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Kudos
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- Kudos to Dustan Eckmann AGAIN for a great band concert! The jazz group was impressive, 7th grade was great, the percussion group was so fun, and 8th grade played strong! Congrats!!! Great concert. Dustan also had a board member, Diane Woods, come and send him a great email!
- I know I gave kudos to Mike Jones last week but seriously... he really out did himself here with all the holiday festivities! I mean... he even added the "You've been mugged!" Last week was so fun and the next two will be equally as fun! Great job! Reminders for this week are below!
- Congrats to Sue Bekken who guessed the closest guess to the chocolates in the jar! There were 313 chocolates and she guessed 314! Impressive! What is even more impressive is that Mike figured people would not just guess but try to "play the system" by looking things up etc. That is why he purposely left out candies from three bags to throw people off!!! It worked!
- Congrats to Barb Berezowitz for getting "best dressed" this past Friday for dress up day! It was pretty legit!
- And... kudos to whoever thought ahead and put pictures of staff on a coffee cup for the "White Elephant" exchange! Such a thoughtful and funny (because they pictures are of staff years ago) idea!
Article this week: This is a continuation of the article last week. Frequently, in conversations with some of you, the thought is that formative assessments have to come in the form of a "quiz" or something that you grade and put in Skyward. But a true formative assessment is something that is very quick, assesses one subskill (or a part of that subskill) to INFORM your instruction and INFORM students of their learning and where they are in the progression of their learning. It can be as simply as a note card give to students at any point in the lesson and then given back to you so that you can diagnose where each individual student is at in their learning and address misconceptions, errors, or mistakes right away DURING their learning. Always remember... formative is FOR learning. Summative is a SUM of all their learning. Formatives do not always need to be in Skyward... they are meant to inform you about your instruction so that you know what needs to take place in the following lesson. Seeing some GREAT quick formatives throughout the building but also seeing some thinking it has to be in the form of a quick... think quick... short... super informative to know if adjustments need to be made or if strategy groups need to be utilized.
HERE is a continuation of last week's article:
What Teachers Really Need to Know About Formative Assessment
by Laura Greenstein
Chapter 1. The Fundamentals of Formative Assessment
This chapter looks at the essential principles of formative assessment and provides a preview of best practice. Our focus here is both the content and context of formative assessment: its basic elements and some of the reasons it has risen to prominence and gained support as an effective means of improving student learning.
Moving Forward with Formative Assessment
In recent years, recommendations for including high-quality formative assessment as an integral part of a larger and more balanced assessment system has come from many groups and organizations, among them the Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation (2002) and the National Council on Measurement in Education (1995). Content- and level-specific organizations, such as the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, the National Science Teachers Association, and the National Middle School Association, have also endorsed formative assessment as a way to advance learning.
Although influential organizations and education thought-leaders have reached a general consensus about the benefits of formative assessment, teacher education and training efforts lag behind. As research has shown, teachers get little training or support in assessment and often turn to their untrained peers for information (Black & Wiliam, 1998; Shepard, 2000; Stiggins, 2001, 2002), and we are left with a gap between what we know is effective assessment practice and how most teachers use assessment in the classroom. This deficit in teacher knowledge and practice was the basis of my own doctoral dissertation, in which I concluded that secondary teachers continue to use traditional summative assessment that infrequently aligns with recommended strategies. Shepard (2000) summed it up well when she quoted this observation by Graue (1993): “Assessment and instruction are often conceived as curiously separate in both time and purpose” (p. 4). The key to high-quality formative assessment is to intertwine the two. What teachers and students need is assessment and instruction that are conceived as a unit, employed as a unit, and applied as a unit.
The most important thing you can take away from this discussion of formative assessment is the understanding that no single principle makes assessment formative. It is through the weaving together of all the principles that high-quality formative assessment arises and the blending of assessment and teaching occurs. For a quick overview of what these components look like woven together, see Figure 1.1, which shows the general flow of formative assessment principles.
Figure 1.1. The Cycle of Instruction with Formative Assessment
Now let's consider what the cycle of instruction might look like in practice. A teacher preparing for a discussion of current events in an English, social studies, or other class might produce the following plan. (You may not be familiar with some of the plan's strategies, but I will present these in more detail in Part 2 of the book and in the lexicon of strategies in Appendix B.)
Objective, Goal, Standard: Differentiate fact from opinion in written text.
Formative Strategy: Signaling in response to simple sentences read aloud by the teacher.
Targeted Instruction: Identify points of fact as contrasted with expression of the author's opinion in a newspaper editorial.
Formative Strategy: A Corners activity in which the teacher reads more complex sentences and students express their response by going to Fact or Opinion corners. One student in each group presents the group's opinion, and the teacher leads a follow-up discussion.
Informed Teaching: The teacher gives examples of how writers extend fact into opinion along with guidelines for distinguishing fact from opinion. Students read selected text, color-code examples of fact and opinion, and record their responses in their work-alongs.
Formative Strategy: A Think–Pair–Share activity in which students create a color-coded T chart with facts on the left and opinions on the right. This is followed by a whole-class review of the charts to reach consensus.
Data Analysis: The teacher uses data gathered to chart individual and group learning outcomes and target areas of misunderstanding and areas where students need additional challenge.
Formative Strategy: A chart of students' progress, capturing and reflecting on data gathered during Signaling, Corners, the work-along, and the T chart.
Responding to Data: The teacher adjusts instruction and assessment as needed to readdress the objective more effectively.
