me.
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My new curriculum is all about the I Can statements and reviewing it at the end, so this is very helpful. I agree with the comment above- Now to motivate the students to care!
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Learning progressions describe how concepts and skills build in a domain, and show the trajectory of learning along which students are expected to progress. From a learning progression teachers have the big picture of what students need to learn, as well as sufficient detail for planning instruction to meet short-term goals. They are able to connect formative assessment opportunities to the short-term goals to keep track of how well their students’ learning is moving forward.
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I have enjoyed our course work on this. It has made me really think the steps between objection and assessment.
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I agree with you. The Progression diagram that I have made 2 different times has really helped me understand how to break the learning down. Trying to make sure students are achieving at each step is so important to their success.
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It should help the student answer three basic questions: Where am I going? Where am I now? How can I close the gap?
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I will remember these questions Often feedback is just a general statement of good job. These questions will drive student with specific feedback.
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I really like the idea of posing those questions to the students and make them more engaged in their learning and the skill of really knowing where they are in the learning progression.
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I imagine the learning progressions posted on the wall and when conferring with students, posing the questions - where are you now? where are you going? how will you get there?
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I think posing the questions to students would be a great way to have them do some self-reflection. That would also help the teacher to understand the students' perception of where they are and be able to give appropriate feedback. For example, a teacher might think a student is doing something well because they have evidence of that, but it would help to know if the student felt they knew it well enough so that they could replicate it in the future.
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student- and peer-assessment should not be used in the formal grading process.
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Sharing learning goals and criteria for success with students, supporting students as they monitor and take responsibility for their own learning, helping students to provide constructive feedback to each other, and involving students in decisions about how to move learning forward are illustrations of students and teachers working together in the teaching and learning process.
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I want to increase this in my classroom so if you have ideas, please do share! :) I want students to feel comfortable with this process and care about the learning progressions we are moving through. I want there to be good peer feedback and not just students "jumping through the hoops" so that they themselves get better at the big ideas and collaboration pieces.
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I think this is very important. There are too many variables in peer statements and comments.
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You must also relate your explanation to one of the properties we have been discussing in class to indicate the reason the steps were incorrect.” Again, the students know the goal, where their response differed from the criteria, and how they can improve their explanations.
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Effective formative assessment involves collecting evidence about how student learning is progressing during the course of instruction so that necessary instructional adjustments can be made to close the gap between students’ current understanding and the desired goals.
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These are only effective when teachers/students use them to drive the instruction further. It is not enough to just say that we are doing formative assessments but then disregarding the data that they give us. Changes and adaptions must be made to successfully move all students forward with the material.
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I agree. I think this also goes with doing a pretest or pre assessment. What data are you trying to get and what are you actually going to do with that data to enhance your teaching and to adjust your teaching for your students.
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A second important part of the definition is its unequivocal requirement that the formative assessment process involve both teachers and students. The students must be actively involved in the systematic process intended to improve their learning.
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So important to build this process in our classrooms so that students take ownership of their learning and want to do better. (I would love tips on how to do this better in my own room if anyone has some!) :)
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Getting students to consistently take ownership of their learning has been one of the most difficult tasks of my career. Intrinsic motivation is key, but by definition, it has to come from within a student There are things a teacher can do, such as offer freedom and choice, but this can be very difficult for students that do not buy in.
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a process used by teachers and students
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It's important to emphasize that it is a process used both by teachers AND students. I think too often, students don't realize how much informaiton a formative assessment can also provide them and help them with goal-setting for future lessons.
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I think that most teachers use formative assessments throughout their lesson plans and teaching without even knowing that they are doing it!
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This is why I liked the learning progression activity. It put the use of formative assessments front and center when creating units. Something I need to do better with.
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I agree that teachers have been using the formative assessment process before it was given a name. I think they knew they were doing it and because it is good practice, gave it a name.
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These range from informal observations and conversations to purposefully planned instructionally embedded techniques designed to elicit evidence of student learning to inform and adjust instruction.
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It's always interesting to hear the groans from students if I announce that we are going to have a more formal formative assessment (such as a quick 2-3 question quiz) vs. the simpler formative assessments that I conduct daily in terms of having conversations with students/groups or thumbs up/thumbs down. There's this misconception with students (at least my own) in that if I announce we are having an assessment, it suddenly becomes more important than the daily check-ins.
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The process requires the teacher to share learning goals with students and provide opportunities for students to monitor their ongoing progress.
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In my building we've spent a few professional development sessions on crafting student-friendly learning targets that we regularly communicate to students and that students can communicate back to us. We are working on how we can better have students monitoring their own progress at reaching those learning goals. I think it's critical that the learning targets are student-friendly so that it becomes easier for them to monitor their own progress.
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The communication piece is key to pulling teachers and students together for the same purpose. I would love to continue on finding ways for students to understand the formative assessments and how they can help in the student's learning.
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Yes, getting students not to push back is key. I find that my students this year, shut down if I attach the word assessment to any thing. I think that they issue is, the educational system has trained students to think with a "for grade" mentality. Somehow we have to shift that focus to a "learning mentality". Is it possible to get parents to and students not to worry about grades and simply worry about the learning that can happen?
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In peer-assessment, students analyze each others’ work using guidelines or rubrics and provide descriptive feedback that supports continued improvement.
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I think the use of peer-assessment can be really effective in helping students think about their learning and make changes. It's helpful for them to hear from their peers, and not always receive feedback from just the teacher. I think this brings up a good point, though. Students have to be explicitly taught how to provide helpful feedback, without it, their comments and feedback are often superficial and won't really help the student make progress.
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I really like this as a formative assessment that I need to incorporate more into my units. What I like is the students are now being more involved in the learning process.
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Have you had any success doing this. At the middle school level we have started pairing the teams together and we present and give feedback across the two teams. However, it is still not what we want it to be. We made a sheet with look fors and sentence stems to help students. We've even stopped a class of 60 students and told them that we are listening for you to us...(a certain sentence stem), and that helps a little, but it still seems a bit fake. I can't tell if we aren't doing something right or if the idea of it is just so foreign to them. I know that as a student we never did peer feed back and the best feedback I got from a teacher was a, "Wow, your hard work is evident".
