domingo, 14 de abril de 2019

April 15, 2019

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Kudos
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  • Thank you to our ELA teachers and co-teachers:  Ellen Murphy, Kailee Smith, Kelly Fulton, Jenny Geyso, Alyssa Riggs, and Kurt Rummler for your efforts and work with our students this past week for the Forward Writing Prompt portion of the Forward Exams.  The students were focused and did well from the feedback you all shared!  Thank you to the rest of the staff for being cognizant of the testing block and keeping the noise volume down to accommodate the testing environment.  
  • Thank you to Eric Sulik, Wendy Zeman, Sue Bekken, and Ryan Heft for your efforts putting to together the Forward Advisory information these past few weeks for advisory.  
Article for the week:  
Why Assess?


By Tom Hierck
The question of “Why Assess?” is one that is posed in schools and districts everywhere. It’s important to challenge educators to think about their assessment practice and how they derive information about student progress. If the purpose of assessment is merely to rank and sort, then little needs to change from the assessment practices of previous generations. If, instead, the purpose is to focus on student learning, then educators need to examine whether their current practice is aligned with that outcome. In “Teacher As Assessment Leader” (2009) I suggested that the teacher’s role is to “make frequent environmental scans to collect formal evidence such as assessments, exams, or homework, and informal evidence such as the questions students may ask, their comments during group work, or even their confused expressions” in order for a productive exchange of information between teacher and student as part of an ongoing, seamless assessment and instruction plan. Analysis of this evidence allows educators to plan next steps and adjust instruction going forward.
Assessment data are only effective when they’re instructionally actionable. It’s no longer acceptable to limit assessment analysis to determining what’s wrong with students. Teachers must use the evidence of student learning to collaborate with colleagues to identify either teaching strengths to share, or areas of concern for which to seek new instructional strategies. The purposes of assessment ought to be framed around diagnosing student learning difficulties and setting individual teacher, and team goals for student improvement.
Professor John Hattie (2012) in “Visible Learning for Teachers: Maximizing Impact on Learning” offers the flip side to the question when he states, “There are certainly many things that inspired teachers do not do; they do not use grading as punishment; they do not conflate behavioral and academic performance; they do not elevate quiet compliance over academic work; they do not excessively use worksheets; they do not have low expectations and keep defending low quality learning as ‘doing your best’; they do not evaluate their impact by compliance, covering the curriculum, or conceiving explanations as to why they have little or no impact on their students; and they do not prefer perfection in homework over risk-taking that involves mistakes.” While this encompasses more than the assessment conversation, it equally serves as a compelling support for the broader discussion schools and districts ought to engage in.
In Starting A Movement, Ken Williams and I (2015) suggest,
“If you’ve been teaching for more than two years, then you have experienced the very humbling phenomenon of roller coaster results from one year to the next. In a culture of collective responsibility, instead of placing the burden of expected achievement on uncontrollable factors, teachers focus on the collective expertise of the people inside the school. They no longer analyze common assessment data out of compliance. They see the process of engaging in this type of dialogue as part of the promise their school has made to students, parents, and staff.”
The answer to the question of “Why Assess?” is rooted in these actions that committed educators take as they continue to work towards improving the life chances of every student. Regardless of the initiative you and your colleagues are engaged in, the quality of your assessment practice will be the lynchpin to success.
As you read this and think about your next lesson, also think about a next first step in assessment. Wherever you currently are in your assessment practice is where you are. That next first step could involve student analysis of their assessment (reviewing it for errors and then structuring a learning plan before getting re-assessed), it could involve you changing the instructional design and re-teaching a content piece students were not as successful with (an intervention plan that presents content with a new instructional strategy or more time), or it could involve a new format of assessment (do all learning outcomes need to be assessed with paper and pen?).
Gathering high quality evidence, using that evidence to guide next steps, and then gathering more evidence of the efficacy of the strategy, will provide educators and their students the opportunity to focus on the reaching those broader goals. At the end of the day assessment is too valuable to waste by leaving it as an end product and too significant as a daily routine to ignore the evidence that could strengthen the teaching-learning connection.
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Information/Reminders
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  • April 15 - April 18 - Forward Exam Week 2 
    • Click HERE for the schedule.  This will be for all 4 days during the week.  There will be no extended advisory or iTime due to the adjusted bell schedule.  
      • There are 5 pages to this schedule so keep scrolling :)  
    • A few testing reminders:  
      • All students should not submit until you checked their assessment to ensure they answered all the questions - then they can submit!  
      • Students are not allowed to do anything but take the assessment for the duration of the minutes noted for the assessment on the testing schedule.  For example... if the math session says (80 min) then inform the students they should use all 80 minutes (or more) for the math assessment as finishing early they are only allowed to just sit there.  They cannot read or do anything else during that time.  The reason for this is we want students to take their time and focus on the assessments, not focusing on hurrying up so they can do something else.  Please just kindly tell them that we are giving them the time so we encourage them to use the time as they can't do anything else anyway so they should just use the time! 
      • Please ensure you are focused on the assessments during the testing blocks and focusing on ensuring students are focused.  
      • Everyone should stick to the scheduled breaks, etc as we want to have the halls quiet during testing periods so make sure you release and have students return at the set times in the schedule.  
      • During the makeup time periods students can complete their Forward assessments, read independently, or complete work independently.  
    • Applied Academic teachers should be assisting in a testing group until 10:25 as below... academic teachers will have shared where to assist.  
      • Pelnar within an Onyx classroom 
      • R. Stoughton and Eckmann within Diamond classrooms.  
      • Block within a Hive classroom.  
      • Nelson within a Hive classroom.  
      • Salbrieter within Hive Mon, Wed, & Thursday.  
        • Thate on Tuesday.  
    • Special education teachers and interventionists will be working with students in a small group setting.  Ryan and Sulik will have an 8th grade small group in the library.  

