Who comes first at your school?

Students, parents, teachers, support staff, custodial staff, district office staff, other principals and community members all pull for our time and attention.

I have found in my work that taking the time to listen and placing the needs of students and parents first goes a long way in building relationships. Students need to know that you care about them and their parents need to know that you care about their kids.

There are times when you get caught up in the day to day adminis-trivia of school life – but you need to be willing to drop it if a child or parent needs your ear.

When any decisions are being made the question, “ How will this affect the students in our school?” needs to be asked.

Kids First is my mantra – how about yours?

How does your soup get to taste better?

Paul Black tells us that when the cook tastes the soup it is formative assessment and when the customer tastes the soup it is summative assessment.
This quote reminds me that as a teacher it is so important to check where students are at and then adjust my teaching before going on and to continue to do this until the outcomes are learned. Learning is a journey that rarely follows a straight and true path.

An assessment activity can help learning if it provides information to be used as feedback,by teachers, and by their [students] in assessing themselves and each other, to modify the teaching and learning activities in which they are engaged. Such assessment becomes ‘formative assessment’ when the evidence is actually used to adapt the teaching work to meet learning needs. (Black et al. 2002)

A frequent misunderstanding is that any assessment by teachers, and in particular the use of a weekly test to produce a record of marks, constitutes formative assessment. It does not.

Unless some learning action follows from the outcomes, such practice is merely frequent summative assessment: the key feature, interaction through feedback, is missing.

www.mantleoftheexpert.com/studying/articles/Paul%20Black2007.

Assessment -How do we change old habits?

Changes in assessment are difficult because so much of what is done is based on tradition and many teachers and parents have strong opinions about what they believe to be best.

If teachers in our classrooms are using assessment for learning and engaging students in the assessment process students themselves will advocate for assessment for learning with their parents. Our students will be the one’s who break tradition and move assessment for learning to a way of being.

Assessment for learning

* establishes where the learners are in their learning
* establishes where they are going
* works out how to get there
Guskey http://pdonline.ascd.org/pd_online/teachbehave2/el200302_guskey.html

The participants in assessment for learning are: teachers, peers, learners

“An assessment functions formatively to the extent that evidence about student achievement elicited by the assessment is interpreted and used to make decisions about the next steps in instruction that are likely to be better, or better founded, than the decisions that would have been taken in the absence of that evidence.” (Wiliam, 2009)

A good teacher

* establishes where the students are in their learning
* identifies the learning destination
* carefully plans a route
* begins the learning journey
* makes regular checks on progress on the way
* makes adjustments to the course as conditions dictate


The past ten years have produced a great amount of research that supports changes to traditional assessment practices to improve student learning.

We need to focus on student learning and understand that learning is not a race or a competition. It is a journey and all students given the right instruction and amount of time will learn.
Students need to be recognized for their learning and given the information that they need to continue to progress with their learning. They need to know where they are at, and what they need to do to complete the learner outcomes.


Teacher Learning
The most powerful teacher knowledge is not explicit

* That’s why telling teachers what to do doesn’t work
* What we know is more than we can say
* And that is why most professional development has been relatively ineffective


Improving practice involves changing habits, not adding knowledge

* That’s why it’s hard - and the hardest bit is not getting new ideas into people’s heads


We need to create time and space for teachers to reflect on their practice in a structured way, and to learn from mistakes. Bransford, Brown & Cocking (1999)

“Always make new mistakes” Esther Dyson

“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” Samuel Beckett

Making a commitment - What one thing could you commit to change in your assessment practices this year?

For more on this check out Dylan Wiliam's website
http://web.me.com/dylanwiliam/Dylan_Wiliams_website/Welcome.html

How does one become good at problem solving?

In stuart Brown's book "Play" he talks about his research that found that successful retiring engineers who were good problem solvers had taken apart clocks to see how they worked, or made soapbox derby racers, or built hi-fi stereos, or fixed appliances in their youth. Young engineers who had done these things, who had played with their hands were also adept at the kinds of problem solving that management sought. Those who hadn't, generally were not.
Perhaps providing students with experiences that require them to be hands on will help them to go deeper with their learning and become better problem solvers.


TED video on the power of games to alter and grow the brain.

Moral Imperative

When teachers decide to become teachers I believe they have the notion somewhere in their head that they can make a difference for every student that they teach. Why is it that some of us forget that it is all about learning - simple, powerful and memorable? We all need to be learners and we all need to respect what it means to be a learner.
Michael Fullan's new book "The Moral Imperative Realized" focuses on the action needed by everyone involved in improving lives and society.

Does it make a difference when community members volunteer in your school?

Does it make a difference when community members volunteer in your school?

I have always believed that parents and other community members could make a difference in schools and have recently had that notion confirmed. I had the opportunity to talk with a community volunteer and was touched by his sincere appreciation and understanding of a student he listens to read.

The volunteer works in our community and has no real connection to the elementary school. He volunteers an hour each week out of his busy schedule and says it is one of the best things he has done. He readily admits that he had no idea of the varying needs our students have.

The last week that he was in to volunteer the regular teacher was away and the substitute teacher said to take who ever he wanted to listen to. He asked the kids who wanted to read and was very surprised to see the hand of a young fellow who struggles shoot up. He chose another student and told the other one that he was next. The struggling reader beamed, the volunteer thought that was weird thinking, that kid has to work so hard to read.

When it came time for the struggling reader to read he brought a book about legends of mythical creatures which was unusual, because he usually brought comic books and generally just talked about the pictures rather than read the words. He opened the book to a page that he had marked and began reading fluently and continued to this for another page and then skipped a page that had words with definitions. The volunteer was a bit confused and was wondering what the difference was. He asked the student why he had skipped the page and he said he didn’t know. The volunteer stated that they should read it because he wasn’t sure what some of those big words meant. When they went back to the page the student struggled, needing assistance from the volunteer. They went on to the next page and he was able to read it well. The volunteer stopped him and asked what the difference was and the reader said, “Well, I practiced three pages, I read them four times because I wanted to show you that I could read them to you”.

The volunteer’s heart was touched deeply – this kid had worked so hard to impress him. He knows he made a connection with that student and in doing so made a difference.

Check out the Lochearn C.A.R.E.S reading program at http://lochearncares.blogspot.com/

Why Change Assessment practices?

Assessment means to sit beside and guide the next instructional steps of learning. We need to deeply involve the learner. It means having the students and teachers working together to improve learning.
Evaluation means to value, to judge. It is summative and should only occur at the end of the learning. It is done by the teacher.

Assessment = scaffolding /practice/practice/practice Evaluation = Showtime! - Sandra Herbst


Classroom assessment has the greatest impact on student learning and achievement of any educational innovation ever documented and is especially true for students who struggle and need additional instructional support. - Black and Wiliam 1998

Perhaps the question should be - Why do we keep assessing students in traditional ways?