Contractors – Summative and Formative Assessment

I had several contractors in to give me estimates for some changes to my house.  The first one measured the room and left.  The second one measured the room and then spent double that time in asking me questions about the room and the house. I went with the second one because he understood what I wanted and how that fit in with the rest of the house.

I see the first contractor as a summative assessment- get a number and leave.  The second contractor was formative. He had numbers but he needed to know what those numbers meant in terms of what I expected in terms of the room (the end goal) and in terms of the whole house (all the other data from the house). He gave me several suggestions for improvements (getting me from where I am to where I want to be) and let me select the one I felt was the most helpful.

Which type teaching contractor are you- summative or formative?

My book, Formative Assessment: Responding to Students, is available through Eye-on-Education.

Fixed or Flexible Learning

I recently talked to someone who teaches an online course.  She says that the college has supplied the lectures for each class.  I questioned how a college could think that the fixed lectures would fit the needs of the class. Then the person reminded me that high school textbooks,  textbook websites, textbook DVDs,  textbook PowerPointsand content websites present the material  in a fixed manner.  I think it is good for a teacher to see an exemplary lesson and then to modify the lesson for the class or  for the teacher to use the fixed  lesson as a jumping off point  but I do feel that teachers should not follow a book lesson blindly. Based on our students’  intellectual, physical and emotional needs, we, as instructional leaders, need to decide how to teach the selected goal.  We need to modify the lesson to meet various learning styles and learning levels in our class. We need to know when to abandon a lesson to teach a missing skill or a complimentary skill. We are the ones to show the students the connections between what they are learning and the big picture, to bring in our life experiences in that learning.

How do you teach your course?  Do you strictly follow the textbook (fixed) or do you modify the learning in a flexible manner based on your students’ needs?

My book, Formative Assessment: Responding to Students, is available through Eye-on-Education.

Student or Teacher Duty: Improving Time for Feedback

On Sunday, the church congregation was surprised to see a young ten year boy be the liturgist. He said the prayers, introduced the hymns, and read the scripture.  The boy had listened to the adults who usually do this and thought he could do it.  He did a good job!

It made me think of what duties are only teacher duties in the classroom and what are student only duties. Students can pass out materials, collect material, take attendance, do class review, prepare classroom materials such as handouts or PowerPoints, make quizzes, and assess other students’ work. Students often present information in a way that their classmates can easily understand the information.

If we have students do more in the classroom, we can spend more time on giving small group or one-on-one with students. We have more time for formative feedback.  We spend out time not in many managerial things but in helping students to learn.

Let’s give our students more duties so that we can help them more!

Teacher Portfolios- Real Student Success or Faked Success?

Individually, I talked  to two teachers who had to present teacher portfolios and had received back  comments on their portfolio.  One teacher had glowing feedback.  He told me how he had only put student material in the portfolio that demonstrated above proficient work. He explained that usually only one or two students in all of his classes had reached that level for each standard and so he included that  work.

The other teacher had put in student work at all levels of proficiency.  Her feedback focused on how she had to help students to be successful. She had included the percent of  students  at each level of proficiency; she had even included a graph for the proficiency rates on  the four major standards. She indicated some strategies she had tried and whether each strategy succeed or did not succeed with these students.

The administrators were looking for measures of the teachers’ success in helping students to learn. They did not discern the difference between  a staged or fake representation of success for a teacher and a teacher’s  full disclosure about classroom learning.

How can your teacher portfolio show your growing success in reaching more and more students?

My book, Formative Assessment: Responding to Students, is available through Eye-on-Education.

Pre-checking for Student Engagement Through PowerPoint

Like many teachers, I use PowerPoint to guide the lesson. I like that I can have all the images, videos, quotes, essential questions, class activities, etc. in one place for the lesson.  Lately, I have been thinking more about student engagement during class. I’ve come up with a simple way to verify that students will be engaged.  I use a distinct color such as dark blue  in the PowerPoint to indicate  all the  student activities  such as questions to be answered, small group discussions, and  comparison charts to be done. Before I teach a lesson, Iscan my PowerPoint slides to see how often I am engaging the students- I simply look for the dark blue text.  Since I’ve begun doing this, I find myself  wondering how I could be talking/showing for so long without students being asked to think through the topic.  I find myself adding more opportunities for students to  become engaged with the material.

