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

Not Unpleasant, Just Hard

Sometimes teaching is hard work. Not unpleasant, just hard. I'm finding this week hard. I'm tired, the kids are tired. Routines and expectations are still unfamiliar. Things are't quite where I thought they were. We're still learning how to be a cohesive unit. It's hard. Not unpleasant, just hard.

That isn't to say that we're not having those exquisite little moments of delight or progress or peace. We are. Oh. We. Are.

I have one young man in my class who, for a variety of reasons, struggles with self-regulation. Today,  during a break, he had a small social struggle. Like all kids do.  For most kids, this would have rated about 1.5 on the richter scale. For my young man it was more like 6.5 and threatened massive aftershocks.  BUT! BUT... But... My young man allowed me into his space and accepted my (very minimal) help to reframe the issue. He then took a timer into our 'oasis' (an Ikea mosquito net hanging in the corner of our learning space, filled with cushions) and 5 minutes later re-emerged ready to reengage with learning. I openly acknowledged his choices and resilience. No fewer than eight students joined in with their own observations of how impressed they were.  For a young man who doesn't show much social emotion... His smile was so big it hurt!

I have another young man who likes to be heard. He makes some brilliant contributions to class discussions, but often is unaware of the other 24 students eager to participate. A longstanding challenge for this young man it's causes a range of extended social issues for him.  Other kids simply don't want to hear anything he has to say because, well, to be blunt, he never shuts up. This afternoon he asked for my help to become more aware of when and how he does this. He asked! You can't say no to that kind of request.

One young lady in my class brought her mum into our learning space after school. Arriving a couple of days after the year started this young lady is clearly not feeling a lack of belonging or group identity. The pride on her face as she gave the 'royal tour' was delightful.

It's hard sometimes, but that's OK. Sometimes it's the hard parts that make it worthwhile.

This relates to the following Australian Professional Standards for Teachers...
Standard 1 Know students and how they learn
Standard 4 Create and maintain supportive and safe learning environments

Marbles

You know those moments when you see something and just know that it's going to roll around - like a marble - in the recesses of your brain until you do something with it?  Well, let's put it this way: if you shook me right now I'd rattle. So many moments today. Too many. Nah. Never too many. Just... Just... Oh gosh.
 
This morning - during that lesson in which my class were using the padlet I wrote about yesterday - I was looking at the data for our school's year 6/7 students in a particular area. It didn't look good. In fact it was alarming, but as I looked I started to see the patterns. And hear the marbles.

This afternoon, instead of a normal staff meeting after school, today we took a walk around the school - visiting all the different learning spaces. Each team spoke about how their design choices reflect their professional practice. Every space was unique and perfectly suited to the group of kids. Cue the sound of marbles dropping.

Borrowed from the SVHS Tech website

Tonight I went to a parent teacher acquaintance night for my son's high school.  Towards 'home time' the iPads came out to show off the learning of the first week of school. I'm not going to comment on where most of it would fall on the SAMR model of educational technology but they were based on middle school pedagogies. And I teach middle school. So the marbles just rolled on in.



I need to interrupt myself for a moment here an make a distinction between those ugly cat eye marbles and the lovely white or black speckled eggs. Some moments - like seeing data that paints a picture of class wide poor understanding - drop cat eyes. Others - like seeing innovative learning space design - drop speckled eggs. Both are important. Both lead to change. You want more speckled eggs than cat eyes but you can win with either right?

So, I've been making mind maps of learning space ideas; planning a programme to fill some gaps and waiting patiently for my son to finish his home learning before I pick his brain about his learning tasks.    Anything to get these marbles to stop rattling before bed!

Time to get back to linking to Australian Professional Standards for Teachers.  This post relates to 
Standard 6 Engage in professional learning

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

A Duck's (Late Night) Adventure

It's 10:30pm and I just finished making those few last minute changes to my plans for tomorrow.  Ordinarily I'm finished well before this time but tonight we had a dinner guest and so I didn't get started until well later than usual. Still. It's 10:30pm.  Past this little duck's bedtime on a school night.

