Category: EDUC 421

Week #2 – January 13, 2022

What do you think makes assessment practices conducive to learning?

Draw on your own experiences as a learner, and as an educator (in the broad sense of the term).

 

When I think back to when I was a busy working mom (not in education-LOL) during my son’s elementary years, I don’t think I had a clear understanding of what assessment was. I would see on his report cards the generalities of where he was exceeding and where he was struggling, but I don’t think I paused ever to consider how his teachers developed these grades. (*Note to self: Remember that parents may have zero ideas of what teachers do.) To me, an assessment would have been a “test” to see where he was at. Not for one second did I consider that for a teacher, an assessment would be used to guide learning, as well as ascertain a student’s level of progress in learning.

Through my new lens, I can see how beneficial assessment practices can be for learning. If an educator truly cares about the learning growth of their student, there needs to be an open pathway of communication between the teacher and the student, a system of feedback that guides the direction and speed of learning progression. The teacher needs to know what is working and what is not working, and the student needs to know when they are on the right track or succeed, as well as the options or paths of learning they have in front of them.

When there is no built-in way for students to at least have the opportunity to receive feedback on their work, they lose sight of actually learning and may possibly begin to start working to move on to the next topic or the next day. I can see examples of this as a TTOC even in primary-aged students. Tasks of a repetitive nature, like the same practice printing worksheet every morning, become meaningless. Even at a young age, they know it is just getting tossed in a bin, and as the year goes on without feedback for improvement or words of affirmation, they lose interest in the morning work very quickly. On the other hand, I have been in classrooms where I have observed Primary Teachers give explicit feedback on morning work, letting their students know when colour is outside of the lines or that the bottom of their letter needs to touch the line, and they will have to re-do it. These students are eager, highly motivated, and are proud to show off the evidence of their improved work throughout the year.

I also think that when there is too much weight or not enough weight placed on anyone’s summative assessment (i.e., test/project), students can immediately be demotivated. Respectively, this could happen out of anxiety or the casualness of too many small tasks. I know that there is a place for summative assessments. Without them, reporting to parents would be very interesting, although I’m always in favour of a good parent phone call. I have a hard time with educators that hide behind “we are preparing them for the real world” but only give students one shot. There aren’t many things in life test-wise that you only have one chance at. Not a driver’s test, not even the LSAT is a one-time test. I hope to have established strong relationships with my students from the many formative assessments before conducting any summative assessments in order to help ease any anxieties my future students will have.

Week #1 – January 6th, 2022

Complete the “L” from our KWL based on today’s class and the assigned readings.

Reflect on your learnings and any aspects that you found particularly intriguing or puzzling.

“L” – What did I learn about assessment from the two assigned articles for this week?

 

I found it somewhat comforting jumping back into learning after the holiday break by re-reading the OECD’s Practitioner’s Guide “The Nature of Learning Using Research to Inspire Practice” (2010). It was also interesting to read it through a slightly more experienced lens. I found I was able to absorb the information at a new level. I really connected with the statement on page 4 that states: “Like emotion, the presence of positive motivation towards a learning task markedly increases the likelihood that students will engage in learning.” I believe that I have intuitively always understood the interconnectedness between motivation and relationships; as written in my EDUC 393 Pedagogical Philosophy Statement, “Relationships are one of the foundations of my personal teaching pedagogy. I have witnessed both the impacts of positive and negative relationships on the ability of a student to learn.” However, I am now gaining the academic language to discuss this pedagogical approach within the teaching community. Hopefully, this will allow me the confidence to approach others if they are negatively impacting my students’ motivation again in the future

The biggest takeaway that I learned from the assigned readings was how to answer a middle/high school student’s age-old question:” Why are we learning this?” I found the answer in the OCED Practitioner’s Guide section titled, Self-directed, lifelong learning on pages 8 and 9. I’ve always stumbled by giving answers like, “because you need to” or “let’s just get through this today – one step at a time.” But now have a much better response, and I tested it out on my teenage son. It is a combination of my finally being able to understand the shift to BC Core Competencies and how it is impossible to know what the future will look like. Students need to be prepared to work in jobs and industries that may not exist today. They need to build skills to use technologies that have not been invented yet and face whatever challenges the future holds. A few months ago, I caught a CBC Radio program while driving discussing climate change. The presenter talked about the nearness of world-altering environmental events in the upcoming 30 years and how hard it will be for educators not to terrify students. I wish I had noticed the name or date so I could listen to it again, but all in all, the memory of the radio program just adds to the fact that the content is secondary to the learning experience. The core skill of competencies that students are building will be the most important for success in an unknown future.

I suppose I could say that I am slowly learning to appreciate BC’s Redesigned Curriculum’s move to a competency-based model and that formative assessment and the shift to a proficiency scale lends itself nicely to that model as well.