Everything in Moderation

Post PD Reflection by Markeeta Roe is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Based on a work found here.

Our professional development day just ended. 17 minute ago. In fact, I'm actually still at the venue. It has been such a big day that I'm torn between the exhaustion of this morning and the natural high of meaningful learning.

Today we were moderating maths tasks with teachers of the same grade level from other schools. Theoretically we were meant to provide three portfolios of 6-8 work samples; one portfolio at standard, one below and one above. (I say theoretically because... Life. You know? I pulled together 6 samples, but they were all from the same unit of learning because I've only been with this class for 9 teaching days!) We swapped portfolios around our table and used the Australian Curriculum achievement standards as our moderation guide.

These kind of events secretly excite me because I love the opportunity to see the learning experiences other teachers plan/use so that I can borrow their ideas.

Upon sharing our thinking, it was re-affirming to learn that as a group (of year 7 teachers and some guest teachers from our feeder high school) we were invariably consistent in our assessments. I have been 'accused', in the past, by another year 7 teacher, of being an overly hard marker so to have my positioned echoed by a large group of others was quite a relief. 

The process we used was, at the same time, incredibly simple and mind bogglingly challenging.  Simple in the sense that the initial question is: does this student meet this standard? Challenging in the sense that assessing the individual work samples as a holistic body of evidence against the achievement standard requires a fair degree of mental gymnastics. 

After/while looking at a portfolio we were encouraged to answer particular questions:

1. Initial thoughts on the evidence provided in the work sample/s.
2. What evidence in the work sample/s aligns with the standard? How? (Be specific.)
3. What are the gaps in the evidence? What further evidence might be required to demonstrate achievement at the standard? (Be specific.)
4. How might the assessment be modified to better reflect the standard? (This might apply to some, non or all of the tasks.)

These responses then formed part of the feedback each teacher received about their portfolios. My portfolio was deemed as not being a broad representation of the whole curriculum - which wasn't surprising. I received positive feedback about the tasks and some suggestions about ways to improve. It was fantastic! I also learnt about a bunch of resources and a new app from Justine Nelson, one of the awesome teachers on my table. Justine and I are also planning to share some other resources and ideas. That, in and of itself, makes today worthwhile. Thanks Justine!

The other part of today that our year level group found particularly useful was spending time with the team from our feeder high school. We worked with them to moderate some year 8 tasks, and then collaborated on extending the example tasks. The discussions around the differences between teaching and learning in primary and secondary schools were powerful if not a little frustrating. Each question lead to another three questions. We all wanted to keep going; talking to the other side (so to speak) isn't an opportunity we get very often.

The final (cute) little tip I'm taking from today are two little sticky note exit slip acronyms: WWW (what worked well) and EBI (even better if). Simple but I think they'd work well with my current kiddos.

I also need to give a shout out to Cheryl Josephs, who was also at the session today. She has known me since my second or third day as a teacher and has become a wonderful friend and trusted colleague. We don't often cross paths professionally anymore so it was a real pleasure to see her. She is one of my most committed blog readers so... Thanks Cheryl! It was wonderful to see you.

This relates to the following Australian Professional Standards for Teachers:

Standard 5 Assess, provide feedback and report on student learning

Standard 6 Engage in professional learing 

Standard 7 Engage professionally with colleagues, parents/carers and the community

Single Point Rubric?

Let's talk about single point rubrics. Maybe I've been hiding under a rock for the past three and a half years but last night was the first time I'd ever heard those words uttered! I was at a Teacher Solutions PD session about the Digital Technologies learning area of the Australian Curriculum and single point rubrics were presented in with a slew of other information; I'm pretty sure the words "my head hurts" escaped my lips on more than one occasion more than once.  So, you guessed it: I had to do a little research on my own.  (I'm nothing if not predictable reliable.)

Long story short: it's a single set of criteria with room to record notes/evidence for performance above and below standard. Am I showing my age when I say "and here's one I prepared earlier"?

There are about as many formats as there are users.
I chose this one because it's familiar.

I struggled to get my head around the idea during the PD session for a couple of reasons. The first being that as a concept it's pretty simple, and glaringly familiar. I was confused by this. The example we were shown had about 30 criteria though (the entire Digital Technologies learning area) so I was puzzled: how was that remotely practical? Once the penny dropped that - in practice - these rubrics need only have the same criteria as any other rubric, aside from feeling a little foolish, I was intrigued by the potential.  Next I wondered how these were significantly different from the success criteria that I already use. (I post our success criteria on the wall (as you can see here) or task sheets.) In a nutshell: they're not! Well, sort of. They are in a different format with an assessment focus but using the same ideas and words.  Single point rubrics use these success criteria as the basis for identifying and recording evidence and feedback.

