Showing posts with label formative assessment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label formative assessment. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Competition doesn't have to be a four letter word...

flickr CC image via stockicide

Competition isn't inherently bad. Whether a competitive learning environment is perceived as positive or negative depends entirely on the context within which we define competition.

When it comes to competition, once again, educators are polarizing an issue unnecessarily. It's a black and white issue for us- either we endorse competitive learning environments as positive teaching and learning, or we denounce them as a negative influence. I think it's when we impose a norm-referenced competitive learning environment on kids in school that it becomes potentially negative and perhaps debilitating.

There has to be a middle ground.

Are we not competitive by nature? Just watch a group of kids playing sometime... inevitably, and without provocation, they will engage in some sort of competition... seeing how long they can hold there breath under water, seeing how high they can climb on the monkey bars or just having a friendly running race... kids like competition when it's designed by them. Why not nurture this tendency in school? Perhaps we need to let kids be the authors of their own learning to a degree. Perhaps this is the middle ground we should target.

Let's use a standards-based learning (SBL) environment as our positive example. In as SBL environment, every student is judged against a set of learning standards that are consistent and measurable. When these standards are differentiated into levels of achievement, they also allow for a considerable amount of assessment flexibility. SBL environments permit us to get away from variations of a Gaussian Curve analysis of any particular group of students- arguably an unfair and statistically-biased form of summative assessment, and instead focus on the individual achievement of each student. In this context, each student is competing against his own prior levels of achievement, working to improve his knowledge and skill-set... taking on the responsibility for directing his own learning. In my mind there's nothing wrong with this form of competition.

Education, like golf, is ultimately an individually driven effort... to be successful at golf we need only to worry about our own score... to be successful at learning we need only to be concerned with our own progress.

Sunday, April 4, 2010

Authentic Learning is the Kind We All Remember

flickr CC image via stevendepolo

As much as I was dangling them in junior high school, I cant remember the rule about participles. Maybe a more authentic lesson would've helped me get it right on the test.

In all seriousness, I was speaking with parents at parent/teacher interviews last week about the difference between how kids were taught a generation of students ago, and how we are teaching their children today, (or at least how some of us are trying.) I can remember doing worksheet after worksheet correcting sentences that contained dangling participles, but although I know one when I see it, I couldn't give you a really good description of what one is. Perhaps it's not important beyond knowing what one looks like so I can avoid using them in my writing. That's where authentic learning comes in.

With regard to developing writing skills, why not allow students to simply write? They can write about whatever they want in so many many different forms... and I'd know they used dangling participles because I would read their writing. After reading, I would provide feedback regarding how to do it differently and more appropriately. My kids love to write; they do it all the time. When we're at home and they ask me to read their writing, I don't give it a mark as if it were one of the worksheets I did so long ago; I just tell them that I'm proud of how hard they worked, and then I suggest some things they could do next time to improve their writing. They seem to appreciate this feedback. If it works with my kids at home, why can't it work for my students at school?

One way for teachers to provide more authentic learning opportunities for their students is to provide choice in the manner students desire to show us what they can do, and then use formative feedback to assess how they're doing. I had some really good teachers in junior and high school, and I remember many writing assignments they gave me; all with an element of choice embedded within them. One of my favorites was a poetry assignment within which students were to choose animals that each of their classmates reminded them of. The teacher made a list of students and the animals that were matched to them, and then we were to choose one from the list that matched our name and write a poem about ourselves as characterized by the traits of that animal. Another one was to write a manifesto that was designed to change the world... just like that; whatever we wanted to write. I chose to write a statement about how to solve the world's eventual overpopulation problems. Yet another was to write a first-hand account of the scariest thing that ever happened to me without using a single adjective. I wrote about my first spill of one of our horses.

I'm sure that all three of the teachers that assigned me these tasks provided feedback; after all, that's their job- to assess my writing- but the fact that I remember these assignments at all over twenty five years later is a testimony to their skill in designing writing activities that are fun, meaningful, motivating and dare I say, authentic.

I am certain my love for writing is in no way attributable to those damn worksheets. Other than remembering having to do them, those worksheets didn't leave me with a lasting impression at all.
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