KARCHER STAFF BLOG
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Kudos
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- Kudos to Brad Ferstenou, Stephanie Rummler and our Student Council/Leadership students for their work and creativity this past week for the Turkey hunt in the gym! Students were able to use KCBs for a shot at a turkey... what a cute and creative idea! Nice job! Pictures are below.
- Kudos as again to our Student Council students, along with advisors Brad Ferstenou and Stephanie Rummler, for their efforts at Culver's this past week! And thank you to all of the staff members who had dinner at Culver's on Tuesday night as well to support our students! Their goal is to raise money for a Gaga pit!
- Kudos to Barb Berezowitz for setting up the Christmas party at the Waterfront. Those in attendance had a nice time!
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Information/Reminders...
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- Science it is your week for students to email their parents/guardians!
- Monday, December 4 - Parent/Guardian/Teacher conferences from 4:00 - 6:00.
- Click HERE to access the time schedule for the conferences.
- Tuesday, December 5 - Start of the 3rd iTime rotation!
- Please make sure the spread sheets indicating the location for students is accurate and up to date for your advisory team.
- Tuesday, December 5 - Band/Orchestra concert in the Karcher gym @ 6:00pm!
- Wednesday, December 6 - Essential Skills PLC in the Library.
- We will be meeting in the library to complete our progress from term 1 and discuss our goal for term 2.
- We will also discuss the use of assigned tasks for each subskill to assist with our work.
- BLT members... if you did not discuss the data information from last week's meeting with your team please do so this week!
Looking ahead:
- Monday, December 11 - Secondary Curriculum Committee meeting from 3:30 - 5:00 in the Karcher library.
- Thursday, December 14 - Karcher Choir Concert @ 7:00pm in our Karcher gym.
- Monday, December 18 - Staff meeting.
- Friday, December 22 - Afternoon Assembly Schedule.
- Details will come from the advisory team!
Pictures from this past week!
Student Council serving our community on Tuesday for their fundraiser in order to purchase a Gaga pit for Karcher!
KCB Dairy Queen walking lunch!
KCB turkey hunt in the gym this past week!
Boys basketball this past week!
Student Council serving our community on Tuesday for their fundraiser in order to purchase a Gaga pit for Karcher!
KCB Dairy Queen walking lunch!
KCB turkey hunt in the gym this past week!
Students coding in Mr. Sulik's class!
Boys basketball this past week!
Seven Practices for Effective Learning
Teachers in all content areas can use these seven assessment and grading practices to enhance learning and teaching.
Article continued...
Article continued...
Practice 3: Assess before teaching.
Before beginning instruction on the five senses, a kindergarten teacher asks each student to draw a picture of the body parts related to the various senses and show what each part does. She models the process by drawing an eye on the chalkboard. “The eye helps us see things around us,” she points out. As students draw, the teacher circulates around the room, stopping to ask clarifying questions (“I see you've drawn a nose. What does the nose help us do?”). On the basis of what she learns about her students from this diagnostic pre-test, she divides the class into two groups for differentiated instruction. At the conclusion of the unit, the teacher asks students to do another drawing, which she collects and compares with their original pre-test as evidence of their learning.
Diagnostic assessment is as important to teaching as a physical exam is to prescribing an appropriate medical regimen. At the outset of any unit of study, certain students are likely to have already mastered some of the skills that the teacher is about to introduce, and others may already understand key concepts. Some students are likely to be deficient in prerequisite skills or harbor misconceptions. Armed with this diagnostic information, a teacher gains greater insight into what to teach, by knowing what skill gaps to address or by skipping material previously mastered; into how to teach, by using grouping options and initiating activities based on preferred learning styles and interests; and into how to connect the content to students' interests and talents.
Teachers can use a variety of practical pre-assessment strategies, including pre-tests of content knowledge, skills checks, concept maps, drawings, and K-W-L (Know-Want to learn-Learn) charts. Powerful pre-assessment has the potential to address a worrisome phenomenon reported in a growing body of literature (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 1999; Gardner, 1991): A sizeable number of students come into school with misconceptions about subject matter (thinking that a heavier object will drop faster than a lighter one, for example) and about themselves as learners (assuming that they can't and never will be able to draw, for example). If teachers don't identify and confront these misconceptions, they will persist even in the face of good teaching. To uncover existing misconceptions, teachers can use a short, nongraded true-false diagnostic quiz that includes several potential misconceptions related to the targeted learning. Student responses will signal any prevailing misconceptions, which the teacher can then address through instruction. In the future, the growing availability of portable, electronic student-response systems will enable educators to obtain this information instantaneously.
Practice 4: Offer appropriate choices.