I know I'm not the only teacher who comes home and packs in another couple of hours.  It's one of the reasons I describe teaching as a lifestyle instead of a job.

It's a great lifestyle if you ask me though... How many other adults get to count reading picture books as work? For someone like me (picture book LOVER), it's the icing on the best cake ever.

My last minute changes tonight were focussed on my need to do a narrative structure pre-assessment, and a prior knowledge of natural disasters of my kidlets tomorrow. I had things planned but with one thing and another (read that as I forgot that I am being released for an extra lesson tomorrow because of a leadership role I've taken on) I need to rearrange my day and the previous plan wouldn't work. Back to the planning book!

I've decided to present out the text of one of my all time favourite picture books and have the kids mark it up. Pamela Allen's Alexander's Outing is perfect for early discussions about narrative structure because it has all the features.  And the illustrations are BEAUTIFUL.  Win!

The natural disaster session is a little more difficult because I won't be in the classroom. I completely trust the teacher who's going to cover me, but as we all know from previous posts - I'm a control freak. So I've set up a padlet for my class to use after the initial conversations. My class used it in a few different ways last year, so I'm hoping my 'loopers' remember and can mentor the others. Padlet is such a fun way of sharing ideas and collaborating, and it's free which is, as we all know, an ENORMOUS advantage.  Depending on when you read this blog, you may see my students' comments on the padlet below.

Created with Padlet

Despite the late hour, I love my job/lifestyle. Planning activities like these two, which are pretty every day ones, makes me happy. I know the kids will enjoy them. And that means learning. And that's why I do it. (Well, that and the picture books.)

Speaking of the late hour: it's now 11pm. Well past this little duck's bedtime on a school night. Still. I was determined to keep my commitment of #28daysofwriting. (3 days done!)

A Prime Assumption

Mini confession... This time last year I thought one was a prime number. Honestly. I had never really considered any other option so it was a bit of a rude shock when I realised that I was wrong. I was intrigued at the time but I put my curiosity to one side because I was juggling a new class, new year levels and new school. (And by juggling what I mean is trying to not drown.)

This year I'm teaching the same year levels in the same classroom with some of the same kids (can't begin to explain the joy I feel in this - that's a whole different post I think). I have the mental space to investigate why my original assumption was wrong.  So today, in a short break in a meeting, I did. It took no more than a minute.

Probably less than a minute.

And you know what?  I found the answer, I shelved my old assumption as misguided and I moved on. Simple as that.

So why didn't I do it last year?

I can't answer that easily. It probably has to do with some other assumptions I held - about myself. Like many new teachers I assumed that unless I was overwhelmed I wasn't 'doing' early career teaching properly - whatever that means. I assumed that always being on the run meant I'd get 'there' - wherever 'there' is. I assumed that admitting I needed help was a sign of weakness - however that works.

Yep. I held a whole bunch of pretty unhelpful assumptions. And it has taken me me somewhat longer than a minute to find the answers to help me shelve them.  I have though, and I think that's probably why, today, I admitted to my school's Maths Coach that I'd been wrong about a pretty basic fact, asked him for help and then took a moment to look it up.

Many of my assumptions have been challenged in the past year; the prime one being that I need to be anything other than what I already am.


(It turns out that there are several answers to my original question,  all increasingly mathematical, that are succinctly explained here.)

A Tool Box

As I grew up I loved to spend time with my dad. His work took him overseas more often than it left him in Australia so our time together was particularly precious. I rose before dawn to go running with him; I helped out in the garden way more than any teenager would want to do; I spent my holidays filing and photocopying in his office just to be near him. My favourite thing though was to help when he crafted something out of wood. It didn't happen often, but when it did... The results amazed me.

More than the results, his toolbox fascinated me. It was just an ordinary ol' tool box, but in the deep recesses of that box were tools that enabled him to take a lump of wood and create something beautiful or useful or... Just different.  It wasn't the tools that caused the change, that was Dad, but the tools enabled him to do it. 