Formative Strategy: Adjustment to content/resource level of difficulty, grouping students for additional practice or expanded learning, and differentiating the final assessment.
Finding the Balance in Assessment Systems
Large-scale accountability measures have been and will continue to be with us for a long time. The use of formative assessment does not preclude standardized testing but, rather, contributes to a balanced assessment system. Summative assessment has traditionally asked students to definitively express what they know. It's akin to asking, “Are we there yet?” or, “Have we arrived at the intended learning destination?” In comparison, formative assessment asks what route we are taking to reach the goal and in what way the teacher can assist in the journey.
Formative assessment gives teachers continual information on student progress—information that supports decisions about how much and what kind of learning, support, and practice students need to reach the goal. In this model, assessment data come from a variety of activities, rather than from a single assessment at the end. While formative assessment and summative assessment serve the same learning goals, the former is an ongoing process and the latter is a finale: the finish line at the end of the race.
The use of standardized tests alone as the measure of knowledge does not typically lead to improved learning. There is little evidence that standardized tests have raised student achievement except in a few narrow areas, primarily at the elementary level. SAT scores have been generally consistent for many years, and most state standardized test results have flattened out during the past few years. If we want better standardized scores or higher final achievement for our students, we must begin at the classroom level. Research shows that the pathways to school improvement are lined with formative assessment. Students need constructive feedback on how to achieve the targets and guidepost measures along the way, not simply feedback on whether they reached the targets or not. It is formative assessment rather than summative assessment that will make the greatest difference.
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Information/Reminders
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New Construction Information
- To separate out information just pertaining to the new middle school I put together a blog just for the 6-8 KMS building!
- Click HERE to access the new building blog. I will add information here when things come up and will always have the link here in the blog for all of you! It is also on the Karcher Calendar :)))
- Monday, December 8 - Club Pictures will be taking place during Extended Advisory for the yearbook. Barb Berezowitz shared THIS schedule for tomorrow! If you have questions ask Barb!
- Monday, December 8 - Staff Meeting from 2:40 - 3:00
- For this staff meeting Deb Jerome will be coming to demonstrate the capabilities of co-writer and Snap & Read for all staff. They are reading and writing support tools that students can use across all platforms.
- Then... Connie Wiedmeyer will be setting up meetings with each team during team time to go in depth and answer questions people might have about both programs!
- Monday, December 9 - District Essential Skills Committee from 3:45 - 5:15 in the Karcher library.
- Tuesday, December 10 - Special Education Department meeting in the small conference room from 2:40 - 3:15.
- Wednesday, December 11 - Essential Skills or Strategies/Skill groups PLC in your rooms. Do not forget to fill out the PLC reflection forms each week!
- Thursday, December 12 - Choir Concert in our Karcher gym starting at 7:00pm!!!
Holiday Cheer Days - THIS WEEK!!!
- Dec. 9- Coffee House Coffee and Hot Chocolate in the office. Enjoy!
- Dec. 10- Reindeer Games. Throughout the school are 25 pictures of this cartoon reindeer. Find one and take it to Kim in the office and pick a prize.
- Dec. 11- Holiday Trivia. Mike will put a sheet of Trivia questions in your mailbox and the first 10 people to return their forms to me with the most correct answers will receive a prize. Please do this without the use of the internet or help from other people. Forms are due no later than 2:30.
- Dec. 12- Time to dress festively...dress in red and green in the spirit of Christmas.
- Dec. 13- Festive Float Friday. There will be Rootbeer and Orange Floats with all the fix-ins in the main office starting around 10:30! Help yourself to a float or two throughout the day.
- Dec. 16-20:
- Follow the Student council spirit days and participate if at all possible. The kids really enjoy when we get in the spirit.
Looking ahead:
***Reminder... Scherrer shared they plan on waiting until December 23 to start the construction of the precast walls for the new gym. They feel better about it with no one in the building.
- December 16th week is Huddle Time during Extended Advisory. This time should be used to conference with each student in your advisory and help ensure they are caught up and good to go as we all go into winter break!
- Wednesday, December 18 - Staff luncheon!!! Christmas Themed luncheon... take that as you would like :) You can sign up in the office or just bring something last minute like I do :)
- Thursday, December 19 - Teams have decided they would like to have an incentive during Extended Advisory - what that looks like... ask your teams!!! I am not sure if this is just 7th grade thinking this or also 8th grade...
- Teams... don't forget to communicate with those that need to know that are not in your team time meetings.
- Friday, December 20 - Afternoon Assembly Schedule!
- Please let Jon Nelson & Eric Sulik know if you plan on playing in the staff basketball game! The more the merrier as this game is students against staff along with lots of other fun activities throughout the afternoon!
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Pictures from the week
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School store in action!
Band Concert this past week! Such a great concert with Dustan Eckmann!
Students collaborating with peers, Mr. Staude, and Briana Harris to practice solving inequalities!
Cheer club had their first game!!!
Students engaged during the underground railroad simulation with Ms. Rummler!
Look at this! ACES paragraph taking place with Brad Ferstenou in Social Studies along with success criteria laid out for students stating the subskill and Essential Skills being assessed! Great to see the scaffolding from the close reading of the article and noticing and noting what is important, reflecting with some questions, and then writing if they believe King Tut was murdered or not... citing evidence either way to defend their answers!
Students dressing up as the ghost of Jacob Marley in A Christmas Carol. Also discussing the symbolism in Stave 1 with Ms. Geyso and Ms. Riggs!