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I like the idea of peer-assessment, but think it would probably work best when the students do not know who is providing the feedback nor to whom they provided feedback. It would require discussion and practice, but allows students to do some analysis which should cause more critical thinking of the work they too are completing.
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process
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I think we still struggle as a system to view formative assessment as a process. Case in point, administrators in my previous buildings would ask teachers to bring their "formative assessments" to our PLC meetings. It became a tangible thing vs. observations, etc.
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I am glad that you brought this up. This whole process is supposed to be something that moves student learning forward and deeper and our profession to new heights. That definitely gets lost in translation when it becomes something forced. My administrators have done the same thing. The meaningful process becomes lost when teachers do it just because they are told to, or they are just going through the motions. I think that you are correct when you say it's so much more than a tangible thing, it has to be observational as well. We also have to get educators to see the value of it and using formative assessments to guide our practice.
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Specific, timely feedback should be based on the learning goal and criteria for success.
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"timely feedback" - students don't want formative feedback when they already took their summative assessment. Make the feedback relatable and clear. If you make the feedback irrelevant it is not meaning full to the student.
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I do like using the language in the rubric to specify what they did well as well as what needs to be built upon to hit the success criteria.
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I also liked that part. I have a hard time with the whole specific, timely feedback. I don't always know how to go about doing it for a 150 students. I think that being more clear on the rubric might really help. Rather than focus on content I could include wording needed that help develop the skills needed to get to or master the content. I still am unsure how to effectively answer the where going, where now, and closing the gap questions. I wonder if students can be given a self assessment with a carefully worded rubric and them I can review those and make changes as needed. What ideas or methods do the rest of you use to meet the needs of the last three questions in this sentence?
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YES! This cuts out all of the fluff and gets to the heart of what we want kids to learn! Creating better learning targets makes teaching much more purposeful!
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To support both self- and peer-assessment, the teacher must provide structure and support so students learn to be reflective of their own work and that of their peers, allowing them to provide meaningful and constructive feedback.
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I think this is a great way to incorporate the rubric that would be used to assess the student. Peer feedback is one that could go really well and really bad if the teacher doesn't set the guidelines of what it looks like. This is a teachable moment in it's self.
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I agree with this statement. If a student can successfully self evaluate according to criteria like a rubric then they can have success with peers. Start there.
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I have found that if I ask students to give each other a grade, it is basically useless, as they will just give each other an A. But if I ask them to comment and send back for revision, in actually work quite well. Qualitative over quantitative has been key for me.
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In other words, there is no such thing as “a formative test.” Instead, there are a number of formative assessment strategies that can be implemented during classroom instruction.
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Viewing formative assessment as a process rather than any one or a series of discrete assessments is critical in my mind for formative assessment to really do what it is meant to do and that is to inform instruction and improve student learning. Never too many reminders of this fact.
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I think the definition has changed a bit since 2006. I know my administrators include AFTER the instruction as formative assessment such as ticket outs and even quizzes. All still help guide teaching decisions but many occur after.
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We use formative assessments in the in-person classroom multiple times within the class period. I have done some formative assessments, realized all of the kids were well past proficient (thanks to great background knowledge), and I moved on. In that sense, there was no test needed.
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Using the evidence elicited from such tasks connected to the goals of the progression, a teacher could identify the “just right gap” – a growth point in learning that involves a step that is neither too large nor too small – and make adjustments to instruction accordingly.
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It is important to identify those "just right gaps" for individual students and for the class as a whole so that time isn't wasted on things they have already mastered nor do some or all of the students feel lost or overwhelmed. Learning progressions in conjunction with ongoing formative assessment help pinpoint where additional instruction or practice may be needed.
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This is one of the positive aspects of blended learning. I can figure out who has gaps and bring them in to work on the skills they need to improve.
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I hadn't thought about how an additional benefit of a well-written learning target is that it allows a teacher to readily know what the next step of learning is for students and let's them use that knowledge to help give feedback that is alerts the student to next steps in their learning, but that makes absolute sense!
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teachers must provide the criteria by which learning will be assessed so that students will know whether they are successfully progressing toward the goal. This information should be communicated using language readily understood by students, and may be accompanied by realistic examples of those that meet and do not meet the criteria.
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Providing students with user friendly criteria upon which they can self-assess their own progress is critical for optimal learning.
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I agree! Too many students aren't able to tell if they are "on track" because they think they have to get in the heads of their teachers. The assessment piece remains a mystery to them.
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Formative assessment is a process that directly engages both teachers and students.
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The teacher might first offer students a paraphrased version of that goal such as, “You will be able to judge the strengths and weaknesses of arguments in the editorials you find in our daily newspapers.” The teacher would discuss the criteria for evaluating arguments and then provide several examples of critiques of political essays. This will provide students with a reasonably clear idea of the analytic skills they are to develop and also provide them with the tools required to assess their own written analyses.
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With this kind of descriptive feedback and collaboration, the teacher clarifies the goal for the student, provides specific information about where the student is in relation to meeting the criteria, and offers enough substantive information to allow the student an opportunity to identify ways to move learning forward.
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Helping students think meta-cognitively about their own learning fosters the idea that learning is their responsibility and that they can take an active role in planning, monitoring, and evaluating their own progress.
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I think teachers and students need to hear and believe this concept more. Once teachers buy into allowing students more o fa role in their learning, students will take on more responsibility...in the ideal world.
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Absolutely! We need to re-structure the classroom environment so that students don't see it as hierarchical. The teacher should be a guide in the room, sitting among his/her students. This way, students may begin to develop more ownership of their learning.
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Helping students see that the only way they can truly learn is when they take ownership for their learning is the key. We will never be able to teach someone who does not want to learn.
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Students can use a rubric to provide feedback to a peer by articulating reasons why a piece of work is at one level and discussing how it could be improved to move it to the next level.
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inform instruction and learning during the teaching/learning process
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particular kind of assessment.
