"Skills Check" Quiz

This past school year my department head was introduced to a new style of quiz (origin unknown - if you know who in the board she got it from please let me know and I will give credit where credit is due). We use them as an opportunity for a specific skill check - generally knowledge-based but sometimes the level 3/4 questions will involve using the skill in a new context. There is no use of marks

The "quiz" is set up with a learning goal at the top with success criteria listed (I now look back and would probably argue for myself that the SC is really just 1 or 2 criteria split into levels). There are 4 questions on the quiz, set up in a chart (3 columns - the question with work space, feedback & reflection/corrections) starting with a level 1 type question and ending with a level 4 type question. A sample (from MCR 3U0) of the front of one of mine is shown in the image below (I put the level 3 & 4 questions on the back).

The focus of this style of quiz is on the feedback.

If a student is struggling with the level 1 question than I will focus my feedback there and stop. The feedback is descriptive (tells the student what they are able to do and what the next step needs to be - as well as where to get the help with it) and manageable - if they are struggling with the level 1 question then giving feedback on other questions will likely be too much.

What really sold me on this particular format is that it became easy for me to record a level for the student at the end - I had already done most of the thinking when I planned and created the quiz. This was mind-blowing for me because so much of the hardship in the adjustments I was making in my assessment journey was the extra time I was spending giving feedback and then figuring out levels.

Granted this is just a quiz and it cannot be used for all purposes. But it's a start.

Finally, when I return these to students I do not take them up (because the individual feedback they need is on them) but students are giving time to do corrections/reflections, redo the next question, and are then encouraged to hand it back in. I will then check their corrections and if they have succeeded at that level will look at the next one and provide them feedback on this.

The hardest part for me? Continuing to work on the classroom culture where this kind of practice is valued and more students take the opportunity to resubmit.

MHF Cycle 2 Reflection

I have previously posted a reflection of our first cycle here.

Here is the plan that we used for our first cycle.
(Most of the activity credits go to Jamie Mitchell and Steph Girvan in the Halton Disctrict School Board - Thank you for sharing your resources - including your blood, sweat and tears guys!)

One of the things we have found as a department is that students often struggle with the algebra portions of this course. Because of this I offered my students an "algebra crash course". I attempted to remind them the core of algebra and solving equations through manipulatives and a clear reminder of what inverse means (i.e. that log is a function, so has an inverse). These should be ingrained ideas that these students have and I find myself often wondering how to best help students at the high school level with these skills. If anyone reading this has any ideas please share!

As you can see in our plan we had two traditional tests in this cycle. We split the algebra portion up into two sections, polynomial & rational functions and logarithmic & trigonometric functions. The last part of the cycle has students explore combinations of functions through investigation of graphs and getting students to do their best to generalize rules for different types of combinations. As a final evaluation in this unit we had student-teacher conferences.

Students had a conference like this one during cycle one as practice (for all of them I was using Google Forms to track and DocAppender to give student immediate access to feedback). For this conference students were given two functions in small groups. They were asked to identify the characteristics of those two functions and then to as a group predict the superposition characteristics of those two functions. On the day of their conferences students rolled a die to get a random second combination. Students were given 5 minutes to prepare and then had 5 minutes to share as much as they could about that combined function. The key was that they were to explain why they believed those were the resulting characteristics, not just to list them.

I found this evaluation very insightful into student reasoning and understanding of characteristics as a whole. It also provided insight into the emphasis that I should consider putting onto the graphical representation of functions in earlier courses. I have started to think that we take for granted what students take away from graphs.

I really enjoyed the experience with conference with these classes and definitely plan to continue working on using them in other courses. Getting students to explain things verbally has an ability to show student learning that reading a written response just cannot do. The power of triangulation of evidence.

MHF Cycle 1 Reflection

As mentioned in a post early first semester we made an attempt to spiral the MHF4U0 curriculum at our school. I will try to create some more posts to share more details, so for now this post will just focus on the first cycle we used.

If you missed the planning post, you can find it here.

I personally started off with a couple of classes where we did some collaborative problems solving. I wanted to introduce my intention to use visible random grouping (VRG) and vertical non-permanent surfaces (VNPS) in the class. I used this with a couple of fun tasks (such as the Tax Man problem) and then continued with them working on the boards while having them do some review problems together (factoring, radicals). It was a rough beginning. My madness was very new to the students, particularly since I was completely new to the school.

Here is the plan that we used for our first cycle.
(Most of the activity credits go to Alex Overwijk and his team in the Ottawa-Carlton District School Board and to Jamie Mitchell and Steph Girvan in the Halton Disctrict School Board - Thank you for sharing your resources - including your blood, sweat and tears guys!)

The textbook references made above are for the Nelson Advanced Functions book. I very rarely assigned work from the book but students were given the sections as a reference for if they needed it or wanted to do extra practice.

Part way through the cycle (probably about 2/3rds of the way through) I asked the students for some feedback. They were struggling with my use of Desmos Activities and lack of "traditional lectures". We added some more structure to the daily work we were doing. At the start of class we went back to the previous day's lesson (took any questions, which we were already doing) and then co-constructed success criteria based on what they had done. This criteria was added to the lesson plan that the students had access to. I also made a pointed effort to make them read that day's learning goal and asked if anything needed to be clarified. This seemed to help students realize that they were learning.

In retrospect, the vast changes they were going through were a lot. I would create brief google forms for each Desmos Activity the next time to help students consolidate their learning (which would have helped them build their functions portfolio we had asked them to do), essentially they would be exit tickets of some sort. I could collect data for myself while giving students a chance to reflect. And the form could be attached to student documents via DocAppender so that they could have a copy of their own responses.

Our formal evaluation for this cycle was a large group stations task. Students were in groups of 3-4 such that there were 8 groups in one class. There were 8 stations in total (we did 4 per day) that were designed to last approximately 15 minutes each. Of course there turned out to be some they spent more time on than others. Students were to use the time in their groups to work through the problem (i.e. match a graph, table of values, and equation and justify the match) and then record their answer in their own words on their answer sheet.

