MRauhPortfolio

Wordle: I've used this before - lots of fun! It might be neat to take a historical text and put it into wordle and let kids evaluate why certain words are bigger than others or what the implications of the big word choices are..... Here's a wordle taken from a blog rant I did:media type="custom" key="9998149"

VoiceThread: I commented on 'What's a Voicethread anyway?" http://voicethread.com/share/409/

I thought that was a unique media for engaging students in a conversation about a "source." As I thought more about this - I thought about a jigsaw I did with kids in the spring where they were responsible for becoming experts on a particular "source" from a particular field of thinking. We were practicing synthesis of ideas, which is so necessary to social studies thinking in the modern world. We had archeologists looking at artifacts, scientists making observations and hypotheses about nature, historians reading documents, and geographers reading maps. It would have been great at the end of the jigsaw if groups could have looked at all the information together and discussed it using voicethread. Exciting stuff! http://voicethread.com/share/2149196/ media type="custom" key="10005505" code

code As I head into my second year of teaching, I find myself focused on the challenge of effectively assessing my students. The more I think on it, the more I dislike the traditional grading format and think that changing it will help teachers develop grading methods that guide us in improving teaching and make students aware of their strengths and weaknesses. Without an effective method of grading, good assessments will still be weak  Like so many things in teaching, we know what good assessment should look like in reality. Good assessment should be a tool to help us revise the way we teach and better meet the needs of each individual student. However, as things stand, we do not effectively record our data and tend to function off of a vague sense of how a student is doing, rather than an accurate picture of the skills they have and don't have. My personal opinion is that this is a result of our grading system. When we as teachers grade, we place scores in arbitrary categories like "tests and quizzes," "classwork," and "homework." These categories do nothing other than to create an easy filing system by which to find or place grades into a s  What if our grading systems had categories like "Evaluating Sources" or "Asking Testable Questions" and rubrics developed with scores for different levels of these skills allowed us to put in scores for these skills throughout the year. By grading this way we meet multiple goals. First, we have a grading system that shows progress and isn't limited to points met in terms of right or wrong answers. Second, students gain a better picture of not only where they are at right at that moment, but what skills they need to work on and exactly what they can do in order to grow. As an added benefit, they can watch their own growth and take pride in it as it  My hope is that by making students more aware, we can eliminate certain misconceptions about their own learning. For instance, I had a student who upon meeting me for the first time told me "maps did not like [him]." Instead of seeing geography as a subject he wasn't good at, he could say "gee, I really don't understand how to use longitude and latitude" or "I don't have an understanding of how to figure out what kind of information a certain map is showing me and how to use that." Instead of saying "I'm not good at math, a student might say "I don't have a solid understanding of how place value works in multiplication." Right now a student can tell you whether they are good at a subject or whether or not they did well on a particular assignment, but they cannot tell you whether or not they are learning and what their strengths ar  At my school we have student led conferences. As part of conference preparation, students fill out a sheet where they talk about their strengths and weaknesses. As often as not, I might have students write down "Aztecs" or some other content that is something they know, but not actually a strength. Their weaknesses might be equally off-base. The same goes for math, reading, or any other subject area. Students are very aware of strengths and weaknesses they have in terms of work ethic, participation, focus, and other study skills type areas. We need to make them equally aware of specific standards-based content skills.

 Of all the teachers I have talked to about this system, I have only had one not be receptive. I have shown them how I broke down the standards into a set of skill words, many of which are cross-curricular. Then I take those skill words and group them together into skill sets. For example: evaluate, analyze, critique, interpret, compare/contrast, differentiate, and infer may all be grouped into a sort of "Evaluation/Analysis" category. Then I might design a grab-bag style rubric, where a teacher could grab the scoring set (a continuum that focuses on one or a couple of these skill terms) and use it to grade an entire assignment, or just part of an assignment. That assessment is not specific to the assignment, but can be used with multiple assignments, thus allowing for grades that can be put into the grade system mentioned above.

 To give it equal notice, I had also mentioned cross-curricular value. Analysis is not a content specific idea and although it may look slightly different in different contents, the basic thinking involved is the same. In other areas, jargon is different, but the idea the same. In planning with colleagues, I have realized that using evidence is something we ask for in several content areas. I want students to explain their opinions, supporting them with evidence they have gathered from multiple sources. In science, students write conclusions as part of the scientific method and they need to explain these conclusions with evidence from the data they gathered. In writing they must use supporting sentences (english jargon for "evidence").

 The Colorado Content Standards (and I suspect many other states' standards) are riddled with skills that we can teach as a whole grade level team, and which, with a little effort, can be developed into a multiple grade-level continuum, such that students progress can be monitored from grade level to grade level. What's more, we prevent ourselves from passing a student who "did all the work" but perhaps does not have the skill levels to progress on to the next grade.

 I feel as if I got a little off topic in my rant, but I feel there are multiple benefits of adjusting the way we grade students and present assessment. I don't profess it to be easy. I don't foresee having a whole system in place as I start this year of teaching. However, I do foresee myself as having a couple of assessments developed that will address this need and help me hone my teaching to developing students thinking in these ways.

 There are other things I am doing to make this work effectively: portfolios and a scheduled time for students to reflect on their own skills and progress. However, that is blogging for another day.