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My first year or two, I believed that it was a specific assessment. The confusion between formative and summative for a new teacher is hard to grasp if you haven't been explicitly taught.
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I worry that in our district's attempts at the PLC process that teachers have gotten the wrong impression that formative assessment has to be proven through a specific assessment in order to facilitate a data-driven discussion. I believe that data can tell us a great deal about where our students are and how to move them forward, but I don't like the idea of it replacing ongoing feedback about the process.
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This is an important point. Any, and potentially all assessments can and should be formative.
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Students build on this learning in later stages of the progression to develop an understanding that people represent and interpret the past in different ways
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An effective teacher understands that this must be built upon before students can learn new material.
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Looking back at my early days as an educator, I did not do a very good job at this. In hindsight, I really assumed that students knew how to do some things that they obviously did not know how to do. I still find that I have to get myself to slow down and break apart tasks for students. I wonder how many other teachers struggle with this, and may not even be aware of it!
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However, for students to be actively and successfully involved in their own learning, they must feel that they are bona fide partners in the learning process. This feeling is dependent on a classroom culture characterized by a sense of trust between and among students and their teachers; by norms of respect, transparency, and appreciation of differences; and by a non-threatening environment. Creating such a culture requires teachers to model these behaviors during interactions with students, to actively teach the classroom norms, and to build the students’ skills in constructive self- and peer-assessment.
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I think this is so very true. I fully think that we as a system we have to do a better job at promoting learners not students. Students do things for a grade. They follow the rules so they don't get into trouble. They don't follow the rules to get out of work or other outside issue. Learners however, they do the work to learn, even if it were not graded. They come to school to better themselves and they understand that they are there are doing the work for themselves, it's a passion of self improvement. The know the teacher is there to facilitate them and they understand that the person in charge of the learning in the classroom isn't the teacher, it's them, the learner. I hope, that through the formative assessment process, scientists seminars, and norms that I have developed, that I am beginning to foster more learners and less students. It is a journey that has forced me to become less of a teacher and more of learner myself.
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A teacher needs to have modeled good feedback with students and talked about what acceptable and unacceptable comments look like in order to have created a safe learning environment
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As an instructional coach, this is a step that I frequently saw teacher's skip when they asked students to to self- and peer-feedback. Teachers assumed students knew how to give high quality feedback then were frustrated with the responses with students gave, often coming to the conclusion that self- and peer-feedback were a waste of time because the feedback lacked quality.
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I find this the most important piece. If I don't model feedback, how are kids supposed to know what's going on? Without the modeling, this becomes an unimportant time-filler.
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Effective formative assessment involves collecting evidence about how student learning is progressing during the course of instruction so that necessary instructional adjustments can be made to close the gap between students’ current understanding and the desired goals.
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I would say that sometimes PLC work goes too far in this...there is too much data being thrown around, and less attention to actual teaching. Sometimes, the formative assessments are analyzed but the kids don't receive any feedback. If we want our students to be a partner in the learning, the feedback has to be provided to the student, not just for teacher use.
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ollie-afe-2020: Building a Better Mousetrap - 2 views
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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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I like this comment! It is a nice way to view rubrics instead of always associating the word with tests or grading.
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I agree. The use of a rubric could focus on improving learning, not just a score and done.
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I agree. I have to admit that I don't think that I have ever viewed rubrics this way. When writing them, I was always focused on how I was going use them for grading. I'm going to have to show this article to my PLC. I think it will really help us move our assessments to new levels.
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I like this definition of a rubric, it gives it a much more important role in the process of assessing. I have sometimes in the past used rubrics as a checklist rather than its real purpose which is focusing on improvement.
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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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I have only started focusing on using these at the beginning of tasks instead of only at the end. It helps the student see all the "parts" to the task.
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I also agree with this. When I was in college this was a big thing that they pushed is to show and use the rubric at the beginning of the assignment instead of just at the end.
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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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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.
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I like to use weighted criteria in rubrics. I think it tells students which areas they need to focus more time on.
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Do you feel that it leads students to "ignore" the areas that are not weighted as heavily? Just wondering what you have witnessed...
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I do this often in teaching writing. The area we are targeting is going to be worth more points, but by the end of the year everything should have been taught. It is more balanced.
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I do weigh my points on my rubrics, however I feel I could do a better job at giving more points to aspects of the assessment that are more important. I don't tend to use the weight part, but rather more points for more importance. Learning how to do this better, will definitely help me.
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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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I often have these same thoughts when I think about our science standards. So much of the standard is based upon what students can do beyond memorizing content, so it doesn't seem appropriate to assess students in ways that make it more difficult to demonstrate those skills. Rubrics obviously lend themselves to these performance expectations well because of the science and engineering practices within them. However, I think there still has to be a balance because not everything can be assessed with a rubric.
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This is also true for mathematics standards. Rubrics help when assessing performance expectations, however, there are still some items that cannot be assessed with a rubric.
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“scaffolding”—if they are shared with students prior to the completion of any given assignment. 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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I've never thought of viewing a rubric as scaffolding before when students are completing assessments. I think that's a more positive way to view rubrics if students are using them as guidelines to complete the task. Even if students have a rubric and know what is expected of them, it doesn't mean that they will automatically score much higher. They may still be lacking understanding/skills that the rubric is being used to assess.
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I agree, a rubric can serve as scaffolding for some who have a base knowledge already, but for students who really lack the understanding and skills being assessed in the rubric, a large rubric can be overwhelming and cause that student to shut down.
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I agree with you on this. I have never thought of them this way. If we are creating rubrics as a way to guide student thinking in the best possible way to reach our expectations/standards, they need guidance in order to get there. If the rubric is being used as a facilitation in the process of learning then this would be their tool for self reflection, not an instant guarantee of a higher grade.
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I have found that in middle school anyway- long or too wordy of rubrics are hard for students to attend to. They have a hard time focusing to go through it and really using it. I keep that in mind when I'm creating rubrics.
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I really like the idea of using rubrics as a way to build scaffolding into an assessment. A lot of the time I give my students the rubrics when we introduce an assessment, which I need to change. I like the idea of giving the students the rubric at the beginning and designing it to help scaffold the learning while they are progressing toward the end.