Go dark blue and see what happens in your class.

My book, Formative Assessment: Responding to Students, is available through Eye-on-Education.

How Lost Are Your Students?

I heard from a college student who happened to read parts of my next manuscript (Formative Assessment Improves Writing) after his mother told him that she was reviewing the book. He mentioned that the smart kids “get it” but the other kids often struggle. They get lost in one part and then they get more lost  in the next and more lost in the next until they cannot find their way out. Unfortunately, their teachers usually do not help them.

He was interested in how I made sure no student could get lost since I assess each student on each minor part of his/her writing  journey.

I wonder how often teachers assess their students and then give formative feedback immediately?  How many minutes go by before the students are assessed and formative feedback is used to help students get back on the learning path if they have wondered off? How many days? How many weeks? The more time between formative assessments, they more time to get lost, to get so lost that there is almost no hope of ever finding the path again.

How lost are your students? How do you know? What do you do to help them when they get lost?

My book, Formative Assessment: Responding to Students, is available through Eye-on-Education.

High Expectations For Our Students: Our Responsibility

Robyn Jackson in Never Worker Harder than Your Students differentiates between standards and expectations.

The standards specify what high level content or process learning we want of the students. Expectations refer to our belief that we can help the students  to get there. If we have high expectations, then we believe that we can help the pupils to be successful. If we have low expectations, then we do not feel that we can help them learn. If we truly have high expectations, then we will figure out what we can do to help the students to  grow in the standard to the point of achievement. We do not focus on what they cannot do, we focus on what we can help them be able to do. We do not focus on what they do not know, we focus on how to help them obtain the prerequisite knowledge or skills in the context of the course. If we have high expectations, we do not ask students to learn the missing material or skills on their own, we build knowledge or skill development into our class into mini-lessons targeted to help them. If we have high expectations, we take responsibility for their growth; we work on the solution, not cursing the problem. If we have high expectations for our students, we promise ourselves that they will be successful in our class due to our efforts.

Do you have high expectations for your students? How do your students know?

My book, Formative Assessment: Responding to Students, is available through Eye-on-Education.

Break your class now!

For many years a favorite book of mine was If it is not broken, then break it by George Morrison. The author stresses that the time to improve something is when it is working, not when it is broken. If you fix something when it is broken, you usually only restore it to its original condition but not an improved one.

If you spend time in reflecting on the lesson or unit and breaking the present level, you improve it to a higher level. Your students learn better.

When do you stop and break your class? Do you consciously say “What can I improve the next time I do this?” Do you rewrite your lesson plans? Redo your PowerPoint? Find different websites? Think about wording things differently on your handouts? Do you ask your students what worked for them such as rating each part of the unit on a 4-very helpful for learning the goal 3- somewhat helpful 2- a little helpful 1- not helpful at all” scale and do you ask them “What would have helped me better learn this goal?” Do you honestly consider their suggestions?

Break your class to help your students better succeed!

One way to break your class is through formative assessment.

My book, Formative Assessment: Responding to Students, is available through Eye-on-Education.

Responding to students: Our Real Emotional Message

In a previous post, I emphasized that students need an abundance of positive comments before they really believe that what they have done is good.

Likewise, when we examine our comments to students in the margins and at the end of their papers, we may discover that  the messages that we think are positive or neutral appear to the students as negative ones.     For example, in “Good topic sentence. Follow it up with more evidence”   the message seems to us to be a positive; however, the second sentence deflats the praise. The previous examples strikes students as a “set up and slap down” comment.

Students may see our statements or questions as direct commands rather than suggestions. “Can you think of other possibilities?” can easily be translated as “You dummy, why can’t you get a good answer?”

When we write on students’ papers, we have to promote a positive tone since many students will read any non-positive statement as a negative one.

If you are interested in implementing  formative assessment in the classroom, my book,
Formative Assessment: Responding to Students is available through Eye-on-Education.

School Awards For Teachers

I recently  attended a college’s award ceremony for faculty and staff.  I was impressed with all the categories of awards.

I’ve made up some awards that I would like schools to give. These awards will not be given to just one teacher but to any teacher who does any of the following:

Focus their students’ learning on the standards

Spend more working with students than lecturing

Diagnose students’  learning problems instead of just giving grades

Give specific feedback that actually help the students to move forward in their learning

Keep cumulative records of students’ strengths and learning gaps in a specific learning goal

Celebrate their students’ standards-based learning successes

Transform academic learning  into real world learning

Invite parents and other experts in the classroom (physically or virtually)  to share their wisdom about a learning goal

Involve the students in meaningful community or global projects that truly make a difference in other students’ lives.

