To begin our day, Mimi presented us with a wonderful task for our prayer- to text our thoughts to God. We offered our own personal reflections to God by giving thanks for something in our life, praying for someone important to us and offering what is on our mind. I tend to forget the power of prayer and how it can shape our mindsets- starve your distractions, feed your focus.
Differentiated assessments
How often do we create assessments and already know which of our students will be capable to answer confidently and which of our students will struggle with even reading/understanding the question? I am guilty of this and it has really brought me back to the reasons why we assess and how we assess student understanding. My goal with assessment is for students to celebrate their success and self-reflect on areas they seek improvement. Sam spoke about differentiated assessment and how simple it can be to increase complexity, open-endedness, freedom of choice and higher-order thinking in the one task- Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.
Assessment design using curriculum
What we seek to achieve as educators:
Conceptual curriculum<--> intended curriculum<--> enacted curriculum<-->experienced curriculum
(An interlinked cycle of school wide pedagogy, a well designed learning sequence, effective teaching practice and rich learning experiences)- THE DREAM.
What stuck with me in this workshop was thinking about the time we give for self-assessment. If we as educators don’t allow time for this to happen, how can we expect our students to understand the importance of self-assessment and reflection? How can we measure if a student really understands? It requires much deeper critical thinking and skills such as accessing perspective, revealing self-knowledge and demonstrating empathy. I personally design assessment and learning experiences with the mindset of an activity designer, more so than an assessor. To achieve quality assessment tasks it is vital to have a balance between purpose and design- only then can sufficient evidence of learning progress be revealed.
Using assessment to inform future planning
We aren’t using assessment correctly- John Hattie
What are we actually doing with the data we are collecting? So often we use assessment to inform students of their level of attainment but how often do we allow them to process and gain feedback on this information? If teachers showed students how to self-assess their own performance and allowed for discussion on goal-setting for improvement, I believe positive growth will be evident. This is something I wish to work on when completing assessments to allow my students to take ownership of their learning.
Now time for some self-assessment on my journal…. 10/10 Miss C!
I would also give it a 10/10... it would of been an 11/10 but i didnt write it so ba dum tskkkkkk