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I agree that using rubrics to build scaffolding into an assessment is a great use of this tool. If the same document is used (with extra spaces for updated scoring) students will be able to see progress and end product will be of better quality.
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maintains the traditional gap between what the teacher knows and what the student knows
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I do like the leverage that rubrics provide students in knowing what is expected of them. It levels the playing field for all students if they have those guidelines ahead of time. I would imagine students also appreciate that they know what the teacher wants from them and isn't using the assessment as something to hold over their heads.
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Yes! I find it so hard with my own kids when they are graded on something that the teacher never touched on and/or told them about. I hope that I am clear with my expectations in my classroom so kids do not feel this way. Having this "guide" would definitely take care of that problem.
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teachers know deep learning when they see it.
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I think that this can become a slippery slope if students attempt to assess without any standard against which to compare the work. Teachers will probably grade things less reliably and it is hard for them to remove inherent bias depending on the student's work being graded. I think rubrics provide an advantage in this way so that teachers are more reliable in assessment practices and can avoid some of the bias.
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First, you must decide whether you need a rubric.
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In short, 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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I highlighted this sentence because it made me laugh and I had to read it several times. It starts out "In short" and then proceeds to use many educational words as possible in one sentence. It understand what it is saying but not right away.
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I agree that it is a lengthy sentence with a lot of educational language but I think the idea is powerful. I am a big proponent of student centered project based learning which can be harder to assess with traditional tests and quizzes. It speaks of "meaningful assessment" which should always be our goal.
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Not only does it help instructors, but it helps students as well to see what is expected of them.
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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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Isn't it sad that rubric that are state issued often are poorly designed. I can see where students that are good at playing the numbers game as school and doing what it says will have a difficult time expressing themselves on non-rubric assessments.
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I have to admit that I have rubrics that look like this. But it is good that I have started to identify the issues with my rubrics and am planning on improving them to their intended purpose.
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rubrics are now used similarly by post-secondary educators in all disciplines to assess outcomes in learning situations that require critical thinking and are multidimensional
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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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You bet! Isn't that just like a job? You do all of these things and this is the outcome. It's life unfortunately and that is how we go about doing our daily lives. But, I do think that when we have a guide of knowing what someone wants in a certain thing, we need these check lists. I know as me being a math teacher, I love those checklists.
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Revise the rubric and try it out again.
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consistently and accurately
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Yes, a well-written rubric can help with consistency and accuracy. In a situation where multiple teachers are teaching the same course, it is also important that those teachers work to ensure inter-rater reliability to ensure that the rubric is being applied consistently and accurately across courses.
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Agreed. This would help with the subjectivity among teachers and across different sections of classes trying to teach to the same standards/expectations.
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rubrics that are outside of the students “zone of proximal development” are useless to the students.
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This goes back to my comment above about how sometimes rubrics can be too overwhelming for students who lack enough understanding or skills to comprehend the rubric, causing them to shut down.
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I AGREE! It kind of sounds like a one rubric for all doesn't work. I'm sure it would completely depend on the assignment/learning target being assessed, but maybe there needs to be multiple rubrics depending on level of learner. That sounds wonderful in theory, but I can't imagine how much more front loading that would be! SO MUCH DIFFERENTIATION!
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Weighting
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While I see the merits to weighted dimensions (particularly that it helps students to see what is most important in the rubric), I also think that adding point values for each dimension puts the emphasis of the feedback provided as a grade rather than the emphasis of the rubric being the feedback in the dimension that helps the student know how to improve.
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Can students and parents understand the rubric?
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I agree with all of these ideas. In thinking about if the rubric is clear to parents and students, I also think that a good rubric is descriptive enough for students to understand the difference between each performance level, but also concise enough that the user doesn't experience reader's fatigue from trying to process the rubric. To me, this means rubrics for lower reading abilities especially need to be clear and concise.
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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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I think this applies to all classes on some level. Too often the "final product" whatever that might be only has the feedback on the final version that is turned in and graded. I have given assessments at the beginning of a project for student reference but I need to place more importance along the way for individual reflection using the rubric so it is a tool for them, not just for me in grading.
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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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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
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I think that both have a place for me, just as described. A general rubric might apply to overall industry standards, classroom norms/expectations, etc for the teacher while the specific rubric would be individual for specific projects/purposes.
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Yes, I agree. Both types of rubrics have a place in our teaching depending on what the outcome is. Maybe the general rubric is for a final performance task, but smaller rubrics or pieces of the whole rubric are used and as the student builds the smaller skills.
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I agree that both rubrics have a place in assessment and communication with students. The general rubric is best for overall concept understanding, but for unique assignments, a specific rubric would provide better guidance. Again, if used with feedback as a multi-step process.
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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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Hit and miss learning like sit and get has seen better days. As an instructor I want to get the most learning out of my time with students and the most learning for their efforts and I think letting students know upfront the qualities of thought and expectations of the activity will help accomplish that objective.
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“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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I usually give verbal examples during lecture but will need to be more intentional about including exemplars for each level on the rubric in an online format as I think this will increase student understanding of expectations
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Such an important instructional tool to use in really any subject. Having students evaluate different samples and decided where they fit on a rubric, discuss with the class, and then evaluate their own before it is assessed by the teacher is very powerful. They can clearly see how the rubric will help them improve and they can improve!
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also be linked specifically to classroom instruction.
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Unfortunately, many of my language arts colleagues like to throw all aspects of writing on a rubric for every piece. I find that this distracts students with what the true objectives are - what they've been learning about in classroom instruction!
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Good point! There has to be an area that is stressed and worth more points because that is the skill teachers are working on for that particular writing.
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student-generated rubrics, they tend to “think more deeply about their learning.
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This is especially true when students also try assessing different models using the rubric they've co-created. Now they see the differences between examples and non-examples!
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I have thought about rubrics for grading but I am glad to see so many more applications, I think a rubric could be highly motivating to a student who needs structure.
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monitor their own performance.”