It was from this point that my inquiry began. The most interesting article I found was from the University of Nebraska that discusses the power of these rubrics as formative assessment and as a tool for responsible self-assessment. This resonated deeply with me because of my views on the importance of the role of 'self' in assessment and development.   It also reminded me of the anecdote shared doing the PD session: one teacher uses a red pen to write on these rubrics, the student uses a blue pen and their peers use a black pen. I'd been impressed by this story at the time but on reflection saw the potential as even more exciting: this opens the potential for a documented learning discussion. (I do wonder though whether there might be a digital option that works better? Perhaps a Google doc?)

Ultimately this is another tool to add to my repertoire. I can see how easily it could enhance my current practice: after building student capacity to identify success criteria - based on the curriculum achievement standards or whatever else we're working toward - these are publicly posted and used to create a single point rubric. Over time student capacity is built to use the rubric as a form of formative self assessment and peer assessment. In some ways it feels like a formalisation of what already happens.

Do you use single point rubrics? Any tips for success?

This relates to the following Australian Professional Standards for Teachers...
Standard 6 Engage in professional learning

Ticking Words in My Sleep

I spent less than 5 minutes in my classroom today. For most of the day I was within ten metres of our main door but I didn't go in.  No fancy new 'hands off' teaching technique: just an assessment day. Today I ran Fountas & Pinnell Benchmark Assessments on my kiddos.  Most of them anyway.

Prior to today I had run precisely two F&M assessments on my own, and observed two others. Today I did seventeen - many of which included two or three levelled texts. To say that my head is spinning right now is an understatement.  I think I'll be ticking words and writing SC in my sleep...  As I dream of, tomorrow, assessing the four kiddos who weren't at school today. 

These are the last assessments I have to do to complete the battery our staff agreed to perform as our baseline data for the year. As with most schools, we benchmark our reading levels a couple of times a year. Our school will, over the course of this year, be moving from using PM Benchmarking to F&P. Our literacy committee and leadership team decided that F&P was a more appropriate assessment tool for our school as it assesses right through to a reading age beyond primary school age.  (Check out the correlation between colour banded levels and F&P here.)

I was pleasantly surprised by the comprehension section of F&P.  There are no question, just a range of prompts and some some suggested key understandings.  Beyond the broader age range, this is, in my opinion, the key advantage of F&P.  Through these 'comprehension' discussions I was able to hear the reading strategies my kiddos are using - or not. One student told me that he'd made a text-to-self connection with one part of the story which helped him clarify an unfamiliar word. I nearly wept at hearing this: we've been focussing on clarifying in our reading block for the last week and a half. Another student told me that she'd used her prior knowledge to infer the feelings of a character. Still another predicted that cacophony had something to do with sounds because she knows the morpheme phone.  

Then there were the kiddos who came across an unfamiliar word and just skipped it.  And the ones who couldn't explain how the author had achieved a particular effect.  And those who couldn't retell the story. As each kiddo left me, I placed their name into the boxes on the small strategy group sheet my deputy principal had suggested I used.  It's an A4 page with 20 squares. Each has a strategy or small group focus at the top. It sounds like such a simple idea but it works brilliantly! (I'd previously used something much less formalised so I felt like a bit of dill for not thinking of it myself. (I'd scribbled areas of growth as I discovered them and added names as I went.) I've come away today with a plan.  Hooray!

I don't love spending time away from my classroom, but today the benefits far outweighed any other problems that arose. (And arose they did...  The kiddos were mostly self-regulated but not in the same way they usually are.  They were pretty engaged but not like normal.) I did love being able to spend some one-on-one time with each kiddo talking about their reading; and I loved learning about them. I can't quite say I love having a range of data on which to base my planning but I do appreciate it.

I feel the need to link this to my recent post about assessment. My take home message from that post was that my kiddos don't mind assessment if they understand its purpose. Today I made sure to explain to each of my kiddos that this assessment was for ME to learn about their reading strategies so that I could better meet THEIR needs. A couple really took this to heart and pointed out things that they don't feel confident doing: "I need help with inferring, make sure you write that down".  Now that's what I call students taking advantage of an opportunity!

