Sunday, December 10, 2017

Formative Assessment - Value in Selection

Purpose: Formative Assessment Benefit

Review of Practice: Formative assessment has fast become one of the key buzzwords in the field of education.  In practice, this calls for teachers to select lesson strategies that engage students in practice for the purpose of feedback.  It is this feedback that is to provide students a learning opportunity before the students would be expected to recall the information in a summative form.  The study in question was conducted at a large suburban middle-class school district in Northeast Ohio.  The study tracked formative assessment practices employed by social studies classes.  These included use of formative practices common to social studies like reading questions, projects, essays, and worksheets. Variables that were accounted for included the duration of instruction and student prior experience.  Future directions include consideration of student engagement on these varied formative assessment types.

Impact: The study found no statistically significant correlation between the selection of formative assessment type and student achievement.  This returns reflection on instructional practice back to existing standards in the field.  These standards continue to suggest that teachers should work to build lessons and learning opportunities for students that are driven to promote student engagement and offer opportunities for direct teacher formative feedback of any kind, both of which are supported by research to move student academic achievement forward.

Kelly, C. (2017) Impact of Formative Assessment Type on Student Achievement https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GW_Q9XDnkU_Ps-spSlRNDzPvcRqxKg8t/view?usp=sharing

Saturday, December 9, 2017

Flipped Classroom Tools

Purpose: Recording lectures for flipped classroom instruction

Review of Practice: Recently there has been a push in the educational community towards the practice flipping classrooms.  A flipped classroom represents one in which the students engage with notes, reading, and/or lectures at home in the form of homework as a preview of the content material.  This then opens classtime to the completion of activities, assignments, and projects that are geared to give the student more experience in actually demonstrating their knowledge with the particular content.  This can generate both positives and negatives in practice.  On the positive side, teachers are able to provide students more direct feedback because students are working with the material during their time in class as opposed to reading or listening/recording notes.  Also on the positive side, the resources teachers posted for students to preview the material at home, such as prerecorded notes, videos, readings, etc, can be stored for a student to access as many times as they need.  This in contrast to a student that misses a class lecture or struggles to pay attention one day and has no method to experience the content a second time.  On the negative side, flipped classroom takes some time and resources to implement, as well as a change in the organizational thinking of the learning process for both the student and the teacher.

Impact: To make the transition to the flipped classroom, there are several resources I have been working with recently aimed at making the process more efficient and effective.  One of the most effective ways to engage in flipping your classroom is to model the Khan Academy approach.  Teachers recording interactive notes as they talk through and explain the content.  This not only introduces the student to the content material, it models notetaking as a skill.  Teachers will need to consider three items in trying this approach for themselves.  The first is acquiring a tablet to be able to efficiently record notes.  Huion makes several quality items at reasonable to cheap prices most of which can be acquired on Amazon with prime two-day shipping.  The tablet and pen will allow teachers to write just the same as on a whiteboard or chalkboard in their classroom.  Next teachers will need to consider software.  Next you will need to consider the software you prefer for how that recorded text will look.  For those recording on a Mac I would highly recommend an application called Sketchbook.  There is a free trial to determine if you like the app and then a monthly subscription fee after that point.  For those on PC, I have had good success with a program called SmoothDraw which offers both free and premium features.  There are likely many options out there for both platforms, you would be encouraged to explore until you find those that work the best for you and your content/classroom needs.  Last, you will need to consider recording software.  I have had good results with the free version of Screencast-o-matic.  This allows you to draw a box over what you would like to record.  If you place the box over your tablet recording software window, it will capture what you write and say in live time as it appears on the screen.  There is also a paid version of Screencast-o-matic that will allow you to record longer videos and upload in additional formats to additional websites.    If your goal is to give your students a new format to engaging with content, and as a result open up more of your class time to activities and projects, give this a try.  You might be starting the next Khan Academy.

Program Link: HUION Tablets
Program Link: Sketchbook Tablet Recording Software
Program Link: Screencast-O-Matic Video/Audio Recording Software

Monday, December 4, 2017

Project Creation Resources


Purpose: Selecting applications and programs for projects


Review of Practice: As we see project based instruction and a push to foster student motivationa nd engagement in their learning, many teachers struggle with identifying efficent and effective applications for students to construct those assignments.  The crew at Ed Tech have compiled a regularly updated blog with some of the best trends in using technology in the classroom.  In particular, their organization of applications/programs for consturcting work by task and/or desired output is the best I have encountered my exploration of teacher resources on the internet.  You are able to sort a database of the best applications and programs by the activity you want the students to complete, and the output for what you want the students to create, and it then provides you a list of all available applications and programs available to complete that task.  In addition, it gives you information as to the cost (if any) and ease of use.  Many of the applications and programs have been indivdiually reviewed in specific blog posts offering best practice highlights of how the application or program may be used in the classroom.

Impact:  This is an excellent resource in lesson and assessment planning in offering teachers the availability to find the perfect application or program for their specific lessons.  Gone are the days of trying to make a limited knowledge of applications and programs fit to what the teacher wants to accomplish with their projects.  In being able to select application and program by student activity and then student output for what they are to turn in, the quality of project significantly improves.
 
Program Links: Ed Tech Techer Apps

Sunday, December 3, 2017

Formative Assessment - Idea Survivor

Purpose: Student Evaluation of Content

Review of Practice: Idea survivor is part of the MAX Teaching series to develop student literacy skills.  The practice involves engaging students with reading new content material.  Specifically, it has students add annotations to reading works as they progress.  Students are to star sentences they determine to be the most essential information to understand that topic and add question marks for areas that they do not understand.  Students then convene in a breakout group where they have a rotating discussion through their stars and questions until all items are placed on two lists within their notes.  Students then must determine a ranking of the most important information identifying and justifying a list of most important.  This replicates the TV show survivor and can be an engaging classroom activity depending on the energy level the teacher brings to the setup.

Impact:  This was one of the stronger tools from the MAX Teaching series in fostering student engagement with content material.  This is especially true of material they are working with for the first time as it adds a collaborative element of support between their peers.  In the social studies discpline, this has worked well with primary soruces, records, and speeches that students do not always have working familiarity with.  The activity can then be built forward into a focused freewrite in which the teacher can provide formative feedback and guage class understandinf of critical concepts.

Program Link: MAX Teaching

Sunday, November 26, 2017

Formative Assessment - DBQ Project

Purpose: Develope student writing in the Social Studies

Review of Practice: The Document Based Question Project offers a model curriculum for students to engage with primary sources and other historical works in order to be able to develop evidence based writing in the Social Studies discipline.  Specifically they implement a model framework that implements a hook, thesis development, document analysis, and outline model.  This model system fosters student skills including analysis and argumentation so that students may improve at using documents as evidence in their writing.  The model curriculum offers possibly the most robust library of prompts and supporting documents for students to develop their writing of any Social Studies resources.  

Impact: Literacy trends continue to be a point of emphasis with students in all discplines.  What we have see in many local districts is a continued struggle for students to develop refined and academic writing.  The DBQ project model, and its heavy scaffolding, offer a student the necessary support to make improvement with their writing.  The model excels over many additional programs in providing a plan of progression that allows the scaffolding to be gradually reducded over the course of the school year so that students become more self-reliant with their writing as their skills improve.

Program Link: DBQ Project