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“stylistic voices full of humor and surprises, produced less interesting essays when they followed the rules
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hose 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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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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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? […]
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undergraduate engineering curriculum at the University of California at Berkley.
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increases the likelihood of a quality product.
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“sentence structure follows current conventions” would be better than “sentence structure is good.”
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Does it reflect teachable skills or does it address variables over which students and educators have no control
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their institution developed can be used to reliably score the performance-based and problem-solving assignments that now form a significan
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The part that sticks out to me here is the use of rubrics to reliably score... This is always my issue. I know that I need to be more clear with the rubrics I use. I don't always know that they are serving the purpose I want or need them to. I often find myself overthinking the rubric when I go to use them. Either I not writing it correctly or I'm not being clear on the learning targets that I'm trying to assess.
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We have created some rubrics as a team so teachers doing instruction on the same assignment can be consistent with one another.
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traditional assessment practices used to grade papers, for example, are not helpful to the students struggling to write the paper:
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Until, I read the lessons in the previous section of this course, I didn't think much about how I use rubrics. I always just used them as the end point for grading. I really like the idea of using them as learning tools and providing feedback along the way to enhance learning. I think that can be a really positive way to help students learn and not give up on themselves. I have so many students that look at the rubric and just give up. If I can scaffold the rubric better, break it into parts, and then provide feedback with opportunities to redo, then I think students will embrace and use them more.
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mitagate both teacher bias and the perception of teacher bias
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I agree here. This is one of the best things about rubrics, if you get them created correctly", they help you to limit bias. There is no, well maybe's, or I think's. Rubrics with details, are fairly clear. I also have seen them useful when students or parents try to argue a grade. Having a rubric that you can point to makes it a lot easier to justify a grade. For the most part, rubrics are fairly black and white as to how students will be assessed. They help keep student and teacher honest and on the same page.
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see as empowering
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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 are not without their critics
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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
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students’ educational disparities and bring fairness into assessment
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I think we have to realize that there is often a lot of knowledge that educators assume kids have, but do not. This is especially prevalent in students from diverse and less privileged backgrounds. Rubrics can help with this, but we may need to expand on the terminology used in the rubrics with many students.
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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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I have served as a reader for AP, grading essays that students wrote for AP exams. It is interesting to note that their rubrics are not fully-formed until after they receive student work. A first draft is made before, but it is then revised after they receive the essays. I think this is generally good practice, but I wonder if there is an even better way to create these rubrics.
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Rubrics can be used either for “filtering”—as they are used in placement testing—or for “latticing,” or “scaffolding”—if they are shared with students prior to the completion of any given assignment.
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Some educators advocate going beyond merely sharing rubrics with students.
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had been more expressive in previous writing assignments, wrote poorly when writing, as we might say, to the rubri
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I think the argument being made here is that a clearly-articulated rubric for this particular course took away the creative flow for these students. I understand this point, in the fact that when I give a grading rubric to my PhysEd classes, many of the kids do exactly what is on the rubric, and don't go above/beyond or exert themselves more. That is likely the cause of a poorly written rubric!
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I agree. Some students will look at the minimum work that needs to be done to complete the assignment. It is hopefully something that a better written rubric can help fix and a great reason to re-evaluate rubric each time it is used.
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“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.”
NICS - Flex Day Tools - 1 views
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Implementation in Advocacy/Guidanace/Post-Secondary Preparation (Articles) - 0 views
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we found that offering options to students also bears risk for the educators.
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They also reached beyond the immediate Graham community to forge partnerships, potentially risking their original plan to unforeseen compromises and adaptations, leaving them-selves open to new opportunities.
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As a parent, community member, and educator, I love this type of authentic learning. But how does this fit into the standards, required curriculum, high-stakes testing education system we have today? Do these partnerships with the community bring more support to schools or do they open up schools to even more criticism if test results aren't a piece of the puzzle?
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Providing choice risks failure because when we, as teachers, make all the decisions for our students, lessons will proceed predictably in productive directions; however, when we remove the possibility of students choosing, and choosing wrongly, we fail to aid the students in becoming competent, thoughtful risk takers.
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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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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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The Silent Epidemic estimates that 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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It also suggests that educators have not yet found a single approach that comprehensively addresses the needs of all at risk students.
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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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It was not that I didn’t want to go to the school; it was that there was nothing for me to go to.
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The sum of all these experiences was a prelude to his senior year, when he began the process of selecting colleges.
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These experiences all sound amazing. But how do they fit into what is required of schools? Is all of this in addition to the learning of "traditional classes"? How does this impact algebra or government class or writing skills? I think it sounds great and would allow students to become well-rounded individuals, but it's hard to understand how a school uses their human and fiscal resources to make this kind of learning available to all students.
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Implementation in an Elementary Classroom (Articles) - 0 views
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You will use the model and examples to assist you in establishing a learning goal for this lesson, how to unpack the Common Core State Standards with your learners, design a warm-up activity that will engage specific learners based on the Class Learning Snapshot. You will also universally-design the new vocabulary along with guided and independent activities as the framework of the lesson.
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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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During this first instructional phase, noise and activity levels sometimes reach eardrum-piercing levels
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lan assignments with choices.
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In 5 months you can
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Adaptive Learning System Articles - 0 views
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Most students learn pretty quickly that a Google search will yield some results that aren’t helpful and adjust accordingly.
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Sorry, I could resist this sentence. It's okay with me if it doesn't count towards my post, but I have to admit to laughing when I read this one. I'm not sure that most students get this today, I mean I hope they do, but the conversations I've had the past few years when students search things are scary.
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Adaptive learning technologies are potentially transformative in that they may be able to change the economics of tutoring. Imagine if every student in your class could have a private tutor, available to them at any time for as long as they need.
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I think this is the most eye opening factor within adaptive learning. It helps provide equity that is often missing when it comes to education. We know, that for the most part, our low social economic students preform lower than their counterparts. Which makes sense if you need tutoring and can't afford it. Adaptive learning technology has the potential to help schools bridge those gaps. It can help provide an equal opportunity for all. The point of, adaptive technologies acting like tutors, hadn't occurred to me before. As someone who needed tutoring in math as a young student, but came from a home where that wasn't feasible, I can appreciate the usefulness of adaptive technology.