This relates to the following Australian Professional Standards for Teachers...
Standard 1 Know the students and how they learn
Standard 2 Know the content and how to teach it
Standard 3 Plan for and implement effective teaching and learning
Standard 5 Assess, provide feedback and report on student learning
Standard 6 Engage in professional learning

Assessment

One of education's hot topics du jour is assessment. There's too much say many parents. Schools should do more say certain politicians. There are better ways say most teachers.  Teachers don't want to give tests because they just show how poorly they're doing their jobs say talkback radio callers. Assessment causes unnecessary stress and anxiety for our young people say some child development advocates.  I could keep going.  I won't though because at the end of the day the voice that should be loudest is the one that rarely gets considered. Students.

What do they think of assessment?

It's a bit of 'how long is a piece of string' question, but an important one to ask nonetheless.  Have you ever asked? I'll admit that I don't ask very often, but recently I have and the answers were as fascinating as they were varied.

By the middle of last year, my students were very clear that assessment was about OUR understanding. Assessment pieces were typically designed by the class and I with our learning intentions (often the Australian Curriculum) in plain sight. They knew that I was more interested in seeing their growth in understanding than in pretty borders or flash .gifs. (Unless that's what we'd be learning!) AND that I would give them lots of feedback. They also knew that at the end of the day I'm constrained, by the system we're operating in, by assigning a grade and the parameters that imposed.  So. Together we'd come up with an assessment that met all of our needs. Often the process of coming up with the assessment told me a lot of what I needed to find out anyway. These kids enjoyed assessment as a medium for collaborating with me to demonstrate all of our progress - mine included - and identify areas for growth.  They enjoyed it, and saw it as an opportunity for all of us to identify our next steps in learning.

This year has started with the usual round of baseline 'tests'. No one loves these right?  Wrong. A few of my students were excited to sit the Westwood Spelling Test to see if they'd 'kept' everything over the holidays. And even more were just keen to show me where we need to start this year. Our maths fluency tests were the same deal. One particular student who was doing a particular program to help him out last year was 'jump up and down' excited to see his results actually grew over the summer break.  

Discussions after these tests showed me that most kids do hate tests, but they don't hate assessment if they know the purpose of the assessment - even if the purpose seems ridiculous is to help a teacher with some research, or provide baseline data for a study. And so that's my lesson. Or at least part of it.

Student voice is the other part. Authentic student voice changes everything. Even the things they hate, perhaps especially the things they hate. 

This relates to the following Australian Professional Standards for Teachers...
Standard 3 Plan for and implement effective teaching and learning.
Standard 4 Create and maintain supportive and safe learning environments.
Standard 5 Assess, provide feedback and report on student learning

Learning about Learning Science

A learning space at ASMS

Another one of the opportunities I've taken this year has been a 5 day course about teaching science in the upper primary years. The course was co-run by the amazing Australian Science and Mathematics School (ASMS) and the Department of Education and Child Development. The ASMS is a senior high school based at Flinders University of South Australia  (my alma mater - woot woot) and which, clearly from its name, focusses on Science and Maths ed. The school is right on the FUSA campus and has amazing learning spaces. Everytime we went there I came away just buzzing with ideas for our learning spaces.

Anyway… I digress.  (Something new? Not.)    The course was open (through application) to teachers of year 6 and/or 7. Preference was given to applicants who applied in tandem or groups of teachers from one school. I applied with two of the other teachers from my unit and we were all successful. The course was taught by staff from the ASMS and focussed on the Australian Curriculum strand of Science as a Human Endeavour  and developing participants' skills in teaching from an inquiry position. Much of our time was spent learning through activity: plenty of 'take home' hands-on learning experiences.  You can imagine how the little groups of teachers from different schools all buzzed with ideas building on each activity. I've no idea how the trainers managed to get through everything on their agenda - we were a rather rowdy class!

The structure that the trainers were keen to impress upon us as best practice is one that I remember well from uni: the 5Es Teaching and Learning Model.  Have you ever used it?  It's a strong scaffold around which to build a learning progression.

• Engage: capture students' interest and activate prior knowledge.
• Explore: hands on activities that are student directed and force them to collaboratively wrestle with a new problem or set of ideas. 
• Explain: teacher provides conceptual clarification for ideas developed during the exploration. Important that this happens after the exploration, but it's ok to cycle back and forth between the two.
• Elaborate: collaborative application of new knowledge.
• Evaluate: review; evidence of learning.

