Went to the third site of the after school crickets program today and met with the site director. When I called him 3 or 4 weeks ago and left the message "Hi, I'm the new outreach coordinator and I'd like to the talk with you about the after school Cricket program that was planned 3 years ago but never executed," I got the impression that maybe he didn't remember much about it. Specifically, he didn't remember why he should spend any of his time working with me to get 8 measly hours of after school programs into his building.
After meeting with him today, he's talking about how to get more grants that could bring more of this and similar projects into his club. That tends to be the general reaction. People see this program and get very excited about the possibilities.
Oh, and did I mention the great idea I came up with for my longer classes? I wanted to give them a fun build-it-animate-it challenge but didn't want it to be the roller coasters again (too specific). I found an old idea on the Playful Invention and Exploration website: building a chain reaction based on a nursery rhyme, poem, or story.
I think this will be a great challenge. I immediately started searching for nursery rhymes and came up with about a dozen ideas of animated story scenes I could build. And it could be anything... they could animate a scene from Harry Potter if they want. The only requirement - use the Crickets to take a simple scene and animate it.
Friday, October 3, 2008
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
There's more to Formative Assessment then meets the eye
To be honest, I wasn't paying much attention. I don't know what lead to the question in class, but I heard the professor say "Who knows the difference between formative and summative assessment?" No one responds.
This is a topic that I tend to think about a lot. I want to know if I'm getting through to my students before I have to grade them on it. I'm always hoping to do a better a job with formative assessments in my classrooms, so that I can feel like I've done every thing I can (in the 5 hours I'll see these students) to help them succeed on their work samples. So, I'm pretty familiar with the topic.
I raise my hand, and give a response: "Formative assessment is on-going. Its when you check in with your students during class and try to get a feel for what they're understanding or what you need to clarify. Summative assessments are at the end; the tests and papers that are graded to see what they retained." My definition wasn't complete enough for him, but he said it got an "A". That was his own formative assessment - he was telling me, you have the idea, but there's more to learn - pay attention.
So how else can I use formative assessments? Not just asking the students to answer a question or list the forces of flight and seeing who can recall it. What else can I do in my classroom now?
One of the activities that is usually part of my class is on the last day when students are finishing up their work samples. I have two or three of them come forward and read their Experiment Procedures. While they read what they've written in their rough draft, I mime their actions, setting up and doing the experiment exactly as they've described. This is a great tool when the first one or two are really bad. When they're good, its harder to use as a tool.
Are my students a tool I'm using (asking them questions and gauging their responses verse what I want/expect) or are they also benefiting from the assessments? During those demonstrations, they're helping each other, they can watch each other, listen to each other, and offer advice. It's a technique that works, it involves the student and it gives them a fair opportunity to review their draft before completing the assignment. What about other times in my lesson plans - do I offer more opportunities when they can assess themselves and each other, or do I wait for them to regurgitate information to see if it stuck?
This is a topic that I tend to think about a lot. I want to know if I'm getting through to my students before I have to grade them on it. I'm always hoping to do a better a job with formative assessments in my classrooms, so that I can feel like I've done every thing I can (in the 5 hours I'll see these students) to help them succeed on their work samples. So, I'm pretty familiar with the topic.
I raise my hand, and give a response: "Formative assessment is on-going. Its when you check in with your students during class and try to get a feel for what they're understanding or what you need to clarify. Summative assessments are at the end; the tests and papers that are graded to see what they retained." My definition wasn't complete enough for him, but he said it got an "A". That was his own formative assessment - he was telling me, you have the idea, but there's more to learn - pay attention.
So how else can I use formative assessments? Not just asking the students to answer a question or list the forces of flight and seeing who can recall it. What else can I do in my classroom now?
One of the activities that is usually part of my class is on the last day when students are finishing up their work samples. I have two or three of them come forward and read their Experiment Procedures. While they read what they've written in their rough draft, I mime their actions, setting up and doing the experiment exactly as they've described. This is a great tool when the first one or two are really bad. When they're good, its harder to use as a tool.