    • April 15 - Monday - BLT Meeting from 2:40 - 3:30 
      • We will discuss chapters 4 from both books and also an update on the change over to a skills based gradebook for the 2019-2020 school year. 
    • April 17 - PLC in the library.  
      • Focus will be from the Shelley Moore Conference a couple staff members attended and hearing some takeaways from the conference.  
    • April 17 & 18 - iReady Incentive signup... 
      • Ryan will be sharing the PDF with you indicating which students can attend the iReady incentive by Wednesday morning.  Once he shares it with you please have students in your testing group (when appropriate) indicate where they plan on attending:  dodgeball or 21st Century for games and hot chocolate.  
      • Click HERE to note where your incentive students plan on going once you have the PDFs.      
        • If I missed your name I apologize... please just add your name to the house list and then your students.  If you work 1:1 with a student just add them to a group!  
    • April 17 & 18 - iTime signups!  
      • The plan is to create a Google Form for students to select their 3 iTime rotations they want to attend for the remainder of our iTime groups.  In order to make it fair and work for all students I will create forms by the following groups.  Then merge the forms together at the end.  That way you can decide when you are going to have students sign up (either on Wednesday or Thursday of this week).  
      • Here is how I will set up the forms:  
        • 7th grade 6th hour classes
        • 8th grade 7th hour classes 
        • So on Wednesday or Thursday plan to use a little time for students to select their choices for iTime during 6th hour for 7th grade and 7th hour for 8th grade.  I will share the forms with you on Tuesday at some point.  
      Looking ahead:  
    • April 22-23 for 7th grade:  
      • 22nd - prep for assembly in advisories 
      • 23rd - students who get the incentive will attend the incentive.  Those not will report to their 1st hour academic teacher and SSR or do iReady.  

    • April 22-23 for 8th grade:  
      • 22nd - students who get the incentive will attend the incentive.  Those not will report to their 2nd hour academic teacher and SSR or do iReady. 
      • 23rd - prep for assembly in advisories 
    • April 24 - Youth Alive Assembly (Afternoon assembly schedule)  
      • 12:52 - 1:42 all students will be in the gym for the assembly.  
      • 1:45 - 2:30 
        • The following students will remain in the gym though for a follow up activity with the presenter so they will not be back in advisories:  
          • Student Council
          • Leadership Team
          • YAR 
          • Campus Life 
        • Students back to advisories.  If you have less than 10 kids left in your advisory due to students staying in the gym then you can combine with your advisory partner for the 1:45 - 2:30 time frame.  
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      Pictures from the week
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      8th grade working through a mock trial about the sinking of the Lusitania!  






      Here are the images from the Dot Activity.  Thought it would be nice to have so you can individually have more time to observe and think on your own about what you can do between now and the end of the school year to assist some of our students.  











      Current 7th graders... 








      Students in Ms. Botsford's class creating Roman Aqueducts!  
















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