Word Tamer

Develop characters, settings, and plots with Wordtamer, an interactive site, going through a carnival atmosphere, using literary devices.  The player will journey through the carnival and develop characters, a setting, and a plot for their very own story.  Students watch videos along the way to ensure understanding of crafting a good story.

Weekly Question: Grading Smarter, Not Harder week 5

Weekly Question

"Grading Smarter, Not Harder"

Week 5

How often do you encourage student creativity in your classroom?    What is your rationale for doing so or choosing not to engage students in this way?

Please comment your answer by clicking comment at the bottom.

Free Webinar video, "Grading Smarter, Not Harder"

The following webinar occurred on January 26, 2015 and is archived at www.ascd.org.

Click here for the link.

"Grading Smarter, Not Harder" week 5: Creativity (Part 3)

Using Modern Technology to Encourage Creativity

Part III

Not all schools, or even grade levels, allow the use of personal devices in the classroom.  With that being said, there are other ways to implement some of the following practices in classroom.  Practicing digital safety, and learning how to be a safe and responsible digital learner (and teacher) is a the forefront of educational practices today.  The 21st Century Skills should be implemented throughout all curricula and understood by all educators.

Strategy #1:  Use Twitter for Class Discussion and Test

Pose a question or problem to the class and students have to tweet back their response.  This will give students practice in stating cases and rebuttals as concisely as possible.  Use hashtags unique to the class, i.e. #MrPHistory

Create a Twitter Tuesday where during the last 10 minutes of class, or the day, students can converse

"Grading Smarter, Not Harder" week 5: Creativity (Part 2)

Part II.  Strategies for Grading Creative Projects

Strategy #1:  Major Project Planning Sheet

Make sure all students are aware of the targeted learning outcomes for the project.   A copy of all the figures, planning sheets, tracking sheets, etc., can be found in this PDF.  Figure 5.1 is the Project Planning Sheet we are referring to here.  It is critical students don't loose site of the learning targets of the projects and the Project Planning Sheet will help them stay focused.  It is designed to facilitate a conversation between the teacher and the student working on their project.  As a general rule, Dueck often asks students to include at least 3 learning targets in a project.  Their choice which ones will be included. The central column gives students the chance to explain how they might use different types of media to meet different targets.  It also allows them to plan for maximum effectiveness.  The third column requires students to list key details and elements of the project (i.e. specific facts, sources,

"Grading Smarter, Not Harder" week 5: Creativity (Part 1)

Creativity

In this final week of "Grading Smarter, Not Harder" we look at creativity in regards to assessment and grades.  This review/summary will be broken down into three parts:  I.  Creativity, Engagement, and Motivation, and Potential Problems with Creativity; II.  Strategies for Grading Creative Projects; III.  Using Modern Technology to Encourage Creativity.  

Part I.  Creativity, Engagement, and Motivation

"Creatvitiy is going to be required by future generations to solve both current problems and those yet unseen."  (Ken Robinson, 2001, 2009)

It has been proven that learning and mastery occur much more readily in environment that promote autonomy through self-direction and purpose.  According to Behetto & Kaufman (2013), "creativty must be task appropriate in order to be effective."  Medina (2008) adds that creativity is an aid to understanding.   Many educators have witnessed learning is greatly enhanced through individual creativity, ownership, and empowerment.  The key is engagement to unlock the intrinsic motivation to learn in students.  "Allowing students to be creative in the classroom is a way of personalizing learning." (Robinson, 2001, 2009).

Additional research:

Weekly Question: Grading Smarter, Not Harder: Homework

Homework is considered a stable in schooling.  After reading this review, how have your opinions about the value of homework as a graded assignment changed?

Post your answer and feedback in the comment section below.

"Grading Smarter, Not Harder" review/summary: Week 4: Homework

Homework

Day in and day out students, and teachers, appear to be bogged down with homework.  Staying up late just to complete it can tire out a student for the next day. Much of our class time, and prep time, can be taken up just checking it over, logging it in, and looking at student responses.  Are we doing this right?  Are we providing our student the proper type of "homework"?  What is homework suppose to be?  For what reason?  What is it suppose to look like?  Myron Dueck dedicates an entire chapter on homework and discusses how we are doing it wrong, and what he did to alter his practice of homework to help his students, and himself.