Students found this to be a very valuable learning tool and, for the most part, the results seemed to align with what we, as teachers, thought that student had shown they knew and could do. They were not big on the fact that it was the only formal evaluation we had done in the first 6 weeks of the course, but appreciated that it was less stressful than a unit test.

In retrospect, the task was too huge for the teachers to deal with all at once. We each had 2 sections x 2 days worth of tasks to go through. It took a lot longer than we anticipated. I would love to do something similar to this again, but would definitely consider splitting it up somehow so that it is not all happening at once. Suggestions are welcome if you have any!

Reflections on cycle 2 to come!

SE2R Comments in Grade 9 Science

I have been distracted from blogging but am trying to catch up and am back to trying to deprivatize my practice more. And so, I am resolved to blog about my assessment practices (including failures and questions) and hope that I can spark conversation, collect some feedback, and crowd source some ideas. So I have one request - if you are reading these entries, please share them with someone else and/or comment at the bottom and join the conversation. :) The first entry from this series can be found here.

Our wonderful Instructional Coordinator, Assessment, Kristen Clarke, organized some assessment-related book chats on Twitter in the latter half of the school year. I was able to participate in two of them and helped moderate a third. One of the books we discussed was Mark Barnes' Assesssment 3.0: Throw Out Your Grade Book and Inspire Learning. Mark is the pioneer of the Teachers Throwing Out Grades movement in education (check out #TTOG on Twitter).

[We also discussed Rethinking Letter Grades (which inspired mot of my Overarching Learning Goal and Learning Map blog entries) and Myron Dueck's Grading Smarter Not Harder (which inspired this entry related to reformatting tests and using learning goals).]

Barnes' book is largely about his feedback process that allowed him to go gradeless in his classroom. By giving students an appropriate avenue to find out what they had done and could improve on the traditional need for grades virtually disappeared. Reading his book has inspired me to make further efforts to reach for the same goal - a classroom of students who want to learn and grow (not students who want to do what they think I want and get marks). I want to build a community of students with a growth mind set that, therefore, believe in themselves as a learner and can reflect appropriately on their own work and the work of others.

Barnes' feedback method is referred to as SE2R. This means that every time he gives feedback he follows this pattern (and thus, teaches his students to do the same):

• Summarize (what has the student done to meet the requirements of the specific assignment)
• Explain (what mastery of skill/learning is shown)
• Redirect (indicate what lessons should be reviewed to master concepts/skills not yet mastered)
• Resubmit (encourage student to review and rework and give directions for resubmission)

I tried to put these ideas into practice a couple of times in the following weeks to test them out. Here is what I tried and how I did it:

1. I put a paragraph writing question onto Edmodo as an assignment for students to answer that I told them would be on the unit test. Students were told what the learning goals were and were told that this was a chance to answer the question and get feedback before the test.



I was able to practice writing comments that followed the SE2R model. Here is an example of what I wrote

• :
2. I created a "comment bank" using the SE2R model and based on the learning map I had created for the course. I sometimes had to modify comments to make them better fit an individual student work, but in the end I saved myself time AND was able to be more consistent and focus on the important areas only.

LGs vs SC vs Task Requirements

Discussing assessment in the education world often leads to more questions than answers and creates a lot of discourse. I have learned that the questions and disagreements are a necessary part of change and that we need to acknowledge and tackle them, not shy away from them. It is easy to feel defensive when our practices are questioned or challenged. It is easy to feel like we are being told that what we have been doing was wrong.

I have also learned that when someone asks "why" they are usually genuinely curious OR they are trying to get me to think about what I am doing. It has taught me to always ask myself why.

I have brought this up because one of the things that has come up a lot recently is the discussion of comparing learning goals (LGs), success criteria (SC), and task requirements. It can be easy to write a a statement that may not clearly fit into one category or the other. But it is also important to try to understand and recognize the difference.

Here is my understanding of each:

LGs are statements that describe what a student should know and do that is specific to a lesson or set of lessons. In Ontario this will often be based directly from the overall expectations of the curriculum.

SC describe what the learning will look or sound like when the student is meeting expectations. They should be based on agreed upon statements formed with a course team but when employed in class may often be co-constructed with the students.

Task requirements are things that a student is asked to do that does not fall under that course's expectations but are necessary to help the teacher focus on evaluating the learning without distraction. These can not be evaluated but a students may be asked to resubmit work when they are not used/followed.

I will be the first to admit that through my journey this year there are times where these things were misused or mixed up. This exploration has allowed me to gain a much better understanding of them and why they are important and have forced me to rethink the what, why and how of my classroom assessment.

Through my use of overarching learning goals, learning maps, learning goals, etc I am hopeful to be able to spend more time giving feedback in the future and less time giving grades. By continuing to build my assessment literacy I can continue to build my students assessment literacy.

My hopes for the future include students who...

• take ownership of their learning
• can self- and peer-assess
• question what we do and why we do it (purposefully)
• enjoy class more
• focus on and prioritize learning not marks

and include my hopes to...

• bring focus to all classroom tasks and evaluations
• shorten written evaluations
• grade less
• discuss more

Comments and questions are welcome and encouraged. Use the comment feature below or connect with me on Twitter :) 

Thanks for reading!

Math Learning Map Journey

I have been distracted from blogging but am trying to catch up and am back to trying to deprivatize my practice more. And so, I am resolved to blog about my assessment practices (including failures and questions) and hope that I can spark conversation, collect some feedback, and crowd source some ideas. So I have one request - if you are reading these entries, please share them with someone else and/or comment at the bottom and join the conversation. :) The first entry from this series can be found here.

Today I am hoping to share the process and evolution of my experiences working toward a learning map for a math course. I think this is a specific journey worth deprivatizing because it has been a complicated one that involved a lot of lengthy discussions.

This entry requires you to know what an Overarching Learning Goal (OLG) is: I described it in an earlier entry as big ideas that are written as board spectrum learning goals that marry the "know" and "do" that we hope a student leaves a course with. I have discussed OLGs in a number of other entries since this one that can show you some of my journey through understanding and using them as well.