Empower students to feel that they are capable of being successful

Share the learning goal, assessments, and success strategies with other teachers

What other awards would you like to schools to give?

Improving How We Use Wikis for Better Student Learning

Here are some handout notes for the session:

Harry Grover Tuttle, Ed. D.
Instructor, writer, consultant
harry.g.tuttle   at   gmail.com
Blog: http://eduwithtechn.wordpress.com

Purpose: To improve students’ learning through changing how we use wikis in our classroom.

Formative Assessment Focus

Improvements:

• 1. Teach the mechanics

  2. Identify the learning goal/purpose

  3. Explain the quality of responses

  4. Use students’ notes

  5. Organize the class

  6. Provide in-class and out-of-class resources by learning style

  7. Avoid common web topics

  8. Make learning “collective wisdom” instead of  “collective stupidity”
     

  9. Have exemplary work and reactions to the exemplars
     

  10. Build in real and varied interaction

  11. Build on the past

  12. Make group work transparent

  13. Have a student-help-student section

  14. Carefully use outside experts and other classes

  15. Co-create with students

A wiki has been created for you to add to  http://wikiforbetterlearning.pbwiki.com/

A mini version of the presentation is available at slideshare

Dr. Tuttle’s book, Formative Assessment: Responding to Students which is available from Eye-on-Education includes numerous ways that technology can be used in formative assessment.

Two Observations, Two Different Approaches

I was talking to two teachers from the same school. Both teachers were going to be observed. One supervisor not only did a pre-conference a week before the observation but also gave the teacher the evaluation rubric. This supervisor asked about any special conditions in the class or if the classroom teacher wanted the supervisor to look for anything in particular. As soon as the class observation was over, the supervisor gave some positives and some suggestions for change. Then within a week, the supervisor sent out the formal evaluation.

The other supervisor showed up two minutes before the class for the pre-conference. He looked over the lesson plan. After about two weeks after the class, the teacher received the formal evaluation.

I’m wondering which technique we use when we observe our students?

For any one who is interested in implementing formative assessment in the classroom, my book, Formative Assessment: Responding to Students is available through Eye-on-Education.

A Sign for Learning

Recently I had to put out a church sign.  I had to write out the sign so I knew what I wanted, find each letter  for the words, put the letters in the correct order to spell each word, and then put  the letters in backward order (last letter, next to last letter, etc.)  for each word on the sign.I constantly checked to make sure that the backward planning was resulting in the words being spelled correctly.

I realized that that is how good teachers teach. They figure out what they want their students to do, they make sure of all the skills involved, and they plan backward so that the students will learn letter by letter so they can be successful. They use formative assessment to verify the students learning

What learning sign have you put out this week?

Time to Teach or Time to Learn

I was talking with another educator who teaches the same course I am now teaching. He spends the first half of the course in teaching about how to give a speech and then, in the second half of the semester, he has the students do speeches. I have my students give speeches after the third class. I think that I have scaffolded their speeches so that they can be successful in including all of the elements of good speaking. The proof will be tomorrow when they give their first speech.

Do you spend much time in teaching the material and then give the students a little time to practice it or do you present the material quickly and then give the students much time to practice?

Gladly would the teacher help the students to learn

Chaucer wrote “Gladly would he learn and gladly teach.” I would like to change that to “Gladly would he/she learn and gladly help students to learn.” Unfortunately some teachers think of teaching as presenting information and then testing on that info. In the formative assessment process, the focus is on helping the students to learn.

Glick wrote :”It is not what the teacher does but what he gets the students to do that results in learning” Our focus should be not on what the teacher does but on what the teacher helps the students to do. The teacher’s “best” lecture is not good if it does not help students to do something to learn the standard. Teachers should teach less and have students learn and do more in the class. The more students do in the class, the more teachers can observe them, diagnose them, and offer formative feedback to help the students so that the students can improve drastically in their learning.

Do you focus on teaching or learning?