Removing homework from the grade book (usually reflected as completion and compliance) that the aggregate data usually began to more accurately reflect student understanding.

Problems with Grading Homework

• Grading Homework Confuses Completion with Understanding
• attaching a grade to homework enviably leads to grading completion rather than understanding.
• nothing wrong with instilling good work ethic in students, but what is the purpose of assigning homework?  Practice!
• Grading Homework Promotes Busy Work at the Expense of Intrinsic Motivation and Authentic Learing
• evidence shows that intrinsic motivation decreases once people are paid to do what they love to do for fun (Pink, 2009) [No, not the singer.]
• embrace practices that promote investigation and inquiry and jettison those that deter exploration.

Weekly Question: Grading (Week 3)

What is an example of deflating student grades?

Post your answer in the comment section below.

How accurately does the grading system you use reflect student achievement of academic learning?  What kind of change can you, or even us as a school, can make to the system to remove inflation or deflation?      Let's discuss.

Txt Msg Cls Tool

The following site gives you and students a fun way to work with dialogue.  Create fun, made up text messages between two characters from a story, have a dialogue between two historic figures to show analytical thinking and creativity (George Washington texting King George III?, Einstein and Hawking have a scientific conversation?, etc).  The possibilities are endless.  Get the kids writing and thinking outside of the box.  They can take a screenshot and paste into a Google Doc or Slides for a quick presentation. 

Click here to explore more. 

"Grading Smarter, Not Harder" Week 3 Review: Grading

We are use to the old tradition way of grading and reporting, usually the 4 point scale, A, B, C, D, F.  This 0-100 point scale poses a big problem many of us don't usually recognize.  According to Thomas R. Guskey's On Your Mark (2015) the shift to percentile grades during the late 19th and 20th century was gradual.  Few educators questioned it and it was adopted through the American educational landscape.  In 1912 a couple of researches in Wisconsin found the use of percentile grades were not reliable and accurate indicators of student achievement.  Both Dueck and Guskey have looked at the 0-100 point scale and have concluded that this structure implies a 60 point difference between a D and an F.  All other have a 10 point difference between each letter grade.  What an academic penalty we are giving students.

(Guskey, 2015; On Your Mark)

Myron Dueck and Thomas Guskey both agree that his huge range of failure grades puts students at a disadvantage.  Even if a student received a zero on an assessment, it will take about 9 perfect scores to make up the percentile difference to reach a passing mark.  ( More on zeros later.)

Dueck goes on to share what he calls, "The Four Conditions for Punitive Action."  He calls it CARE guidelines.  Care, Aims, Reduction, Empowerment.
Care:  When students opt to ignore assignments, penalties may serve to make teachers feel as though they've addressed the issue, but they do not increase student accountability or responsibility.
Aims:  Punitive grading does not complement the overall aim to measure learning outcomes, increase student confidence, and provide an environment of fairness and equity.
                               measure evidence of learning or capacity against a set of standards.

                               behavioral penalties do not relate directly to learning outcomes (in fact both Dueck and Guskey agree on this as well).

                               "lates" and zeros do not inspire academic confidence.

                               punitive grades diminish fairness and equity

Weekly Question

This week's question is based on the review/summary for "Grading Smarter, Not Harder", week 2.

In addition to tracking scores on test sections, what additional information is recommended including on test tracking sheets?

For a chance to win a half-a-dozen dry erase markers for your classroom, please write your comment in the comment section below.

WikiWhere Map Game

Test Student's knowledge on world geography with WikiWhere?  Students have to try their best to identify cities based on their description.  All city descriptions come from Wikipedia entries.  Set up some rules to make it fun, interesting, and extending the learning process.  If the student is wrong, have them do a little research about the city.