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Adaptive learning has long been a part of education. The basic concept is simple: Coursework should be adapted to meet the individual needs of each student. Every teacher has experience modifying curriculum in some way to help students access information. Nowadays technology can help make the adaptations easier and more streamlined.
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Thinking about this first part and segments from the previous article, I would say that this idea would be a life saver. Sure, I realize that some students need more support than others, and sure I realize ways to give them the support they need, but how do I go about accomplishing such a daunting task? I often feel like that, at times, I'm running around with my head cut off. I can support student A who is struggling with seeing the connection from last weeks lessons to our current ones, but student B is so advanced that he's bored and tired of waiting so he's acting up instead, student C hasn't been to school in 8 days and has no idea where were at, and the list just goes on from there. I try to manage what I can by breaking students into groups, focusing on the larger picture, but I still realize that at many times, I'm falling short. If it can help assist me in meeting the needs of individual students, then I'm all for it. Later in the article it also talks about how it helps limit students from giving up. I think we can all agree, that's a huge bonus. My only unanswered questions are when to use it, how often, and at what point in the learning process? I've never used adaptive learning before, so I have lots to learn.
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n fact, it many strengthen instruction as faculty take on a more supporting, coaching role, with less time devoted to delivery of content, which students may or may not already have mastered, and more time focused on one-to-one student engagement and self-paced guidance through a curriculum.
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When I read the first sentence, I was a little offended. I'm glad I kept reading, I like this part a lot. I think that these moments, when students are working independently, are the moments where we truly get to know our students. I often feel like I don't have enough time to talk with my students about their learning. In fact, I often make lists of who I've talked to recently and who I haven't so I can get to them next time. The idea that adaptive learning can help me become an effective facilitator of learning is intriguing.
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"One of the benefits of adaptive learning is that it frees up faculty members to spend more time with students, to work with them in small groups and individually, essentially flipping the classroom," Johnson said. "We see this [approach] as part of a much bigger pedagogical picture. The technology is a tool that gets us to our goal of rehumanizing our large classes."
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I've already commented on the idea and benefits of time in prior articles. Although I like the idea of having more time to work and actually talk with students, I wondered something a bit different when I read about teacher's time in this article. Along with freeing up teacher time to do the things that, I would think all of us got into education for in the first place, would adaptive technologies also help with teacher burnout? What about the fact that in our state, enrollment in teacher education programs are down at all three regent schools? I can't recall the exact reasons why teachers burn out and quit, but I'm fairly sure that time with actually working students is one of them. I hear from many new teachers say that they didn't realize how hard it was going to be to the meet the needs of every student. I wonder if data would show whether or not these systems would help with getting and retaining teachers.
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They might help a student get unstuck on a particular step that he hasn’t quite understood.
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tools t
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the notion of adaptive learning technologies can be abused as a kind of magic incantation by the reductionists.
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work that is not replicable by a machine.
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PLE Articles - 3 views
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Write and Store Notes
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This seems like a tool that would be effective for all of my students. Most of them still take notes in their science notebooks--but a few have dabbled in writing their notes digitally. The problem I see with this is that they write them in separate google documents and then do not find a way to organize them so that they can access them easily when needed. This could be a good tool for them to learn early in their high school career and then carry it on as they get into courses with a larger need for note-taking.
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The employ of PLEs in the classroom can go horribly wrong if teachers fail to prepare students and set usage parameters.
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This is definitely something that I would worry about with my students initially. Because they are used to having technology, I sometimes take for granted the skills I expect them to have when it comes to using different sites. Moodle has been a bigger learning curve for my students than expected, so I know that I would definitely need to prepare my students for setting up and using PLE first. Which also means that I need to feel comfortable explaining what it is and how it works to my students as well.
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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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I find this becoming more and more true the longer I teach. My frustration comes from where to start in supporting students so that they can become more sophisticated in learning online. For example, I use Moodle for my courses rather than Google Classroom and I run into more hesitation and complaints from students than I anticipated because it is "something different." I'm not sure if it is because only a small subset of teachers are currently pushing their students outside of their comfort zones when it comes to online learning and that's where the pushback is, but I feel like we need more teachers to buy into changing the landscape of online learning beyond Google Classroom. I feel like only then will students start to develop those skills and abilities to grow in their capacity as online learners.
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Teachers are challenged to provide the appropriate balance between structured lessons and learner autonomy in order to facilitate self-directed learning.
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This is definitely a balance that I am still trying to find within my classroom and even one that I think my students are trying to figure out. There are some days where they would rather take control on their own, but other days when they want to be given more structure and told what to do or how to do something. I think this balance is hard to find depending on the particular student because some really struggle with the autonomy provided in online learning and still need those additional structures in place. Is there a formula to follow in terms of finding that balance? Does the balance vary from class-to-class depending on your students or can it be a one-size-fits-all approach? These are things I know I will figure out in time, but it can be frustrating at first.
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teachers must pursue training and be knowledgeable of how to utilize PLEs
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I agree with the comment above wholeheartedly. I think this is what caused my genius hour plan to not be what I had hoped a couple years ago. I saw weak projects and kids not very motivated. This is what I want to make sure does not happen again. I just wonder will I really be prepared and confident? Will I have learned enough? Hope so!
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Symbaloo or NetVibesas a foundation to help learners create and maintain their personal learning environments.
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Others utilize sites such as
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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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Students engaging in networked learning have to learn to be more self-directed than in the typical classroom
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as an instructor, you can make a webmix quite interactive
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I've used symbaloo as a way to organize myself and I've even put together webmixes on a specific professional development topic before. Reading about Symbaloo in this context makes me rethink how this tool might be helpful in personalized learning. Building in interaction is a really interesting idea I had never considered.
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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 learner
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A PLE is the method students use to organize their self-directed online learning, including the tools they employ to gather information, conduct research, and present their findings.
