Several weeks ago I had the opportunity to participate in the Edcamp43.  The process of this un-conference is one that we would very much like to try with students.  I have been trying to think of a time when we could bring students from across the district together to organize, host and participate in this kind of dialogue.  While the logistics and possibilities percolate, we are going to incorporate it into our classes.

Two ways we have thought to use this process are for assessment and for designing our curriculum for next year.  In a previous post, I disucssed how we brainstormed and came up with the topics of inquiry and themes for the past 2 years.  This year we are going to try having kids post the topics they are interested in discussing on the wall on post-it notes, then clustering the most common topics (or themes that become apparent) and having discussions groups (facilitated by students) with a recorder taking notes onto a google.doc. 

Once we have the themes and topics fleshed out, we’ll faciliate the students in a discussion to look for places where there are curriculum connections. 

Hopefully after experiencing the process, our students will be able to envision and want to host a larger gathering for students and if not we’ll continue to dream about the possibilities.

This year has been a unique situation where students have not received formal report cards due to job action by the BCTF.  We have heard from parents that there are questions about how they can determine how their child is doing in class based on the assignments and test scores they have received throughout this year. 

Within our classroom we use two types of assessment – formative assessment (assessment for learning) and summative assessment (assessment of learning).  When we assess learning we look at the growth of learning represented by the changes on formative assessments, summative assessments and how the students assess their own work.  An example from Language Arts – in our online literature circles, students receive a rubric assessing their writing.  We use the BC Ministry of Education Writing Performance Standards for each grade level to assess writing.  These rubrics provide evidence of the growth of the students’ writing through a weekly snapshot.  The information on the rubric shows what the student is doing well and areas that the student may need to continue to improve.  Often we will provide a personalized comment on the students’ assignment about the students’ writing that can provide more details or a specific focus for the following week.  Students are also asked to peer assess other students writing using the same rubric. 

When you look at the Performance Standards the categories are Not Yet Within Expectations, Meets Expectations, Fully Meets Expectations, Exceeds Expectations.  These do not translate directly into grades.  We have had conversations with students in our classes that having a piece of writing assessed in the exceeding expectations column does not mean that the grade is an “A”, that fully meeting translates into a “B”, and meets expectations is a “C+.”  It is difficult to overlay one form of evaluation (letter grades) onto another (Performance Standards).  

Students complete Assessment Focus (AF) questions for each lesson in Math.  The Math outline provides daily assignments for students to complete and includes an AF for each topic.  Students are encouraged to submit their work daily or as they complete the AF so they can get quick feedback and teachers can identify any areas of difficulty.  AFs are marked using a rubric that looks at mathematical reasoning and understanding, accuracy of computations and communication of procedures.  Students are assessed on whether they are excellent, proficient, adequate, or not yet adequate.  We have been working with students to develop their responses to be able to be proficient in their reasoning and communication.  AFs are another type of formative assessment we use in the classroom; they are assessment for learning to help identify where areas for further work.  Students sign up for unit tests when they are ready to write. The unit tests are an evaluation of the learning over the course of the unit.  We try to include a math project each term for students to apply their math knowledge into a `real world` situation.  This term, students are working on a statistics and data analysis project – creating sports, weather and business sections of a newspaper including data tables and analysis of the data.   

Have you seen the writing your students’ writing performance standards rubrics?  Have you seen the assessment focus packages for math? If you haven’t, ask your student to show you these assessments. 

If you are interested in reading about what other schools and teachers are writing about assessment and letter grades, you may be interesting in Rethinking Letter Grades and Assessment & Grading.

Did you ever wonder where Ms. Abbot and Ms. Moody came up with the topics or ideas for projects? 

It started in September 2010 when we were starting out with two new groups of students in a new program. 

We asked the class to list questions they had about themselves, their community and the world.  We invited them to share with a partner and had them make a combined list of the questions they shared in common and considered must haves.  The partners formed a group of four and synthesized a list of top 10 questions combining and re-wording questions for their original lists.  The top 10 lists were shared with the class and the class sorted the topics and identified the themes they would like to investigate.

Our themes:  the economy & taxation; 2012 & apocalypse; world conflict & war; aliens; life changing events (children, marriage, death); fame & fortune; myths & fairy tales; schools (history, who invented & why); Technology (replacing books, flying cars, underwater living); the future; animal survival; world change; why do people enjoy sports; a changing Canada.

Then Ms. Moody and I took the themes and the prescribed learning outcome for middle school and started to look to connections.  We sat a brainstormed and found ourselves working with three major themes: Being the Change; Sustainability; Conflict and Oppression.

This year we are exploring sustainability.   We started by looking at some of the impact we are having on the environment and the earth.  Recycling, zero waste, trash free lunches, population and natural disasters were all topics that entered the discussion.  We have watched episodes of “Trashopolis” and continued to talk about what changes we could make to alter the path we are on.  During term one, every student researched an issue they were interested in.  From their research students work to present a proposal about how they would like to see change.  We had proposals on school compost, Green Team Club for the school, increasing recycling in our school, trash free lunches and cafeteria waste audits, school gardens, Bear Aware programs and walk to school programs. 

In term two we are taking a different approach to sustainability.  We have been exploring the sustainability of cultures and language through a literature study of the classics and a study of empires.  Students are currently working on their empires projects and are studying cultural sustainability through expansion specificially Rome & domination, the British Empire & the New World, and Space. 

We are also looking at the sustainability of food.  At the beginning of the new year, we watched “The Future of Food” and began the discussion about where our food comes from and how it gets to our tables.