Starting in early 2015 I dove into OLGs and started working with a colleague to write some for a math course. At the time we were both teaching Gr 10 Academic ("Mathematical Principles") so we tried to tackle it. This was both of our first attempts at the process for any course so it was an exploration of the process itself and a discovery that every time we tried to do it we wanted to make different decisions. [One thing I would critique us on looking back was our neglect of the front matter of the curriculum].

Here is a look at the 2 different sets of OLGs we landed on in our two attempts.

In 2016 I had the opportunity to gather with some math and assessment colleagues from around the board to take a real look at designing OLGs and a Learning Map (LM). [I showed a sample LM for my Science course in this entry earlier if you would like some context] A LM takes the OLGs and describes what the learning should look like at each level. This map can then be used for many purposes.

Over the course of many discussions with colleagues at my school, one of our math resource teachers (@MashelleKaukab), and the above mentioned gathering we went through a process of unpacking the MFM 1P (Gr 9 Applied - Mathematical Foundations) course and the Math Processes (Ontario math curriculum front matter). It involved a lot of debate with well-reasoned points - and a lot of learning! Oh how our brains hurt at the end of that day!

Our team decided to create "skeleton" OLGs that focused on the processes that could then theoretically be used to finish OLGs for any course at any level (perhaps with rewording needed). Here is where we landed:

Our team left that meeting still feeling like things were a work in process but I am sharing our draft of our work hoping that you will contribute to the discussion by providing feedback. Please visit a copy of the document here.

The hope is that this map will become the foundation for every decision, evaluation and report completed for the course. The hope is that it will be the backbone of my backward design for my course.

Thank you for reading and for joining the discussion!
Happy summer!

Triangulating Evidence - Formal Interview Attempt

I have been distracted from blogging but am trying to catch up and am back to trying to deprivatize my practice more. And so, I am resolved to blog about my assessment practices (including failures and questions) and hope that I can spark conversation, collect some feedback, and crowd source some ideas. So I have one request - if you are reading these entries, please share them with someone else and/or comment at the bottom and join the conversation. :) The first entry from this series can be found here.

I this entry I would like to share my first formal attempt at integrating conversation (via an interview) into my class.

As part of the Peel Teacher Assessment Working Team (PTAWT) we discussed triangulated evidence and worked together to create something to use this semester. At the time my Grade 9 students were in the middle of their Ecojar labs and had been asked to write a lab report and to do some research about the impacts they were studying in the local ecosystems. It was getting late in the semester so decided it would make sense to take the research part out of the report and try it as an interview.

I worked with a couple of others at the PTAWT meeting and we checked the Overarching Learning Goals (OLGs) that the assignment aligned with, pulled out the specific learning goals, and then created a Google Form to use to record the interviews. It was a good experience and it gave me another chance to use my Learning Map to make sure we were doing things that would align with our plan. Below are the questions that I used:

1. Student Name (in the future I would do this with a drop down menu so I can reuse and use an add-on to get the data to go into a student file instead of an assignment file to make reporting easier)

2. Wondering?
What are you wondering as a result of working on this lab?

3. Observations
Would you change the observations you chose? Why or why not?

4. Research - Pros/Cons
What have you found out about your impact in Ontario? What are we doing? Do things seem like they may change in the future?

5. Research - Appropriate?
What sources did you use to find your info? Why did you choose them? (What have you found out about your impact in Ontario? What are we doing? Do things seem like they may change in the future?)

Learning Goals & Reflection on Quizzes in 1P Science

I have been distracted from blogging but am trying to catch up and am back to trying to deprivatize my practice more. And so, I am resolved to blog about my assessment practices (including failures and questions) and hope that I can spark conversation, collect some feedback, and crowd source some ideas. So I have one request - if you are reading these entries, please share them with someone else and/or comment at the bottom and join the conversation. :) The first entry from this series can be found here.

In a more recent entry I blogged about the basics of using learning goals (LGs) in my Grade 9 applied science class. You can find this entry here. In today's blog you will find a little more about what I have tried to do with the LGs, particularly related to quizzes.

Here are some of the things I wish to share and/or reflect on:

Challenges of writing in student-friendly language:
It is not always easy to maintain the integrity of the vocabulary necessary for the course while making statements accessible to all students. I try to give them a chance to review the LGs and to ask for clarification if needed, but it is not always easy to get them to admit that they do not understand. And sometimes it makes more sense to revisit the goals at the end of day 1 when the vocab has been introduced through the lesson.

LGs vs success criteria (SC)
It was pointed out to me at one point that the statements I was using were better suited as SC than LGs. The more I have learned and discussed A&E with colleagues I am inclined to agree. I would now zero in on the overall expectations in the curriculum to help with LG writing more and let the types of statements I was writing become the success criteria. But what I was doing did serve these students pretty well as it (but having real learning goals would have benefited me a lot when determining grades for them, but so would editing and knuckling down to use the Learning Map that I started to create for the course as well). I discuss these ideas in this entry.

Quiz layout and using learning levels:
I was inspired by Myron Dueck's book Grading Smarter Not Harder to change the format I was using on written evaluations. I now group things based on learning goal. In addition I no longer give marks on them. Instead I have a grid with the learning goals at the top and I have students reflect on where they think they are (and then I show them where I think they are) and I give feedback within each question. This has led me to write evaluations that much better reflect what I want them to know and do (and I test what is valued without over-testing topics)

Now the unit test is essentially a "re-do" opportunity:
I use the unit test as a chance for students to show me what else they have learned and to give them a different way to show me the same learning goal. I make sure that the goal is tested using a different style of question (i.e. maybe it was a graphic organizer on the quiz and the next time they label a diagram). This was definitely time consuming the first time through, but it was worth it (and creating a brand new (good) unit test is time consuming anyway).

