Dear all,
Attending the Grade 12 final assembly made me realize how close we are to the end of another year at ISHCMC and there still feels as if we have a great deal to do. Thanks to everyone for another good week.
This week's food for thought is a continuation of the World EducLead conference and focuses on one of the strands that emerged; assessment. What I will do is try and capture the key thinking of a few of the speakers on this topic. It was clear amongst the 1200 in audience that some found it hard to release learning to students so that they can inquire into their own content and still be able to give their traditional tests and assessments. As Heidi Jacobs bluntly pointed out to one question she was asked, " I think that you may be missing the point with your question."
Professor Guskey made it clear that from his research the assessment that makes the most difference to student learning is that which takes place in every class and is primarily formative in nature. His work has led him to believe that its is essential that we learn from what was done to us when we were students. His four key point were:
- Assessment must be a source of information for students and teachers. We need to move away from making assessment a guessing game for students. Assessment, what ever form it takes should never be a surprise to the students. If it is it will teach our students that their hard work and effort with revision is a waste of time and that they should not trust their teachers. He suggested that at the end of every lesson students should be asked what have your learned in the lesson and the teacher should use this information for planning the next lesson
- Assessment must be followed by high quality corrective instruction. Every conversation with a student about assessment should provide strtaegies for the student to improve in the future. Deb Masters and her work with Hattie further emphasized this point.
- Students must be given a second chance to show improvement. Professor Guskey was very strong on this point when he raised this criteria for successful assessment in a school. He asked the audience how many had driving licences, how many failed their test first time and how they would feel now if that meant they could never drive? He talked about creating live long learners which means learning by doing. He pointed out that none of us are perfect and therefore we should be encouraging our students to develop resilience and grit which is built around learning from mistakes. He shared research that students learn more from making mistakes than getting it right first time. He used the Roger Staubach quote, " Spectacular achievements are always proceeded by unspectacular preparation," to further illustrate the futility of having assessment as a one off shot. He concluded by saying that all students should be given the opportunity to re do assessment task, but not the same one, one that is parallel so they can demonstrate how they have learned from their mistakes......and it should be this result that is recorded. When you stop and think about all the literate around resilience and like long learners this approach makes sense although it runs contrary to how we were treated in school.
- We must ensure that students enjoy early assessment success. He started to talk about this by asking the audience how many of us started our course with a hard assessment to show that our course is tough and let the students know that they will have to work hard to be successful. He showed research that clearly shows students are quite malleable when they start a new course until the first assessment. This first assessment, for the majority, becomes self predicting of their future achievement. The first assessment defines how they feel they will do in the future and becomes a self fulfilling prophecy for the majority. Hence, Guskey stressed that we should use the first assessment to create early success and that this will produce greater confidence, engagement and effort from our students. this approach is very similar to the use of kind words as part of the achievement culture in our mission. (This is further supported by Hattie because it creates student expectation which has an effect size of 1.44 compared with an average learning impact of .53)
In this session with Guskey he added one more important point that certainly applies to us as an IB School with a focus on AtL skills. It is one that I have never heard raised before. I did try and research it but there appears to be a great deal of information but not related exactly to what Guskey stated. The concept raised was categorical perceptions which he said explains why when students learn soft skill in one subject they do not automatically transfer these skills as we would hope and imagine to other classes. Guskey said that for skills to be transferred they have to be deliberately taught and linked in each subject. This certainly merits additional thinking and would have an impact upon how we think about soft skill acquisition across the school.
If you would like to read more detail about Guskey's work here is a link to ascd article linked to one of his books.
Dr Heidi Hayes Jacobs was without doubt the most provocative of the speakers at the conference. Here are just a few of the provocations that she raised in her first session.
" Everything should be for students not our old habits"
" We must be preparing our learners for the future not the past"
"Students must be taught the three new literacy's, Digital, Media and Global."
" We must make learning spaces that create responsive environment for students"
" All decisions regarding school should focus on pedagogy"
" We all need the courage to break the boundaries that need breaking and replace with fresh relevant solutions."
This short video catches many of the things that Heidi was talking about in her sessions. it is full of her ideas from http://www.curriculum21.com/ a great site to visit.
As this is a great deal to absorb and think about I will save the sessions on Hattie till next week's Food for Thought. Deb Masters provided many interesting findings that we need to be reflecting upon in order to develop our classroom teaching strategies across the school.
Have a good Sunday,
Yours
Adrian
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