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This makes a PLE sound more like an LMS or organizational tool - which I am in desperate need of! We assume students can work through a linear progression, but even adults struggle with that! I know I'm guilty of putting more emphasis and effort into WHAT students will learn rather than HOW they will learn or what the EXPERIENCE will be like.
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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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One thing I also do is forget that students have lives outside of my class. I set what I think is a reasonable amount of time for a task - but neglect to acknowledge that I'm basing that time estimate on my own abilities or on previous experiences in a face-to-face setting where students (and I) could get fairly immediate feedback on the learning (or lack thereof) occurring. While we have to balance between structured lesson and autonomy, we also have to balance between what can feasibly be done by students all alone versus students being actively guided in person.
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Susan and I loved that students could organize their Netvibes portals in a way that made sense to them and that a page could contain a diverse range of information streams: a webpage, an embedded document, a RSS feed, a database widget, the link tool that made a webpage “live” within the Netvibes page. Not only could students organize information, but they could also publish content they were creating through tools like Google Docs and VoiceThread as well as original works, such as artwork and videos.
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What Are the Potential Issues With PLEs?
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An issue i don't see addressed directly below is the issue of students accessing or pulling inappropriate or inaccurate content. Maybe this falls under the "Not every student is ready for the responsibility" category. Depending on the age range, students could so easily get lost in "fake news" or general misinformation, so there would have to be appropriate media and tech literacy lessons provided.
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The concept of PLE is not a way to replace classroom learning, but to enhance it
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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
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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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Teachers, she explains, are no longer the primary or even the best source of information available to students,
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"Personalized" vs. "Personal" Learning - 2 views
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The tasks have been personalized for kids, not created by them.
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At this point in the article, I have many thoughts floating around. One major thought comes to mind. Can we ever fully personalize our classrooms? I get the points given here, but as a functioning society don't we have to conform a little bit? As parents, I think we do this to our children more than most of us would like to admit and certainly our schools follow suit. Also this first line here, isn't this what state standards do? Provide some sort of standardized leaning? Or is it simply saying that kids should be able to design how they will progress through a certain standard? A student chooses his or her own path to the end. However, if is a standard of no interest to me and you make me do it anyway is that truly personal learning? I'm starting to feel like flip flopping politician.
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folly of believing that everything can and should be reduced to numbers.[7
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This seems to go against our current reality in my school. We're told that everything has to be data driven or evidence based. On the surface that makes sense, but my issue has always been that we are dealing with people not things. We work in a system filled with a multitude of variables and I would agree that there is a folly in believing that everything can be reduced to numbers. The more I read this article, the more I am thinking that we might be looking at turning the traditional school upside down on it's head.
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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. It’s a dramatic shift that requires new literacies to navigate all that access and, importantly, new dispositions to take advantage of it for learning.
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Yes, our kids today are walking around with infinite knowledge at their finger tips. Yes, they don't know how to use it and when they are provided the opportunity, they don't seem to use it. I'm not saying that they can't or won't. I'm saying that from my experiences, they are trained not to do so. So many students do not realize their own potential for learning. They want to wait for the teacher to tell them what to do, what the correct answer is, or how to go about a particular task. Maybe we trained them too well. I 500% agree that we need to teach this skill. I also know that I have struggled to do this myself. If asked, I would have say, no I don't how to teach these new literacy skills. It's talked about, but I haven't seen any real professional development on the subject. If you know of any, please share.
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I couldn't agree more with your ideas about students not knowing how to use the knowledge. Sometimes they ask me the simplest question and are offended that I don't have the answer for them. To which I ask, how could you find the answer? I feel as though they only take advantage of having that knowledge at their fingertips when it's a direct benefit to them and seems simpler than relying on someone else for the information. I encourage so many of my students to think through investigations for themselves and to try and come up with possible answers first. So many of them want to sit and wait for me to tell them everything and haven't realized how much more power there is in learning it if they put in the cognitive effort first. Coming from the same district, I also don't know how we teach them how to persevere through that when they just want to take the easy route, but there have to be some strategies out there that help to break down that "instant gratification mindset."
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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.
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Yikes and ouch. Time for some personal reflection. I would say that I have done exactly this. I'm also fairly sure that personalized learning is what I would have called it. Letting students move at their own pace and not be anchored down by others in the classroom. I agree with most of this article. In fact it sounds like an utopia classroom. Students working on problems in their own way, connecting their own dots, learning new skills so they self progress along their chosen path.... At the end of reading though, I'm right back to my roadblock. How do I even begin to manage this or set it up in the first place? Thinking from the science view, we use a lot of materials and supplies, having to have these items available gives me enough anxiety alone.
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but every mechanism we use to measure it is through control and compliance.’
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I often wrestle with these different questions/thoughts from a high school perspective. Personalization seems like a great way to reach each individual students' interests and needs, but the logistics of measuring progress always surface. How do we ensure students are still meeting all of the state standards and critera so that they can earn a credit that is satisfactory for graduation? How do we make sure that things are coded appropriately so that those courses are recognized by post-secondary institutions? How do we allow personalization but don't limit it because of the need to be compliant for some things?
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I really think to implement a system which uses a personalized approach, the whole system by which we operate would need to be changed. High school graduation requirements would need to be adjusted as well as college entrance requirements.
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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 sounds like a great opportunity for a lot of my students, but I'm not sure it will also fit every student's needs. The more flexible schedule and choice inherent within it worries me about some of my students who really struggle with staying on task and making progress. I wonder how much structure would need to be embedded for these students and would it alter it to the point that it wouldn't be considered personalized?
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In theory, giving students a choice in what and how they learn would eliminate the need to keep them focused and on track. However, we have students in our classrooms today we know would struggle with this! As with any method of teaching, there would be students that would love it and thrive while others would struggle and need more intervention. Not every individual could learn this way.
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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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There are certainly some changes that need to happen on a macro level if we want to reach our students in the optimal way. State assessments would need to change, the way that colleges rate students may need to be different and even the way college is taught could have implications. What happens if we are teaching these high schoolers in innovative ways that are truly personalized, but then a students ends up in a freshmen lecture hall with 300 students and is put back into that cookie-cutter scenario? Will they be prepared with the skills to handle that?