It is much easier to evaluate using levels now than when I gave "marks":
I have been trying to awhile now to think about levels when I mark. For instance, if I am looking at a Gr 11 physics test and the student has problem solved I want to know what level of knowledge and skill they have demonstrated. I then assign a mark based on this level (instead of "taking marks off" for mistakes made, which can be quite arbitrary). Going to levels has removed the idea of getting 1 out of 4 meaning 25% when really it showed the student is starting to get it, but isn't there yet.

Students need better feedback from me than I am giving:
It is still really easy to just circle things, use check marks and question marks. This is not good enough. There is not a level of description being provided when we do this and many students are not asking about them. I know this is something I need to work on, and I also think that by adjusting the LG vs SC aspect mentioned above that this could get easier as I wouldn't have as many things that I think I have to give feedback on.

Most of my 1P students were doing better at midterm than they thought:
There was a lot of surprise in the room that they were doing well. Many of them had never felt like they did well in science before (although they all like the subject). I did notice some of them thinking "oh I can try less now" but it also spurred some of them on to try harder. Some may think this means the course was made "easy" but I believe that they were actually showing knowledge and skill in the course. My practices had allowed me to remove the "noise" from evaluation (i.e. grammar was much less of a distraction) and it was easier to identify students to have conversations with to prove that they knew more than they had written down.

Overarching Learning Goals

I seem to have fallen off of the blogging band wagon recently. It has also been pointed out to me recently that I should try to deprivatize my practice more. And so, I am resolved to blog about my assessment practices (including failures and questions) and hope that I can spark conversation, collect some feedback, and crowd source some ideas. So I have one request - if you are reading these entries, please share them with someone else and/or comment at the bottom and join the conversation. :)

I have blogged a couple of times about creating and starting to use Overarching Learning Goals. The most recent one can be found here. If you are not sure what I am referring to please check that out (which also links to the first time I blogged about it - this one is where they are explained).

I am trying to build on my understanding and use of OLGs as the semester progresses. Sometimes this means simply thinking ahead to future semesters and things I hope to attempt, sometimes it means trying something new right now. I will blog about some of these specifics in the near future. Here is where I stand right now.

I see OLGs as a starting point for everything. I see it as having the potential to drive my backward design, influence my daily assessment practice, revolutionize my evaluation strategies...the list goes on.

I have been able to create OLGs for a few courses now and am feeling more comfortable with the idea. One thing I have learned (and I believe my colleagues would echo) is that it is a work in progress. As soon as I introduce it to my class and start to think about actual changes I realize there are things I do not like or think are missing. But perhaps this process is really the most valuable part.

Here is an image showing the OLGs that I came up with for SPH 3U along with some of the "rough work" that shows part of my process/thinking.

If you are a physics teacher I would appreciate your thoughts/ideas/feedback/questions about these OLGs as I have not had the chance to collaborate with other physics teachers around them yet.

Here is an image showing the Learning Map I created from our department SNC 1D/P OLGs. This is one potential application of coming up with OLGs. This rubric could be used to inform all course rubrics used for evaluation and could also help me determine a students final grade. This is great particularly if you are a teacher who is interested in joining the "Teachers Throwing Out Grades" (#TTOG) movement.

I would appreciate feedback/questions/comments/ideas from any subject/grade teacher about this one. This is my first full attempt at a full learning map.

To anyone still reading at this point, I would greatly appreciate you joining this discussion to help in my journey and/or to pass this blog entry onto a colleague who might be interested. I am still very new to all of this and am hoping to collect as many ideas as possible. Particularly as I will be presenting at OAME this Spring around these ideas.

Also, if you are interested in this process it is based on the book Rethinking Letter Grades. I have also recently read Myron Dueck's Grading Smarter Not Harder that I think every educator should read. Both books are by teachers for teachers out of British Columbia.

Trying Some New Things

Since meeting with my department to hash out some overarching learning goals (OLGs - which are described in this entry) for Gr 10 science I have been able to start working on something else - true student self-evaluation and reflection.

The first piece we could do overall without the OLGs (but it may be less effective without them). I have created class OneNote files so that there is one file that has all of my students in it, but do not have to worry about other students in the class looking at each others reflections. And no more paper! Hooray!

Students have three tabs in the file. The first is an ePortfolio where I am asking them to take snapshots of their learning and evidence of learning so that they can track their progress. That is the hope, anyway. Basically I got this under way last week and it took a bunch of time away from other things, but I am hoping that now that they are familiar with it they will be able to do this more effectively and with less guidance. Students can create pages within this tab and have been told they can choose how they want to organize their portfolio. For example, my Gr 10s were asked to take a photo of their formative quiz, something they were proud of, as well as at least parts of their test (minimum of one part of the test they were proud of/improved on and one part they wanted to improve on). They also had to include a photo of their self-evaluation (described below). I am hoping that this can help them see their own improvement and give me a place to go to check details when writing reports or talking to parents. I could even open the file to show a parent if needed.

The second tab is for reflection. Students have a page with their SMART goal from the start of the semester and now have a page where they did a reflection on their learning skills for the progress report. I referenced this when doing their progress report cards, taking their evaluations of themselves into consideration. This can also allow for some conversation with individual students if needed who may not be self-evaluating as accurately as I would like so we can find misconceptions about what the learning skills mean. The third tab is for notes, and students can choose to use this as a place to store notes if they would like to.

The next big thing I am trying is to use the OLGs explicitly in class. The Gr 10 OLGs are written (permanently) on the board at the front of the room and have been posted on our class site for easy access. I am trying to make reference to them in various classes in conjunction with a specific learning goal to help give the class direction and meaning. I will also reference specific ones for every project or evaluation we do so that the students know what the appropriate big ideas are.

After the first chemistry test I was inspired to create the students a checklist relating back to the OLGs and specific learning goals. When I returned they marked test to them they were given this checklist (as a met/not yet met list) and they had to use my comments, etc to help them evaluate themselves to identify what they should continue to work on. This forced students who would usually just look at the mark, or who might even recycle their work without giving it much thought, a reason to actually look at it carefully and start to self-regulate.

