Damian Cooper’s “Talk about assessment” was a very interesting read. The text introduced us to a need to change the way we think about assessment and the difference between assessment of learning and assessment for learning and the importance of the latter. With all the big ideas and the suggestions on how to make these changes in ourselves as educators there was never much speak on how to implement it on a wide-scale basis. This had me thinking that unless you have a supportive administration staff that want to help change and make a difference, as educators we will have a hard time making changes. So I decided to go out and do a little research and by research I just had small conversations with people that I know that are teachers as well as friends that I trust that are pretty plugged into education. The majority of the people that I talked to seemed to be leaning towards this being a fad more than something that would be able to stick. So I asked them what needs to change about education something that they experienced or saw and the same people responded with the fact that too often students don’t know what expectations are and teachers are not sure what ways to effectively show students what they are expecting from them and ways to show them what good quality work looks like. These are all things that I wondered myself before reading the text and I am hoping to be able to use it when I return home to start my teaching career. In Chapter 10 Cooper gives strategies for implementing change on a system-wide level as well as at the school level. First off everyone involved must agree on a basic level that is a need for change and if that is achieved Cooper outlines four conditions to effect sustainable assessment reform at both levels. The first is Focus, when attempting to implement change we need to be able to identify the most pressing need and focus on that rather than being bogged down trying to fix everything at once. When implementing change you are adding more to teachers that are already busy or don’t feel like their methods need changing and this is where the second step Support and Accountability comes in. teachers need to be held accountable in a respectful and professional manner that applies to everyone taking part in this reform. If they are help accountable and feel supported this will enable teachers to grow as professionals and will cause an increase of pride in their work. Collaboration is step 3 in the process and it calls for teachers within a school and within a school board to pool their resources and rather than working on identical tasks separately, come together and complete these tasks together or divide up the task and combine the finished product. Step 4 is most important step and where I believe the most problems with implementing new systems arise. Staying the Course is important because all the members of a school community have put time and effort into this reform and even when times are bumpy and the expected results are not there immediately it is very easy to go back to your old habits. Ill finish with an example from my coaching experience, one of my favourite movies is Coach Carter and I enjoy having my athletes work harder than anyone else has ever pushed them. We do an exhausting amount of conditioning after every practice and it takes a while for new players to buy into all this conditioning because it is very hard. I tell them after every practice “ I work you hard in practice so that the games are easy”. During our 4th game of the season we had to travel from Toronto to Sault St. Marie and it was a hard fought game and we were down by 6 points going into the 4th quarter. The amazing part was that the other team was exhausted and we were very fresh so I asked the guys how they were feeling and one responded we’re good coach this is easy and they all started to realize why I had pushed them so hard from day one. We ended up winning the game and at our next practice on Tuesday not one player complained about running because they realized the benefits of it after seeing it in action. The moral of the story is if there was a focus on being in better shape, along with support and accountability with the athletes especially when it was hard. I helped them understand why it was so hard and let them give feedback and ideas for a way to make us more successful and I stayed the course even though they fought back against it until the desired results were present. Not every situation will work out but you will always fail if you don’t try.
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For me grading and reporting seemed like pretty simple process as long as you were very clear with what you are looking for from your students and if you could eliminate the guesswork as much as possible. I believe in school students and parents should have a good handle on exactly what coming to them when it come to report cards. In school I was one of the lucky few that always felt like I knew what was coming to me because I knew exactly how much work I had put in that term and had a good handle of what I felt like I deserved and it would always surprise me the reactions of some of my classmates when they would see their reports especially the ones that were visibly upset. Cooper goes in depth with ways that these instances can be avoided, first students need to be introduced to the rubrics that will be used to grade culminating activities and also checklists that will help students understand if they are doing good work quality worthy of achieving a level 4 before the hand that work in. A problem I ran into in school was too often there were never examples of what good work looks like for us to reference to make sure we are on the right track, this is where anchors are very helpful for students success. Anchors are examples of what high level work looks like for students to reference, Cooper believes it is essential for students to be given at least 2 anchors to work from to make sure that single anchor isn’t used as a piece of work that the students believe they must copy exactly to achieve a good grade. Another problem that students and parents had was the belief that grades were a symbol of a students skills in a certain subject and the emotions were brought on when a student feels they are good at a certain subject and their grade doesn’t reflect that at all. In the growing success document it is explained how and when report cards are meant to be administered this give me some insight into how I can set up my assessment for learning to be able to accurately explain to parents and students what it is that the student is lacking so that are no surprises when it comes to their reports
This week we have been focusing teaching and assessing students with needs as well as assessment tools and strategies including the good bad and ugly of rubrics. To me and for anyone who has ever done it I believe working with students with special needs is the most rewarding part of teaching if done correctly. Teaching students with special needs certainly can be frustrating but Cooper gives some ideas on how to make sure it is a rewarding experience for everyone involved. For the last 2 years before I started teacher's college I worked at a company called Junglesport. We would set up a rock/rope climbing structure for the students to use for a week in place of their regular Phys. Ed. class and every school had special education classes either mixed in with other classes or separately on their own for more 1 on 1 instruction. Both situations provided a unique experience for us during the integrated classes I would take the special education class and get them in their harnesses and get them started before the rest of the class would get started. This allowed me to be able to get all of them in the air even if it was only a few feet off the ground. The majority of the students who were terrified of leave the ground until I got them up and their favorite word became higher and higher. There were also the students who would surprise you some of the greatest climbers we have ever seen came from special needs classes. We also had students surprise their own teachers and parents who were unsure or unaware of these student's true capabilities. These students definitely erased some of the myths that the teachers and parents had of them. In my experience 5 of the 6 myths that Cooper laid out were broken by the students I have encountered. I hope that everyone in their teaching career has a chance to work with special education students at least once it is a thrill.
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