It's important to remember too that each stage in this progression can, indeed should, have assessment built in - either for, of or as learning.  Hearing a broad range of assessment methods was thought provoking. And a little affirming. Our team all uses a really broad range of assessment strategies across for, of and as learning. My commitment to action from that session: get students to self and authentically peer assess much more often than I currently do.

The next part of the course involved developing an inquiry unit of teaching and learning to deliver to our classes. We then came back together to discuss our progress. Now, I'm going to let you in on a little secret that I'm sure my colleagues won't mind me sharing… We came up with the draft of our unit in about an hour.

A big part of our hour was spent formatting this pro forma. Shhhh!

And then finished putting together the unit in another hour AND then taught the majority of it in two days. (They were full days - dedicated to science.) It's not ideal but you know what? We learnt a lot about how we need NOT to plan in future and the four classes in our unit  learnt a LOT about electrical circuits. It might have seemed like it was a rush job to put together and teach but I think a more accurate description is that we pulled together as a team and worked incredibly well and incredibly collaboratively.

The five day course was an interesting process for me. Occasionally I felt a little frustrated because the 5E model was presented almost like a new concept and it's not. (Certainly not to anyone who's finished uni in the past 5 years.)  However, looking around the room I remembered that most of the people there finished before then although most of them had worked with the model before anyway. I guess it was my expectation that I'd learn more NEW models? That being said it was a good chance to review the model.

I enjoyed looking at science (as a subject) through the lens of the Science as a Human Endeavour strand. I don't think many of us do it very well yet. I certainly don't. It comes across in various aspects of my programme but rarely as part of my science programme. I need to work on that.  

Stay tuned for a wrap up of our unit of teaching and learning about electrical circuits.

This relates to the following Australian Professional Standards for Teachers...
Standard 1 Know students and how they learn
Standard 2 Know the content and how to teach it
Standard 3 Plan for and implement effective teaching and learning
Standard 5 Assess, provide feedback and report on student learning
Standard 6 Engage in professional learning

Standard 7 Engage professionally with colleagues, parents/carers and the community

(Is there someway I can pull a standard 4 out of this and go for a full house?)

What's the time Mr. Wolf?

Our current unit of learning in maths requires my young people to work with time. Our pre-assessment showed that many of them have somehow missed a lot of the skills involved in reading analogue clocks so I've paused our official unit to redress this. 

I started with a review of my understanding of the sequential development of reading time. Recognising that the reading of digital time is significantly easier, I started with a recap on the parts of an analogue clock face and their roles. I went right back to basics and we made interactive clock faces inspired by this pin. 

My research highlighted that at this age confusion about the hour and minute hands is often still prevalent, and this has been the case for many of my young people. Another point of confusion in our class is about hand movement.  We've worked hard to remove this confusion and today we had quite a few a-ha moments. You know the ones:

"So it takes an hour for the big hand to go all the way around, but the little hand only moves  between two numbers in one hour?"

Tic Tocs! 

"There are five minutes between two numbers but also an hour!"

Yes indeed!

Next I pulled out the big guns: a packet of Tic Tocs!  (For readers outside of Australia: Tic Tocs are a round iced vanilla biscuit (cookie), with clock faces embossed on the underside, made by Arnotts.)

Our white boards.

I pulled out the first couple and read the time. Using the clocks that we made the other day the class had to show me the time on their clocks. Moving on pretty quickly I started drawing the time (on an analogue clock) on my white board and asking the class to write the digital time on their show-me boards. Still moving pretty quickly I started giving a ranged of elapsed times - forward and back. Is back also called elapsed? Prolapsed? Hmmm.
The clocks were essentially cast aside by some children as understanding developed. Other children continued to use their clocks to self-check.   The high flyers worked in 24hour time, challenging themselves to make word problems to match my elapsed times.  (Yes, I did scribble them down for future use!)

You may be able to see here that each number on the clock
has a flap. Underneath has :05 or :35 etc.

Our very last step in today's lesson was by far the best hardest ... Eating the Tic Tocs! Tomorrow we'll use this new understanding with our 'official' unit on timetables.

This relates to the following Australian Professional Standards for Teachers...
Standard 1 Know students and how they learn
Standard 2 Know the content and how to teach it
Standard 3 Plan for and implement effective teaching and learning
Standard 5 Assess, provide feedback and report on student learning

What Would an Alien Visitor Think?