What I hope to do with this for future evaluations is to give them the checklist BEFORE the evaluation to do in pencil and hand in, and then I will return it to them after to go through the same process so that we can hopefully identify areas to work on more effectively. If nothing else I am hoping it will help some students put some focus into their studying, as many students do not spend study time wisely.

Would love to hear about other ideas you are trying out there with OLGs, learning goals, and self-evaluation!

My Marking Hacks & Things to Come

(Sorry my American #flipclass friends, but whenever you see "mark" you will have to think "grade"..It's a Canadian thing)

There are two main things that I do that contribute to (hopefully) speed up marking a bit.

1. Using EduCanon to embed questions and note-taking suggestions into video lessons. This app is connected directly to Edmodo (and also to Google if you use Classrooms, so students only need one login) and I can log in to look at my "monitor" page and can see how my entire class did on one screen. I immediately see which Ss are struggling on an individual topic and/or if a Q gave a whole chunk of the class issues. Students can also go back and write explanations that I can read and give them credit for. Love that added communication piece.

2. More discussion, less grading. Evaluation comes later. During the semester verbal and written feedback is much more valuable than marks themselves. I do everything in my power to get kids to stop thinking about the mark and start thinking about the learning. This is where I want their focus to be, and when I have to do something with an actual mark they will hopefully be better prepared (and, as a result, do better). If I could throw out grades entirely, I would.

Then there are the things that I want to do. I have (what we call in Ontario) my AQ (additional qualification) in assessment & evaluation. I am a bit of an assessment nerd, but my practiced do not yet match my beliefs/values (I am working on it).

Ontario has a policy called Growing Success that was published in 2010. Apparently we were one of the first provinces to have such a document and it is both vague and detailed. There is a lot in there that we should/have to do that we are still working to put into practice.

I am currently working on making better/more accurate use of Overarching Learning Goals (OLGs, this is a board term...they are similar to what some books call Big Ideas or Enduring Understandings) and learning goals in my classes. On my lesson plan (that is posted online for all to read) I give a learning goal (and am working on shifting them to more student friendly "I can" statements) that Ss can use to self-assess. Last week I had release time with some department colleagues and we created OLGs for Gr 9 and 10 science. I am planning to reveal these to my Grade 10s and make a point of referring back to them often.

Here is the ultimate goal - all assessment and evaluation will be developed with the OLGs in mind. In other words, the OLGs will serve as my starting point for backwards design. One of my colleagues has switched her "tests" in one of her courses to be much less traditional. Instead of having a bunch of (potentially insignificant) questions, she only has 4 questions on each test. One for each OLG as it relates to that "unit" of study. I love this idea. It seemed like the biggest issue was training Ss to answer the types of Qs she was using. Basically to UNtrain them of their previous habits of "studying content" to making connections and communicating well.

Week 34: Metacognition in #flipclass

On May 11th our #flipclass chat asked us to complete a flash-blog answering the following question: How do you incorporate metacognition into your classroom? Encourage it? Use it?

I was not able to complete my blog at the time but am taking the opportunity to reflect on these questions now (reflection of my practice and ideas are really the reason I blog to begin with - it is a great way to make yourself think about the things you are doing (or not doing).

I have mentioned a couple of times recently that  I am trying to find ways to get more conversation going in my classroom. Some of these attempts double as attempts to get students using metacognition. If you have read my earlier entries you may recall that I used to use a twitter chat for my physics class as a way to get them to focus on concepts instead of problems (and to model positive use of social media). I bring this up because one of the things I tried this semester reused the prep-work I had done for this task. Instead of using the questions I had prepared on twitter I used them to pose questions in class and had students discuss them in their groups.

In many cases these lead to some great discussions around the room - I would walk around eavesdropping and would ask additional questions when needed or would re-ask a question that was posted to a group I had not been able to hear previously. I think that getting in classroom norms at the beginning of next semester around conversation will help to enrich this even more. I plan to pull these "norms" from the ideas I share here when I first started talking about using Accountable Talk in class.

I also try to get my students to use metacognition by setting up opportunities for students to reflect on their learning. This comes in a few different forms, most notably I will mention:

1. Having embedded questions in my flipped video lessons so that students have to stop at different points in the lesson to actually think about whether or not they have understood.

2. Using peer and self- assessment in Grade 9 for formal lab writing that asks them to actually think about what they are seeing and compare to the expectations.

3. Using gradeless quizzes that both eliminate the stress of the formal evaluation and give the students a chance to get feedback from me. In turn, it forces them to reflect on what they do and do not understand. I facilitate this by returning the quizzes without showing them the answer key. Students must first attempt to correct their quiz on their own or in discussion with their groups. I have found this usually improves student confidence going into formal evaluations and (by forcing myself to have a focus when I am giving feedback) allows students to focus on what the next step should be for that particular concept.

I hope to improve/build on these ideas and to hopefully add more in the process.

Thanks for reading!


I do not know if this copy and paste will work but below are the other blogs that were contributed to the flashblog that night:

Katie Lanier	@lanier_katiesue	http://opportunity2learn.blogspot.com/
Carla Jefferson	@mrsjeff2u	https://t.co/flHOAwzdW5
Lee Graves	@Ldg32	http://flippingphysicswithmrgraves.blogspot.com/2015/05/metacognition-and-physics-fun-duo.html
Lindsay Cole	@lindsaybcole	www.flippingbiology.com

Week 28 - Grades in #flipclass

In recent weeks the weekly twitter chat for #flipclass has become a #flashblog where the topic that is being discussed at the beginning becomes the topic of a blog that we go off to write (and then return to share). This weeks topic is grades/assessment (and since I am Canadian I must add to that list, marks).

I have been trying to work toward a classroom culture that limits the emphasis on marks. Both of the classes that I run using a flipped classroom model (and wish I could do a mastery model) I have been trying to create this type of culture in. About two semesters ago I stopped including a marking scheme on my in-class quizzes. I now only give descriptive feedback on them and return them to students. This has allowed me to create more discussion around them and to try some new things.

