Mar 5th, 2015 – ECS 410

This week, we basically wrapped up the past 6 weeks with a carousel of four different topics that brought up some interesting discussion with my group. We also went through some big ideas for assessment, and had 8 takeaways from what assessment is.

The first station that my group was at was the contract station. The first part of the booklet we were given was about the independent novel study. After being hung up on the word ‘maximum’ we concluded that this was an activity to do with choice, and students would have to pick certain activities to do to get to 100 points. When skimming through the ideas I had kind of a deja vu moment where I am pretty sure I have already seen this. After reading some more in-depth, I am almost 100% certain that my own high school English teacher used this exact document when we were reading Luna by Sharon Butala. We were told that we had choice for our final assignment for the novel and got to pick our assignments, as long as they added up to 100 points. Personally, I loved this method. I was able to take responsibility into my own learning. We were also given the choice of making up an assignment, and presenting it to the teacher with evidence of how many points it should be. This allowed for those students who are more creative to make up their own assignments. In connection with contracts, I think that this could be used as a contract where a student says this is what they are going to do, tells the teacher, signs a contract on it, and gets to work on it. This was probably my favorite document in the contract packet.

I also really liked the RAFT(S) document, standing for Role, Audience, Format, Topic (or Time). Being an English major, I think this could be very interesting way of bringing new assignments into the classroom. You could give the students a different role than a student, different audience then the teacher, an unique format, and a topic that is relevant to the curriculum. It brings fun back to English. A student’s role could be a character in a story and they are writing a letter to another character about their ideas of friendships (one of the overarching themes in English curriculum). One of the examples in this document is the role of the mayor of Vicksburg, Mississippi speaking to the congress through a rap or song in the time of two years before the war ends. There are endless possibilities about what could happen using RAFT. Students could even create their own RAFT, and I think this is where the contract does come in, so students sign a document saying that they will stick to their RAFT, and that they know what they will know, understand, and be able to do using the RAFT.

When looking through the contract booklet, my group realised that a lot of these documents situate around the idea of choice, and that students should have choice. This is where our discussion led to. We talked about how important choice in the classroom really is. I found a document called “Crafting Effective Choice to Motivate Students” by Kevin Perks. It states three main points of what choice should do for students. It should give students “a sense of control”, “a sense of purpose”, and “a sense of competence” (Perks 2). When students are given choice, they are given optimal opportunity to take responsibility in their learning. They take charge, and do things that really interest their learning, and this may provide more learning opportunities for the students. This also connects really well with inquiry learning. However, sometimes for students, choice may be a difficult thing to wrap their head around, so I think this is where adaptations come in for students. You could give fewer choices for those who need it.

Our next station was the Rick Wormeli videos. We choice to watch his video called “Redos, Retakes, and Do-overs”. I have to first say that Wormeli is very passionate in what he does, as it comes through in his loud voice while talking. I really liked the point he brought up about how failure is not something to demonize. It is okay for students to fail, as long as teachers give them a way to recover. This also relates to the whole zero debate. He talks about how it is okay to give a zero as long as you give students a way to recover. I think that is a valid point and should be looked at when debating if zeros are okay or not. My group had quite the lengthy discussion on re-dos or re-takes. We all liked re-dos or re-takes to a certain extent. We had some valid questions about how far would you go for a student who just doesn’t care, or how many times should you give the chance to re-do something? What came from these questions were a few ideas that we had. One was that, as teachers, we should come up with a policy on the first day with students, let them have some say in it, and clearly communicate with students what you expect from them. Another thing we talked about was communication. If a student needs more time to do something, talk to the teacher beforehand. As teachers, we have to always make sure we are open to students and allow the classroom to be a safe place for them to come talk to you if they may not make a deadline. Another thing that we came up with was a contract that students could use. If they were not able to hand in their assignment on the due date, they would have to hand in the contract with the reason it was not in, and set another due date that they will have it in by. This could also be something that they talk to the teacher about beforehand.