Aliens visiting my classroom last week would have been treated to a particularly poor viewing of how we 'do' education in this country.  It was NAPLAN week.

By way of explanation...

The National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) is an annual assessment for students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9. It has been an everyday part of the school calendar since 2008.
NAPLAN tests the sorts of skills that are essential for every child to progress through school and life, such as reading, writing, spelling and numeracy. The assessments are undertaken nationwide, every year, in the second full week in May.  (National Assessment Program 2011)

(On paper it's a three day event with up to 5 tests (depending on the year level) administered under strict control.   In reality it's a week long interruption; causing stress and anxiety for almost everyone involved, returning largely redundant data too late in the school year to be meaningful to anyone. The tests ignore current pedagogy in favour of a colour the bubble format that, in itself, excludes the type of answers we usually seek from our students.)

So what would the aliens have seen?

Children neatly sitting at rows of desks, all silently facing the front and following specific, set instructions before answering mostly multiple choice questions on paper, with a pencil. Children anxious because we don't 'do' assessment this way because we know it doesn't tell us what we want or need to know. Children panicking as they come across *yet* another question that they have little chance of fully understanding because the test covers the full breadth of the year's curriculum and it's only week 14 out of a 40 week year. Teachers patrolling the aisles and making lists of absent students ready to pounce on their parents for keeping them home for the week.

And if aliens come this week, what will they see?

Children learning in whatever space best suits their needs at any point in time, whether at a group table, on a couch/bean bag/the floor, outside, in another teacher's space, in the canteen!  Children using whatever tool best suits their individual learning goal, whether pencil, paint, play dough, laptop, iPad, smart phone or hula hoops! Children democratically negotiating their learning processes and outcomes as a group and individually. Children learning about the world around them. Children connecting to the world around them. Children making a difference to the world around them. Children making noise.  I'm largely invisible as I play the part of lead learner alongside of the children.

I've read the rationale for NAPLAN and am willing to, for the sake of my job, administer it BUT I could not justify it to visiting aliens.

I just hope that any visiting aliens would have stayed long enough to see my students' end of week reflections. Many commented on the challenges of NAPLAN. One, in particular,  stood out...

"Mrs RP taught us that it doesn't test the important things about me. I'm more than what those tests can show. I make strong choices all the time. I'm polite and am trying to get better in my learning all the time. That's more important than the NAPLAN I reckon."  

I reckon so too.  What about you? What do you think of NAPLAN? 

High (or otherwise) Quality Assessment Tasks

A couple of weeks ago our school undertook a whole school professional development day about developing high quality assessment tasks. (Specifically in maths, as that's been the whole school development priority this year.) It was a great challenge, and quite confronting for many people as the process involved sharing and evaluating each other's assessment tasks.  I really enjoyed the process, but not everyone was as enamoured. I even appreciated the need for us all to use the same template to present our assessments along with the pertinent curriculum links/context etc.

(Disclaimer: my co-teacher was our presenter for the day so I was lucky enough to know ahead of time  how the day was going to flow which probably added to my level of comfort. I'm not usually that in love with having my work examined and judged - as you probably figured out in this post.)

The day's discussion  (for me) centred around a few key questions:

      by Ludwg

• When and how do we design assessment tasks?
• Does this assessment allow students to demonstrate understanding that deserves an A or B?
• Does this assessment ask for higher order thinking or merely fluency?
• Does this assessment allow students to demonstrated their understanding in a new context?
• Does this assessment task really assess what the achievement standards in the Australian Curriculum state?

They seem like obvious questions until  you really stop and use them to critically assess your own assessment tasks.  Ha! I came away feeling pretty confident about some of my assessments and almost embarrassed of others. There was a lot of self-talk happening for me: 'it's good to identify these issues because it means I can work on fixing them' took a lot more effort than the much louder 'oh boy how on earth did you not see what problem before now?'

The synergy of working in a team was a highlight of the day for me. You know that whole thing about two heads being better than one? Well. I know not everyone feels that way but I LOVE bouncing ideas off others so this process pleased me greatly. Bring on more team planning time I say!

How do you design your assessment tasks? Do you have a favoured format? Have you ever had something work amazingly well? I'd love to hear about it. 

This relates to the following Australian Professional Standards for Teachers...
Standard 5.1 Assess student learning  

Standard 6.2 Engage in professional learning and improve practice

Standard 6.3 Engage with colleagues and improve practice

Standard 7.2 Comply with legislative, administrative and organisational requirements