The first semester the focus was on getting students to make corrections without me simply posting an answer key. This made sure that students actually had a good reason to read through the feedback I had given and put some thought into going back to that material that was unclear to them. Students bought into this idea fairly easily and it seemed to work well overall.

This semester I had a quiz for my physics class that lead me to find some common mistakes. I used this idea to create homogeneous groups based on their results and then throughout that class visited each of the groups to discuss what their next steps should be. The feedback from students was that they enjoyed being put into different groups like this and that I should do it again. It is kind of funny how often they appreciate new groups but they never switch it up on their own (even though this class choose their own groups).

I am always seeking new ideas to try to work on this culture some more. I am also doing a lot of work around my assessment practices in general and hope to work more with learning goals in the future (and then make info available to students showing them their learning level of each of the goals so that they can see what I think they need to work on whenever they need).

If you have ideas, please share!

Happy Spring!

Data Driven Triangulation

Like many educators I often find myself frustrated with the education world lingo. Every once in awhile some new initiative comes down the the Ministry of Ed that forces some modifications that, in essence, just takes us back to something that used to be with a new name. Not entirely what I am about to talk about, but it is definitely related.

Current big ideas/words/phrases
- triangulating assessment
- observations and conversations

We are continually told that there are things we can do and tools we can use that can decrease the marking work load and lead to more reliable and accurate grades for our students. The current thing being "triangulation of assessment" - where we consider student products (the part we all know and love), observations, and conversations. And this is all well and good - we effectively use these all of the time. For instance, maybe in conversation with a student they showed understanding of an idea but on a test they struggled to use the correct terminology, etc in a question. I may give them the benefit of the doubt based on the conversation. Really what we are now being asked to do is have written "evidence" of these conversations and observations and include them as part of the grade calculation. Less work? I think not.

Now there are some really neat ideas, don't get me wrong. And I am more than aware that there are students who gain understanding and then struggle to read and/or write about those ideas. So the question is, how do we determine the value of all of this and what can actually predict the success of these students in the future? The last thing I want to do is lead a student to believe they will be academically (or otherwise) successful when they, in fact, may get to the next stage of their lives and discover they are missing a valuable skill. Or maybe I am just over-thinking all of it.

The one thing I like and can take away from this right away is feeling like I have permission to translate the inquiry based lessons and process that I use (especially in my Applied classes) into grades. One of those lessons from this semester was manipulatives I created to get my grade 9s to show me Bohr-Rutherford diagrams. I used a word processor to create a document with a large nucleus, small electrons, and various numbered charges (protons/neutrons). I printed them on coloured paper and cut-out 5 copies so that I could put students in groups of 4. It seemed helpful for many of the students, especially those who had missed one of the lessons needed to successfully draw a BR diagram. So here is my problem - now I have to either find a way to record each student using them (i.e. recording each other on flip cameras for me to view later and assign a mark) or spend more hours creating enough manipulatives for each student to have a set (the 5 copies took me more than an hour). Either way, time required...and how many really benefit from this compared to drawing a BR diagram on paper?

Of course I should collect data. Try it both ways. Reverse the order with another class and try it again. Analyze. But I am frankly sick of the data driven obsession that has been created recently. Everything is about credit accumulation and wanting to increase these numbers and increase graduation rates. The way I see it, what we end up accomplishing are skewed grades and students ending up in streams, grades and levels that they are not yet ready for. I would way rather help a student succeed at their pace than use some way of assessing that increases my credit numbers and pushes students into things they are not prepared for. It does them no favours.

Please bare in mind in this entry that I am barely grazing the ideas and issues at hand. I am aware that there is more to it and that there are many like-minded people that will seek to answer these questions and help students to the best of my ability. I just needed to rant so that I can go to sleep and wake up refreshed tomorrow to seek for more answers.

Despite our system's difficulties, I love my job. Let's keep the conversation going.

Simple Labs Don't Make for a Bored Class - Yay!

I tried this lab last year, mostly out of desperation with a difficult class teaching a course I had never taught before, but decided to try it again to see if the engagement it created the first time could be reproduced. Because labs require writing they are always going to be difficult with a class with a number of students with communication exceptionalities, etc. The students continually require attention from the instructor to get through the process and I was lucky to have a second body in the room to help out for Day 2 and 3 of this process.

When I showed the lab to the aspiring teacher who was helping me he was concerned that it would be too simple for them and would not engage them for three periods. The lab is simply investigating the combination of two ingredients to determine the best tasting mock champagne. It allows me to have them work on skills such as writing a procedure, hypothesis, identifying variables, creating an observation chart and drawing a conclusion. As well as have them practice an important skill - measuring liquid volume. And they love that they get to drink their lab!

The next one will be more complicated - measuring the pH of stomach acid and its changes as different antacids are added to it. We will probably have to practice a couple of the lab writing skills again before we get there. As this one will be a summative piece of their chemistry mark.

An aside: We changed our formal (but formative) lab in Grade 9 Academic this year to a simple, but fun, lab using Alka Seltzer tablets, water and film canisters and went "Smarter Science style". The kids loved it. Can't wait to evaluate the formal lab write-ups that went with it. I hope they learned something through all of the peer and self evaluation that we tried in my class with it this week. (Cross your fingers for me, next year I hope to do some action research with peer and self evaluation).

A Teacher in Drowning

Wow...I have clearly been overwhelmed and under water. For starters, I have not posted an update in two months. But that is really only a symptom of a long list of things that have been going on. I am behind enough in my marking that I currently have two assignments from the same class in my bag (gross, worst feeling). We are working through the Biology unit in the Grade 10 course (and despite this being my second time through it, we are actually making a real effort to develop a good unit so I am learning way too much and spending time creating new things and working with my colleague who is the lead for the course this time around). And it is my first time teaching the 3U Physics course and I have decided to add a research presentation to the Energy and Society unit (but I have never developed this type of assignment before, never mind developing it alone).

The above is the current icing on the cake. The joys of being a second year (read first year, since I am in a different department) teacher. Despite the stress (and the addition of being in a wedding party for a wedding that is fast approaching) I am still happy with my career choice and love the learning and excitement that comes with it.