"Another distinction that underpins formative assessment is student involvement. If students are not involved in the assessment process, formative assessment is not practiced or implemented to its full effectiveness. Students need to be involved both as assessors of their own learning and as resources to other students." Catherine Garrison & Michael Ehringhaus, "Formative and Summative Assessments in the Classroom"
Are my students a tool I'm using (asking them questions and gauging their responses verse what I want/expect) or are they also benefiting from the assessments? During those demonstrations, they're helping each other, they can watch each other, listen to each other, and offer advice. It's a technique that works, it involves the student and it gives them a fair opportunity to review their draft before completing the assignment. What about other times in my lesson plans - do I offer more opportunities when they can assess themselves and each other, or do I wait for them to regurgitate information to see if it stuck?
"..[F]ormative assessment occurs when teachers feed information back to students in ways that enable the student to learn better, or when students can engage in a similar, self-reflective process." Staff, FairTest; "The value of formative assessment"Not as easy as we want it to be.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Technology is...
I'm going to start collecting these quotes. Some are thought-provoking and some are funny, but mostly, the value is in considering the instinctual reactions that people will have when you say you want to bring "technology" to the classroom.
Here are three to start us off.
Here are three to start us off.
"Technology is anything you don't trust. It's the things that break. If it's going to work, you call it a toaster." (Paraphrased) - the Director of IT at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival
"Technology is anything invented after you were born, everything else is just stuff." - Alan Kay (via Drape's Takes)
"Technology is anything that makes something else easier to do. This pencil is a form of technology." - (paraphrased again) Dennis Dunleavy, Assistant Professor of Communication, Southern Oregon Universiy
El Paseo
Back in school for the first heavy-duty term of the Master's program. Of course, every term is supposed to be relatively light, so it can be worked around jobs, family obligations, etc, but this term will definitely be more work than last.
We started our Multicultural Education class with an interesting activity last night, an El Paseo "Circles of Identity" activity (click for link to pdf). It was a good way to integrate the basic "get to know your classmates" first day activity with the class' topic and a teaching tool that is relevant to the topic. The activity started with listing the categories of things that we consider part of a student's identity. What pieces fit together? Race, gender, socioeconomic status, religion, family environment... the list goes on. Then we needed to build our own web of identity. Using specific terms in place of the categories, what makes us who we are? What is our own identity? We then went around the room having one-on-one conversations to share reflections on those characteristics. We didn't stand there and list off what we wrote - we talked about why those things made us who we are. Using our identity web and our conversations, we should have a good start on our first assignment, writing an autobiography.
It wasn't until today that I realized the subtle work the professor did in bringing the standard first-day classroom introductions, the class content, our first homework assignment, and a useful teaching tool together in one activity. We're taking these classes to learn to be good teachers... how often do we notice the tools the teachers are using and recognize the ways they're demonstrating technique in addition to the content?
After drifting a bit for the last month, and falling behind on posts and reflections, getting back into class is motivating. A lot of it comes from the increased stimulation: reading assignments, discussions, class time, etc. I want to remember to reflect on this stuff, so that 'el paseo' (the road) to my Master's definitely won't end with the degree. It should all be part of the learning experience and the never-ending quest to improve my teaching strategies and abilities.
We started our Multicultural Education class with an interesting activity last night, an El Paseo "Circles of Identity" activity (click for link to pdf). It was a good way to integrate the basic "get to know your classmates" first day activity with the class' topic and a teaching tool that is relevant to the topic. The activity started with listing the categories of things that we consider part of a student's identity. What pieces fit together? Race, gender, socioeconomic status, religion, family environment... the list goes on. Then we needed to build our own web of identity. Using specific terms in place of the categories, what makes us who we are? What is our own identity? We then went around the room having one-on-one conversations to share reflections on those characteristics. We didn't stand there and list off what we wrote - we talked about why those things made us who we are. Using our identity web and our conversations, we should have a good start on our first assignment, writing an autobiography.
The "circles of identity" I came up with last night.
After drifting a bit for the last month, and falling behind on posts and reflections, getting back into class is motivating. A lot of it comes from the increased stimulation: reading assignments, discussions, class time, etc. I want to remember to reflect on this stuff, so that 'el paseo' (the road) to my Master's definitely won't end with the degree. It should all be part of the learning experience and the never-ending quest to improve my teaching strategies and abilities.
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