Greater Learning Through Same Model and Technology

I talked to a student who had been in the same English classes with several friends from 9th through 12 grade. Each year they had a different teacher and each year that teacher taught them “their” way of writing. When the students got to 12th grade, they just said to the teacher, “Tell us how you want us to write.” She taught them her “official” way of writing. These students are living proof that constantly changing what we expect of students results in less than proficient writers.

How can we expect students to improve in their writing if we constantly change how they should write? They will only improve when we build on one consistent model. They same is true for all subjects.

Do you get together with your department (K-12) to talk over what you expect of students and what model the students will follow? Do various teachers produce Power Points, emovies or podcasts to demonstrate that consistent model? Do other teachers help develop scaffolded handouts or Power Points that guide students through the model?

Formative Assessment Camps

There are two camps in the formative assessment field. One focuses on what the teacher does. The teacher camp concentrates on all the teacher does- how he/she observes, gather data and plans the lesson. It focuses on future changes for the next year in the curriculum or manner of presenting it. The other camp focuses on the students receiving information for their improvement in the standard for the present lesson.   This other camp simply asks how does what the teacher does help the students to better learn the standard in this unit.

What formative assessment camp are you in? How do you use technology to help you in your camp?

Spring, Student Learning, Formative Assesment and Technology

In the northeast spring is in the minds of people even if it is only 28 degrees. Ice cream stands are interviewing applicants; miniature golfing ranges are getting spruced up, and chicken Bbqs have begun.

I wonder how we prepare for our students’ spring? Do we throw out old non-productive lesson plans? Do we figure out ways to discern the learning gaps (weeds) in our students’ gardens and then to help them remove those gaps? Do we celebrate their learning successes? Do we review the strategies we have used with various students and make sure those strategies have made a positive difference? Do we help them to see what learning succcesses they have had? Do we help them to see the goal that they are growing in?

How do we use technology in this garden of learning? Do we allow students to see their standards-based progress through online “grading” programs? Do we provide many different formats for learning activities to overcome learning gaps such as emovies?

Modeling Think Alouds with Emovie

How do we model the thinking for students so that they learn how to think in our subject area? We can do think-alouds in which we think aloud “When I.., I..”  or “What if ….” .However, if we do an in-class think-aloud then our students have nothing to refer to do as they work at home. What if we do an emovie of our think-aloud where they hear and see our thinking? We can show how we complete a graphic organizer or draw a model of something.  We could put the think-aloud up on Youtube, Teachertube, or our district server. Students can view our think-aloud so that they can develop the same thinking process. They will begin to think in a scientific fashion, a language arts fashion, a mathematical fashion, etc.

Quarterly Benchmarks Programs and the Role of Teachers

Many companies are now selling quarterly or more frequent benchmarking of the students. The companies make it sound like the benchmarking will solve the educational woes of teachers and schools. I agree that benchmarking can provide a valuable summative assessment of the student. Unless the benchmark specifies what the student can do to improve than the benchmark is summative, not formative. The teachers have to spend time going through the data to figure out what each student needs. If a school’s solution is for a computer program to diagnose and then give formative feedback (i.e. have the student do certain activities which the benchmark happens to provide), I wonder what the role of a teacher becomes. Do teachers in such environments simply become managers instead of instructional classroom leaders? Does all their expertize get thrown away since the computer program does it all? Teachers could be working with small groups of students but then the benchmarking program would not have that information to keep track of students’ progress. How do teachers integrate these benchmarks into their class?

Technology Skills Assessment

A push is on to assess the technology skills of students and teachers. Let’s add administrators.

Here are some questions that Roger Sevilla and I thought of:

• Who will determine what skills will be assessed?
• Will the skills be assessed in a “paper and pencil” self-perception survey mode or will the skills be assessed in actual performance?
• Will the teachers be assessed on what technology skills they have or on what technology skills they use in the classroom? Same for students. Same for administrators.
• Will the district create its own assessment or will they use commercial programs?
• Will everyone be assessed or will there be a sampling? If sampled, will it be a percentage of each school or only certain schools?
• If the survey reveals that the students, teachers, and administrators have a high degree of technology skills, are technology integration teachers needed?

Cherry Picking Metaphor For Technology Integration

One summer I worked picking cherries. I would move a tall ladder into a cherry tree and pick as many cherries as I could from that one location before I would get down and move the ladder to another section of that same tree.