Speaking of learning, I have had the privilege of getting to attend two great P.D. sessions (3 if you include the sharing session we had with nearby schools). The first was a session for Smarter Science (they are also on twitter, if you would like to follow them). It was a great look at inquiry-based learning for the science classroom, a model that started near London that now has ministry funding and has been spread across more than 3-quarters of Ontario since! The session fascinated me and overwhelmed me. All of these great ideas and new things you want to try...but once a semester has started it is difficult to implement a new model of learning. I have had a chance to use parts of it three times so far in my 1P class, which has been a good start.

More recently I attended a session on Graphic Intelligence (read, making use of graphic organizers in class). Something that is a bit easier to start using right away but still something new to get used to using and a lot of prep work to get it going (new lesson plans to think about, rubrics to write, etc). We got a chance to do some planning inf the afternoon so I walked out with an idea for the Electricity unit for the 1Ps and will look forward to using it when we get there. I have also found myself thinking about other places it could be used and hope to get a chance to do those - but they may have to wait for another semester. Oh, and did I mention that I have finally gotten myself on explorelearning.com so that I can use Gizmos with my class (think online demos for science concepts)? I am using it in my 3U Physics tomorrow...wish me luck.

I think the cherry on top of all of this is even feeling overwhelmed about the summer (as it is fast approaching). I will be working an afternoon shift as a secretary for 6 weeks, the same 6 weeks I will be doing my Honours Specialist course in Mathematics online, and will hopefully be spending time looking at condos. These are the three basic things I see myself doing, and those in themselves are not really all that overwhelming - it is actually the thought of all of the things I can't wait to try as an educator and feeling like I am never going to have the time to wrap my head around them and actually prepare to use any of them. All of these ideas to look into, literature to read, assignments and ideas to prepare, assessments to come up with, rubrics to write, checklists to develop....well, I think you get the idea.

Here's to surviving these next couple of weeks. Hopefully the marking works itself out before report cards are due in just over a week. Hopefully.

Happy marking!

The Learning Continues

March Break is drawing to a close, and of course I have spent the majority of my time lying on the couch trying to get over this cold. It has made getting my errands finished quite difficult, not to mention being sick is rather annoying. But I guess I expected to fall ill this week - being fine on Monday just gave me false hope.

The Semester is shaping up to be a relatively interesting one. My Grade 11 class has been tough, it's a pretty good class but we do not have textbooks for this "new" Grade 11 course. And the department doesn't have a day-to-day outline set up either so it has been really easy for me to miss things as I go. As a result their tests have been a tad difficult, and on the unfair side. Something I totally recognize and am working to correct for them (I adjusted one of the tests even). What really got me was that I had to find out how they felt through the Grapevine of my former students - at least I know that those students still had some respect for me. Anyway, I got the class to do a Start Stop Continue reflection for me and reiterated that it is their class and they need to speak up so that I hear it from them. Hopefully this has shown them that I am willing to make changes and that I do want them to succeed. Hopefully. Hence, my learning continues...as I expect it to for the rest of my career!

We had a curriculum development day for Math recently so I spent some of my time creating an authentic assessment for the quadratic relations unit for the Grade 10 Academic course. I already have one for the Analytic Geometry Unit so it made sense to try to have one for each of the units in the course (one more to go). I want to give my students who have trouble on tests the opportunity to show their understanding...which will hopefully help them to be successful in the long run - maybe it can help them build some self-confidence. The goal is for the assessments to look at a variety of skills and communications and be graded through a rubric. The rubric allows students to know exactly what I am looking for and allows for a shorter marking time.

Finally, Grade 9 Science. Interesting to say the least. Chemistry is almost finished. It was a lot of lab/activities so it was hands on for the students and we had a practical test so they could show us what they had learned in an appropriate way. It seems as though leading off with this unit may have given them a misconception of a lazy teacher in front of them, but this is generally the way the department goes through Chemistry - and seeing as though it is my first time through and Chem is NOT my thing I guess it has gone relatively well. One thing is for sure, this has involved a lot of written formative feedback. We return for one last lesson or two on compounds and their summative lab assessment before moving onto Earth and Space Sciences.

Needless to say I've had my ups and downs so far this semester, but it has also reaffirmed that I love teaching and that working with my colleagues at this school has been an amazing experience.

I guess the next two weeks will tell if I get to spend another year with them or not. Here's to hoping!

Month One

Well loyal followers, it has now officially been 4 weeks since I began teaching. Which means that only 174 days remain on my probation period as a teacher. It has been quite the roller coaster ride, but I can safely say that I still love it and am so happy with my decision to pursue a career in teaching. There have been funny moments, overwhelming/stressful moments and some great learning moments so far. Some of them are outside of the classroom - it's always ironic when I get home to have my father say "are you REALLY a high school teacher? not grade 2?"

He has a point though, as I love that age group as well at camp and cannot believe that I handle teenagers everyday either, but I love that I can go into class every day and not know what is going to happen...and at the same time be able to be apart of such a tough/awkward time of a kid's life. There are pros and cons to being the "young" teacher that the kids think they can relate to - I find that they tend to be more open about life and class which can lead to them saying things they probably shouldn't but they also seem to really appreciate my efforts and want to put forth the effort to meet my expectations.

Speaking of expectations, I tried to walk into these classes with high expectations...if you lower your expectations students will tend to lower their standards and not work to their potential. They created my classes by splitting existing ones in half (ya, I am a lucky butt, I know!) so the classes are small but I also had to deal with starting partway through a semester and got some of the students that were struggling a bit more in their classes. I've been working hard with them and some of them are struggling, but I make myself available to them for extra help a lot and a few of them have responded to it.