As part of a culminating assessment for a major unit on their state's history and geography, a class of 4th graders must contribute to a classroom museum display. The displays are designed to provide answers to the unit's essential question: How do geography, climate, and natural resources influence lifestyle, economy, and culture? Parents and students from other classrooms will view the display. Students have some choice about the specific products they will develop, which enables them to work to their strengths. Regardless of students' chosen products, the teacher uses a common rubric to evaluate every project. The resulting class museum contains a wide variety of unique and informative products that demonstrate learning.
Responsiveness in assessment is as important as it is in teaching. Students differ not only in how they prefer to take in and process information but also in how they best demonstrate their learning. Some students need to “do”; others thrive on oral explanations. Some students excel at creating visual representations; others are adept at writing. To make valid inferences about learning, teachers need to allow students to work to their strengths. A standardized approach to classroom assessment may be efficient, but it is not fair because any chosen format will favor some students and penalize others.
Assessment becomes responsive when students are given appropriate options for demonstrating knowledge, skills, and understanding. Allow choices—but always with the intent of collecting needed and appropriate evidence based on goals. In the example of the 4th grade museum display project, the teacher wants students to demonstrate their understanding of the relationship between geography and economy. This could be accomplished through a newspaper article, a concept web, a PowerPoint presentation, a comparison chart, or a simulated radio interview with an expert. Learners often put forth greater effort and produce higher-quality work when given such a variety of choices. The teacher will judge these products using a three-trait rubric that focuses on accuracy of content, clarity and thoroughness of explanation, and overall product quality.
We offer three cautions. First, teachers need to collect appropriate evidence of learning on the basis of goals rather than simply offer a “cool” menu of assessment choices. If a content standard calls for proficiency in written or oral presentations, it would be inappropriate to provide performance options other than those involving writing or speaking, except in the case of students for whom such goals are clearly inappropriate (a newly arrived English language learner, for example). Second, the options must be worth the time and energy required. It would be inefficient to have students develop an elaborate three-dimensional display or an animated PowerPoint presentation for content that a multiple-choice quiz could easily assess. In the folksy words of a teacher friend, “With performance assessments, the juice must be worth the squeeze.” Third, teachers have only so much time and energy, so they must be judicious in determining when it is important to offer product and performance options. They need to strike a healthy balance between a single assessment path and a plethora of choices.
Practice 5: Provide feedback early and often.
Middle school students are learning watercolor painting techniques. The art teacher models proper technique for mixing and applying the colors, and the students begin working. As they paint, the teacher provides feedback both to individual students and to the class as a whole. She targets common mistakes, such as using too much paint and not enough water, a practice that reduces the desired transparency effect. Benefiting from continual feedback from the teacher, students experiment with the medium on small sheets of paper. The next class provides additional opportunities to apply various watercolor techniques to achieve such effects as color blending and soft edges. The class culminates in an informal peer feedback session. Skill development and refinement result from the combined effects of direct instruction, modeling, and opportunities to practice guided by ongoing feedback.
It is often said that feedback is the breakfast of champions. All kinds of learning, whether on the practice field or in the classroom, require feedback based on formative assessments. Ironically, the quality feedback necessary to enhance learning is limited or nonexistent in many classrooms.
To serve learning, feedback must meet four criteria: It must be timely, specific, understandable to the receiver, and formed to allow for self-adjustment on the student's part (Wiggins, 1998). First, feedback on strengths and weaknesses needs to be prompt for the learner to improve. Waiting three weeks to find out how you did on a test will not help your learning.
In addition, specificity is key to helping students understand both their strengths and the areas in which they can improve. Too many educators consider grades and scores as feedback when, in fact, they fail the specificity test. Pinning a letter (B-) or a number (82%) on a student's work is no more helpful than such comments as “Nice job” or “You can do better.” Although good grades and positive remarks may feel good, they do not advance learning.
Specific feedback sounds different, as in this example:
Your research paper is generally well organized and contains a great deal of information on your topic. You used multiple sources and documented them correctly. However, your paper lacks a clear conclusion, and you never really answered your basic research question.
Sometimes the language in a rubric is lost on a student. Exactly what does “well organized” or “sophisticated reasoning” mean? “Kid language” rubrics can make feedback clearer and more comprehensible. For instance, instead of saying, “Document your reasoning process,” a teacher might say, “Show your work in a step-by-step manner so the reader can see what you were thinking.”
Here's a simple, straightforward test for a feedback system: Can learners tell specifically from the given feedback what they have done well and what they could do next time to improve? If not, then the feedback is not specific or understandable enough for the learner.
Finally, the learner needs opportunities to act on the feedback—to refine, revise, practice, and retry. Writers rarely compose a perfect manuscript on the first try, which is why the writing process stresses cycles of drafting, feedback, and revision as the route to excellence. Not surprisingly, the best feedback often surfaces in the performance-based subjects—such as art, music, and physical education—and in extracurricular activities, such as band and athletics. Indeed, the essence of coaching involves ongoing assessment and feedback.
This article will continue next week!
