Week #7 – February 17, 2022
Chapter 5 – What concerns or queries do you have about assessment
in relation to what you are teaching in your practicum?
I feel like I had a million questions before my practicum started, but I’m a week in and now I feel slightly better, but I still have many questions. The classroom teacher that I have been assigned for my practicum is amazing! It’s a Grade 6-7 split, and I love-love-love how structured her classroom is. She has made me realize that I could definitely take on that grade as a contract in the future. I have always been comfortable with the age group, but it was the vast amount of work and subject matter that they require that I felt was overwhelming. The simplicity of her assessment and reporting practices is inspiring. Last week, as I sat beside her, I heard her ask herself, “Do I have enough evidence for developing yet?” After scrolling through her posts, a moment later, she answered, “Yes, I do!”
In my Week #4 Journal Reflection, I had frustrations regarding the process of breaking everything down only to smush them together for a letter grade; however, I have now learned that digital reporting is the key to cataloguing and summarizing all of a learner’s evidence of content knowledge, curricular and core competencies. Now that I have seen just the tip of the iceberg, I cannot imagine using any other system or grading elementary students using anything other than a proficiency scale. I admit that I am an inexperienced novice, but it makes so much sense. Digital Reporting is the missing link that I was looking for that makes using a Proficiency Scale and the three focal points of the BC Curriculum into something manageable.
Classroom Teachers need something manageable. How can you focus on relationships and building an inclusive environment for a broad group of learners when you are overwhelmed with the administration? Digital reporting allows teachers to capture moments that could not be caught in the same authentic way. It creates a shift towards student responsibility for their learning and assessment, and the students love the technology aspect.
I hope that my next practicum has digital reporting too! I’d love to see a class start up with it in the fall to see how they implement it at the beginning of the school year. My practicum teacher deeply integrates her formative feedback before each summative assessment the students have. Their summative assessments are digitally recorded by either the student or the teacher. Students are explicitly given a lesson, time to practice and develop their skills, work on their project and then at the end, something is always uploaded for their parents to see, which is tied directly to the BC Curriculum and Proficiency Scale. I suppose my questions are detail orientated about how things are worded and how the technology is applied. It’s all so exciting. I love it.