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I agree with you. We find ourselves teaching for the standardized tests. We need to find out what the expectations are in college to ensure kids are learning skills that allow them to succeed in all classroom settings.
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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
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This is a big hurdle to overcome if we are to adopt a personalized learning environment. How can we make sure that students know the curriculum they will be evaluated on before going on to college or other programs after high school. Can they still demonstrate success on these tests?
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My school as adopted EL Reading LA curriculum. It is very scripted and all kids read 4 books through the year. Choice in reading has really taken the backseat. No room for personalized learning here.
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Technology was strikingly absent from these conversations.
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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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because of the larger preoccupation with data data data data data
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I love Alfie Kohn but this is a scathing assessment of the data-based movement. I get that not all things can and should be reduced to numbers and I tend to agree with his assessment of the dangers of these things being our focus. However, there has to be some way to see if we're making progress other than just individual feelings.
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One final caveat: in the best student-centered, project-based education, kids spend much of their time learning with and from one another. Thus, while making sense of ideas is surely personal, it is not exclusively individual because it involves collaboration and takes place in a community.
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We don’t need personalization as much as we need to promote and give opportunities for our kids to do personal learning. And while they come from the same root, those two words are vastly different. “Personalized” learning is something that we do to kids; “personal” learning is something they do for themselves.
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To me, this is the most important point in all three of these articles. But this is such a complex issue in schools today. The pressure of all that students must learn and be prepared for has led us to a place where there is far less personal learning in schools. And at the same time, it would probably be more efficient (time-wise) to let project-based, personal learning meet the standards BUT we've also gotten to a place where funding cuts mean it's almost impossible to move away from the industrial model because the more personal project-based model requires more and different human resources. In other words, at the same time that there is more to learn and more concern about students having the engagement and perseverance to get there, we have less money to rebuild a system that currently gets us by with high student to teacher ratio.
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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. Big questions, passion, personal interest are what should drive our use of technology, not the other way around.
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Yes. This. So much of this. To me, this is what I love about the Blend/Flip cohort and AIW. Both of these concepts start with the kids and the content and how to engage them in the real ideas at the heart of the matter and then look at the best way of getting students to that goal with or without technology.
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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.
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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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truly personalized learning experience requires student choice, is individualized, meaningful and resource rich.
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It’s as if engaging them in learning without technology has become this impossible task.
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animates “competency-based progression,” “mastery learning,” and programs that tweak the “delivery of instruction.”
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Could this also be at the center of the difference between credit recovery online/personalized learning and more robust project-based/personalized learning? If a program's goal is to get students the bare minimum of credits for a basic diploma (ala GED), then this style might make sense. If we're thinking of a broader, system-wide approach, then this attitude it definitely at the heart of a lot of fears about the automatization of education.
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Simpler strategies, such as having kids choose, read, and discuss real books from the library may be more effective
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This is what lives at the core of my department's belief in individual reading. Every Friday, students in English 9, English 10, English 11/12, and American Literature read a book of their choice. There are no assignments attached. This "simpler strategy" is based on Kelly Gallahger's work in Readicide.
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By assigning the lecture at home, we’re still in charge of delivering the curriculum, just at a different time.
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THIS!!!! THIS 1000% times over! It takes twice if not three times as long to prepare a flipped lesson than a live lecture. This is a point most people don't want to talk about. We're still putting in the time and effort -- it just changes to outside of class time -- which puts the onus on us. Instead of completing the majority of my work during the school day, I'm completing the majority of it outside of school in the evenings and weekends.
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The assumption here is that curriculum can be broken into little pieces, that skills are acquired sequentially and can be assessed with discrete, contrived tests and reductive rubrics.
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Is this not what Standards Based/Referenced Grading believes? I am not at a SRG school, so I haven't gone through the process. My experience comes with a testing/data collection software our school is piloting called Performance Matters. All questions are tied to standards and wrapped up nicely-packaged in pretty color-coded data to allow teachers to quickly assess and regroup students based on ability or skill-demonstration. This sounds great - an easy to push students who already know the material and help students who don't - but it is testing actual growth or just test taking ability?
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Create a personal learning environment with Symbaloo | Instructional Design Fusions - 0 views
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webmixes.
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Symbaloo is a visual, social bookmarking tool that makes it easy to access your personal knowledge management tools.
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How To Create a Personal Learning Environment to Stay Relevant in 2013 | Online Learnin... - 0 views
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PLEs will help instructors not only stay relevant in his or her field, but will provide an opportunity to learn how to use tools that will enhance instructional methods and adapt to the changing paradigm.
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Create a diagram of the PLE. The purpose of the diagram is to provide a framework for learning goals, identify tools and provide a digital footprint and record of the PLE.
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Our understanding of learning has expanded at a rate that has far outpaced our conceptions of teaching. A growing appreciation for the porous boundaries between the classroom and life experience…has created not only promising changes but also disruptive moments in teaching.
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This is such a key idea in educational technology. Our understanding about how people learn has exploded, thanks to lots of new research about the brain. However, research on teaching isn't quite there yet, so there are a lot of us who aren't sure the best way to implement technology to achieve the highest levels of success for our students.
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The Instructor’s role has changed. The learner is moving to the center of the learning and teaching model, and relies upon a variety of sources for learning.
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What makes this harder is that this reality has not made it's way into the minds of many parents. Parents had very traditional experiences and they therefore tend to think and believe that it should still be that way, when in fact, our reality has changed. It's hard when parents make comments to students about what the classroom and teacher should be like....
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Determine which Web 2.0
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This can be quite the challenge because there are tons of new Web 2.0 tools coming out each year (seemingly every month!). It's hard to keep on top of and be able to diligently choose which tools will meet the intended need best.
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I agree with this! How to keep up? As teachers we have asked for our District to have coaches usher the best new apps to the teachers to try in our classroom. It's too hard to keep up on what we could be using. So far that idea has not really happened. Maybe it just has not happened YET?
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