I had to write report card comments and do the report marks for my students in my second week at the school. It was quite the experience and quite the learning curve, but I got through it and have become more acquainted with the process as well as using Mark Book - a computer software for recording and calculating marks. This week has marked a bunch of "milestones" as well. The new teachers had our NTIP meeting with one of the VPs to find out about that process (and of course I just realized that there is much to do and it got left at school, luckily my Teacher Performance Appraisal (TPA) isn't for another two weeks). It was also Parent Teacher Night this week - which marks my first as a teacher. I give camp experience a ton of credit for how easily that went and for the fact that I wasn't even nervous about it. Overall, it went really well and some great conversations with parents occurred.

There are so many things about this first month that have gone through my head when I have thought about finally getting a chance to write this entry, but of course I cannot think about much right now - the exhaustion on a Friday evening is aplenty. I have kind of gotten used to the idea of exhaustion being a constant state of being. I have yet to drink coffee still - hooray!

Well I feel I have spent enough hours thinking about school for now anyway. 53 hrs were spent within the school walls, plus some additional time at school and lots to do this weekend.

Something you would like to know about my experience so far? Post a comment and I will include it in my nest entry :)

Completing Practical

So practicum was coming to an end...and as my Associate Teacher (AT) put it, I was learning what a report card deadline felt like. Basically I had a huge pile of marking left and very little time left in which to do it. It's not like I could return it to the students at that point, but March Break and the fact that I wasn't coming back was big enough reason to finish it. Needless to say, I got to see what it was like to be one of the last people in the building...at 5pm the Friday before March Break.

It was kind of like I was there....in the moment...as this teacher that is really on her way to becoming who I want to become - I was no longer a student teacher, I was a committed, hard-working professional and had a huge smile on my face, even though I was exhausted. I was leaving, knowing I had helped some students understand new concepts and believing that what I had set out to become 15 year earlier (I was in Grade 3 when I realized I had a passion for teaching) was always going to be a part of me.

At the end of my last class with each of my Grade 11 sections I asked them to take half a sheet of paper and write me some feedback. To explain why they liked or disliked something I did or didn't do, etc. Some of the students were ones I had taught in Mathematics during the fall and some of them mentioned something that I had improved or that they had noticed I did different between the two subjects. Last night I got around to reading the comments from my last class and one of them had written something along the lines of 'you're way better at teaching physics than math'. I was kind of shocked for a second when I read this...but in the end it has few surprises...in Physics I was able to lead two labs, and do multiple demos throughout the chapter I was working on, as well as mentioning some things I had seen in the news, etc.

It is definitely true that my passion lies in Mathematics and teaching - and I can see even more clearly now that I need to let that passion out with my students and strive to find ways to demo math concepts and keep the classes more connected to the lives of my students. Now the next step - get the chance to do this in a teaching job!

Now that all of my classroom practicum opportunities are complete I will go forth, seek opportunities to learn, and make a difference for myself and in who I want to be.

Loving Online Marking and soooo Much More!

Wow it has been awhile since an update was written here. It must make it seem like I don't have much to say about what is going on (I'm sure those of you that know me are laughing/scoffing at that comment right now!). There has been so much happening but I guess some of it had to compound (and a few of you had to remind me to write) before I realized there was much I wanted to share.

I am in the midst of my first ever science placement. Teaching in a different department has brought on many new challenges and excitement since I have started. Math and Science both had their perks and their low points. Some of the things I have noticed are as follows:
- Coming up with and being able to perform demos as a normal part of my classes is a lot of fun and a great way to think about learning
- Doing demos is a lot of prep work and cleaning up is annoying! (But it is DEFINTELY worth it!)
- I am way less confident working with science concepts, but teaching it has led me to refresh my knowledge and even do a bit of research of my own. It has reminded me how much I LOVE learning and being curious about things!
- It really is amazing that departments within the same school can have such different dynamics!
- Getting to work with a new Associate Teacher has been a great experience. New things to learn and different approaches to observe.
- Enriches classes are SO curious about the subject. They are amazing to watch in class!
- Teaching four sections of the SAME course is REDUNDANT and I cannot keep track of who has be told what (Yikes!)

There are definitely other things that I have come across, but many of them are not directly related to the subject change so I will stop there. I will leave you with a brief account of some of the excitement I have encountered in the past two weeks.

1. I started teaching the Grade 9 sections today. You definitely have to be conscious of the ways you manage a junior Grade compared to a Grade 11 or 12 class. But you can also have a lot of fun with the material with them.

2. I was on the bench for the girls' last regular season hockey game. What an improvement they have made! Unfortunately I couldn't make the quarter finals or semis - but I was super proud of them for getting to the semi finals!

3. An experience of dealing with coming back to class after a supply teacher has been there...I was away and my associate teacher ended up being sick. Needless to say I am behind with my Grade 11's and there are more interruptions to come (gross).

4. Spending 3 days and 2 nights at an outdoor centre on a Grade 11 Biology field trip. SUCH a GREAT experience as a teacher candidate! An experience I will take with me and (dare I say) reflect on. It is definitely something I would do again and even though I have seen how much work organizing a trip like that can be I am definitely interested in doing something like that in my professional career. Getting to see what the students can get out of it and realizing that so many of them would never get some of those outdoor experiences otherwise. Lots of responsibility (and definitely some risk involved) and many new challenges with discipline and problem solving - and experience worth having!

I cannot believe that I almost signed off without talking about the title of this entry! I only remembered becuase I was running off to do more of it before I head to sleep. ONLINE MARKING!!!

My Associate Teacher uses turnitin.com - how awesome! It took him some time to get all of his students on the site and connected with the class they are supposed to be connected to, but now I can post bins for them to submit assignments to (in word format) that I am using to do formative assessments with my students. I will assign a communication type question for them to do based on something I have taught and they have to submit it before the next class. I review it (make comments on the work online that they can then access!) and then discuss with them the next class common mistakes I noticed or even realize that I need to reteach a concept. Marking this way is sooooo much faster than formative marking by hand. I am much less overwhelmed by it this time around. Oh, and I can also send entire classes emails from turnitin to remind them of the assignments, etc. I highly recommend checking out what it is capable of!

Happy March!!
(March Break in 2 weeks!!!!!!)