Dad's toolbox was crammed full of tools and each time he pulled one out he explained its name and its use.  I was thinking about that today as I wandered the aisle at the shops seeking inspiration for my reading block. I was in the tools section (yes, I was getting desperate creative!) and could hear his voice patiently explaining the difference between a coping saw and a tenon saw.  

If this were a daytime movie there would be soft lighting and rousing music playing at this point, to alert everyone that my moment of brilliance is fast approaching.

At the end of the aisle was a pile, nay a mountain, of  red metal toolboxes - you know the old style ones?  A more obvious message there will never be. Dad, in his inimitable way, was reminding me that all I need to do is teach my students what the tools are and how to use them so they can fill their own toolboxes with the ones that work for them.

So what did I do? I bought a bright red metal toolbox and will take it to school tomorrow. Each time I introduce a new  tool (or strategy)  I will put it in the toolbox to remind us all that we can use it.  It will stay there ready for us whenever we want to improve our use of it, or compare it to another tool.  My bright red toolbox will sit at the front of our learning space holding the tools that will enable us to create beautiful, useful or even just different understandings. 

Dad would have turned 64 today. I hope he knows that he still helps me fill my toolbox.

Pride, Popcorn and Pizza

We're well and truly into the second week of our term 3 holidays now, and I'm finally starting to feel rested.  I've spent time with my family and we've all put in mammoth efforts to rip out our entire front yard ready to re-landscape it over the next couple of weeks. It's been inspiring to see our six boys pull together as a team and work incredibly - and I do mean that in the literal sense of the word - hard.

All the hard physical labour has given me plenty of time to reflect on my and our class' learning last term and to think about plans for this coming term. I'm so proud of our class and the progress we've made this year. It's been such a privilege to play a part in the lives of these amazing young people!  I have such high hopes for their futures, and am excited for my year 7s as they ready themselves for their transition to high school.  

OK, enough of the gushy stuff. I'm already dreading the end of the year.

So, toward the end of last term a couple of students asked if we could watch The Book Thief on the last day. My immediate response was to remind them that, at our school, we don't watch movies just because "it's the last day of term" but before I could even get the words out, they followed up with all of the links to our learning programme AND the actual curriculum. You know what? They made links that I wouldn't have dreamt of but were brilliant. They took the process of getting parental permission (for a PG movie) into hand and within 24 hours I had verbal and written permission for child. The whole process was student driven and managed.  Student voice in action!

The day arrived: I bought the movie on iTunes, and brought in my popcorn maker. We shut the door, turned off the lights, curled up on the couch, beanbag and cushions and watched The Book Thief. We paused it a few times to make links to our prior learning, or clarify a few misunderstandings. There was often an undercurrent of quiet conversation that - when I sneakily moved to eavesdrop - invariably included words like 'inferring' or 'text-to-text' or 'point of view'.  We may have watched a movie on the last day of term but it wasn't a mindless entertainment activity, it was the culmination of a lot of learning.   Even though I'd already seen the movie several times already, I was surprised at the links my students were making.  If you haven't already seen the movie, I highly recommend it. (Just make sure you have tissues  ready!)

After the movie we held our usual end of term celebration. I push my kids pretty hard during term, so I buy them pizza for lunch on the last day of term. It's just one little way I say thank you for making my job easier by not pushing back! Nearly everyone contributes something to our shared lunch and we have a mountain of fun food. This term many of my students had gone above and beyond and cooked delicious treats for us.  It's lovely that so many other teacher have messages they need to hand deliver to me around this time, so that we can share our fun with them!

There was a cupcake with EVERY person's initials!
And as you can guess, I have a nut allergy! 

At the end of term 2, we had a dance party at lunchtime as well, but this time we were all a bit tired and emotionally drained after the movie so we skipped that.  The last 40 minutes of each term,  we reflect on the best parts of the term and make suggestions for what we'd like to carry forward. I sit back and scribe the kids' discussion. It's their reflection, so it's particularly humbling to hear my name as both a reason behind the great learning, and the amount of fun we have. I think they may have it a little confused though: I think THEY are the reason they are learning so well, and having so much fun. I know they are one of the reasons I have so much fun at school.