What if I told you that I moved the ladder to one tree, picked one cherry, moved the ladder to another tree, picked one cherry, and continued tree by tree picking one cherry each time? You would think I was crazy! Yet isnt’ that what many technology integration teachers do? They work with one teacher in one building, go to another building and work with one teacher, go to another building and work with one teacher. When they are done, they have a few cherries in their basket.

What if they had a cherry picking mentality of working with a large group of teachers from the same building – perhaps, all 7th grade social studies teachers, perhaps all English teachers at the high school, or perhaps all elementary teacher in one building interested in using a wiki in their classroom? By working with a group, there can be group momentum and collaboration. The technology integration teacher can work with a larger group at once in the same building and help them to be successful in learning how to integrate the technology into the classroom. The classroom teachers can feel excited by the success of their students in improved learning through the onsite mentoring of the technology integration teacher.The technology integration teacher can collect many cherries at once; he or she can share with the building principal a big success instead of just working with one person. The technology integration teacher can collect large groups of cherries in each building; therefore, they have a huge basket of cherries in just a few months.

How do you collect technology integration cherries?

Checking for Understanding Instead of Lecturing

We feel so good as we lecture. We know that we have prepared well. We know that we have good examples and visuals. We have interesting stories. We feel that the students are basking in our teaching. However, we do not know if the students are learning the goal. They may be able to parrot back to us the major points but can they paraphrase these points in their own words? Can they identify examples of it? Can they apply the learning in a mini-example? We can stop every 5-10 minutes and make sure that they can demonstrate their learning through the use of various technology. Each time we will raise the bar of what we want them to learn in terms of the higher level thinking skills for the learning. Each time we will have them demonstrate that can reach that new level. Then we can really feel good about their learning!

Simple yet powerful technology

I believe that when a technology is simple to use, then teachers will use it.  Witness the Smartboard and the Document camera.  Simple technologies can be powerful technologies.  They do not require thousands of hours of professional development. They do not require long learning curves.  Teachers “get it” and can use them.   They can involve their students in that technology with minimal prep.  I think that often we over look simple technologies like word processing, digital camera, document  cameras, and smartboards. Let’s promote technologies that teachers can and will use instead of complex technologies that often require someone else to set things up like videoconferencing.  Let’s focus on what teachers have in their classrooms!

Pool Curriculum Resources for Students’ Success

I have been asked to do three courses next semester, two of which are new to me. I was given a one page syllabus listing 7 outcomes and the name of the textbook. This course has been taught for over 16 years and surprisingly, that is all the resources I’m given. Why do school districts or universities not have a pooling of resources so that any new teacher can not only start off running but can start off at a high level of running? If schools and universities want their students to be successful, then each course should be built on the students’ successes from when the course was taught in the past. What helped the students to advance in the standard? Which learning experience were not helpful in moving the students forward? Where did students encounter learning problems in the course? Of course, each class is different but if teachers had all that previous information at their fingertips, they could have their students soar in their learning.

Does your district, school, or team pool resources so that each teacher is curriculum rich in practical strategies to help students be successful?

Having students assess classroom teaching and learning

We all think that we are good teachers and that we have great lessons. However, last year I did a study on the difference between students’ and faculty eportfolio perceptions and it struck me how different they were. It reminded me that when I taught in public schools, I would have my students assess each unit in terms of how well the various classroom activities helped them in doing well in the standard. I was alway shocked at that special activity that I thought was the perfect learning activity did not strike the students that way; the rated it as one of the lowest. I also included the open ended “What do you think would help you to learn this standard better?” question and I was amazed at their great suggestions which I incorporated into the next time I taught the unit.

The students can do your unit report card in an online system that will instantly give you the information by categories. Instant feedback on your teaching!

Are you willing to grow based on our students’ assessment of the unit? Students can be the best in-class professional development we can have!

Concept Maps – Yours or the Students’ Learning

Some high school teachers were sharing the success of using concept maps in their classes. These teachers had created their concept maps in Inspiration. They were proud that their students could complete the concept maps.

I wonder if they had their students create their own concept map from scratch. Do they allow students to select which type concept map they will use to display their learning? Do they allow their students the growth opportunity to decide what to include on the map? Do they allow students to work through the creation of the concept map as they learn information or concepts over time? Do they allow students to own their own learning instead of doing a “fill-in-the-blank” type of teacher given concept map?

What experiences have you had with your students creating their own concept maps?