Rick Wormeli has many videos that I absolutely love. His ideas are phenomenal and very informational for beginning teachers who have so many questions. I was curious on some other things he had to say, so I just watched his video “On Late Work” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHeij2Zfil4). I really appreciate how he brought up the fact that some students may have to support their family outside of school. Some may have to go work until late at night, or some may have to take care of siblings until their parents get home from their jobs. They may not have time to do work outside of the classroom. He also brought up that fact that some students may not learn as fast as other students, therefore, they may not be able to do assignments as fast as other students. I also like the idea that if you allow students to do the work that was late, they will learn from it, and will come to respect deadlines. And lastly, I like how he states that students will learn more from doing the assignment then giving them the zero. I think this also brings up the challenge for teachers of having assignments handed in months later and right before a final exam. It creates a lot of pressure and marking on the teacher, so I believe that there should be some guidelines and boundaries that should be created in a policy on the first day.

Our next station was on inquiry based teaching and learning. I have heard multiple times in English about inquiry, but never connected to the four steps that were explained by Tracy. The four steps are immerse, investigate, coalesce, and go public. Throughout this entire presentation, I could not get my mind off of how this is exactly what a science fair project is like. We are given the overview that our topic has to be, in some way, connected to science, the areas that need to go on a science fair board, and to talk about what some possible topics would be. This is the immerse step. Then we were given time to go research and come up with our own topics and going deeper into those topics. This is the investigate step. Then put it together and present to class. This is the coalesce step. Lastly, we had a science fair with the entire school, and community members who wanted to come in. This is the go public step. I know that it can be used in many classrooms and in many cross curricular ways; this was just what was going through my mind when thinking about this idea.

Our last station was the test and quizzes station. Two things that caught my eye in this document were to use a variety of questions and to keep tests short. Being an English major, I tend to think that there are way more efficient ways for students to show their learning than to test them, especially for those students who get testing anxiety. However, being that we are going to be beginning teachers, and not accredited teachers right away, we are going to have to give students the final departmental, and we are going to have to prepare them for that using tests, so I will keep in mind those two points about testing, as well as all the other ones in this document.

Another thing we did was discuss the two checklists of assessment. They repeated a lot of ideas that we learned in this class. Cooper’s 8 big ideas, I felt like, were exactly what we learned in the last 7 weeks of classes. In an overview, assessment should serve different purposes at different times, so sometimes diagnostic assessment is needed over formative assessment for what you are teaching. Assessment should be planned and purposeful, meaning that it should connect to the curriculum and the students’ needs. Assessment should be balanced and have variety and flexibility. I think this connects really well when we learned about different types of assignments and how to do adaptations for the students who may not benefit from a certain kind of assessment. Assessment should have predetermined criteria. This connects with creating assessment with students, and getting students’ input on what the assessment should look like, as well as, giving students the assessment before they start an assignment. And lastly, grading and reporting should be timely. Students should know where they are at, and teachers should check in with students.

Lastly, we were given the “8 Takes on Thoughtful Assessment” from assessment gurus. It has 8 quotes of wisdom about assessment from 8 different people. My favorite quote from this page is from Dylan Williams: “If students answer all the teacher’s questions correctly, the teacher is surely wasting the students’ time. Worthwhile questions cause students to struggle and think.” I 100% agree with this quote. We were told in our ENLG 350 and 351 classes that if we are not challenged by our questions, then neither will be students, and that sometimes the worthwhile questions have you unsure of the answer as well. It creates learning with the student and teacher alongside each other.

I am extremely grateful to have experienced this class, and I am sad that it is already over. However, I know that my learning will continue throughout the rest of my life about assessment. I really like how teaching is really an on-going learning opportunity. I appreciate the idea that our philosophies will change because we are not yet out teaching in the classrooms, and haven’t had the experience to know how things are going to be. I’m excited to see how my philosophy will change 10 years down the road.

Perks, Kevin. “Crafting Effective Choices to Motivate Students.” Adolescent Literacy in Perspective (2010): 2-3. Print.