Authentic Assessment

One of the conversations I feel most passionate about having with teachers is about authentic assessment. It's important to me because it isn't just good for students, its so freeing for educators to be given back some of the decision making power. Below is a multi-flow map I created to reflect what I see in much of my work. 

Because this is the reality, it is with intentional clarity that I aim to shed light on what we can count as assessment. Margaret Heritage's book, Formative Assessment in Practice: A Process of Inquiry and Action, she brings it down to a statement I find myself repeating everywhere I go; "evidence of mastery can be found in anything that students say, do, make and write"

 
Of course the conversation about how evidence of mastery is proven and the various types of assessment is not always a simple one. But I would argue that it is within our talking about assessment that we grow as teachers and assessors.

In effort to support your conversations, here are some facets of assessment that are helpful to discuss as you plan new assessment activities and evaluate those you have been using for a while. These facets and the subpoints are a synthesis of my work and research, and are evolving as I continue the journey towards more authentically assessing students.

What PLCs should really DO

One of the most satisfying moments in my job as a staff developer is when I get to witness the lightbulb moment for the teachers I serve. If I'm honest, these were the moments I lived for as an elementary teacher as well. It's the same thing with teachers. These moments are usually accompanied by the statement; "Oh! I finally understand what PLCs are really supposed to do!" There are a lot of great resources out there to help collaborative teams build their capacity to teach all student well. Solution Tree as an organization was built for this very purpose. If you have the opportunity to attend one of their events or read one of their books, please do. In the meantime, here is a practical template that I created for teams that are trying to break bad PLC meeting habits and to start new ones. It isn't earth shattering, its just clear.

Here is the link for the template, feel free to use it!

I had the privilege of attending a training with the brilliant Lucy Calkins this winter. Of course I left the day long session with a lot of notes and ideas, but I wanted to share this particular set of questions because they are all simple yet very profound. Here is the list that has already helped me to be a better teacher of reading and thinking. I hope you experience the same thing!

Questions to push thinking about CHARACTER…

• How are the character names significant?
• How are the characters changing or staying the same over time?
• What or who causes the character to most be themselves?
• How do the characters react to the setting?
• What are the relationships between the characters like?
• Who do these characters remind you of and why?
• What details about the characters has the author left out?

Questions to push thinking about SETTING…

• What tone does the setting create?
• If the story was set somewhere else, how might it be different?
• What does the setting allow for?
• What does the setting limit?
• Does this setting remind you of somewhere you’ve been?
• What details has the author kept from us about the setting?

Questions to push thinking about PLOT…

• What patterns are showing up?
• How do the current events add to the problem or the solution?
• Is there any hint of what’s to come (foreshadowing)?
• How is the passage of time represented?
• What is moving the story forward?
• How is the structure related to the plot?
• What perspectives are represented?
• What perspectives are missing from the story?

Ways to write longer…

• I wonder if this…
• More evidence of this is…
• The author could have __________ but instead they…
• If nothing changes, this might lead to…
• This adds to my theory about…
• This supports or conflicts with the title because…
• I disagree with the author’s choice to…
• As I read, I’m changing how I think about…

Here is a link to the one page document I made for reference and for student groups to use

Observations, questions...and a T-Rex named Sue

This weekend I find myself writing from a Starbucks in Chicago. I'm here visiting my sister but knowing how busy she is with her seminary work, I planned a few adventures for myself. Yesterday I took the morning to visit the Field Museum of Natural History and (big shocker here) I found a way to connect the experience to teaching, assessment and educational culture :)

The museum offered me the opportunity to learn about several African cultures, Ancient Chinese dynasties, Rainforest conservation in Peru, the volcanic activity that is responsible for much of Hawaii's landscape, animal adaptations, mammoths and mastodons, insects, gems, and much much more. It was truly fascinating. One of the museum's most popular attractions is SUE, the largest and best preserved Tyrannosaurus rex ever. Not actually a confirmed female, she is named for her discoverer and at 42 feet long with a 600 pound skull...she was something to behold.

   We made fast friends as I read the details of her discovery in South Dakota in 1990. Of course the dating process and removal of her valued bones was interesting but what caught my attention was the initial description of how she was found. Sue Hendrickson was digging...her purpose was to find bones, she had studied enough to know what she was looking for so much that she "noticed several dinosaur vertebrae sticking out of the face of the bluff." I laughed a little to myself upon reading that. I thought noticed dinosaur vertebrae? I'm not sure I could notice a dinosaur vertebrae in a bunch of rocks if it were bright pink and glittery! On some level, she must have known exactly what she was looking for. And then as I though more, and read more museum signs, and traveled to other exhibits I noticed a pattern; regardless of if it was a chunk of turquoise found in Brazil, a baby mammoth discovered in the tundra of Siberia, or a T-rex in South Dakota...everyone that uncovered these historical and scientific wonders was either informed enough to know what they were looking for, or engaged and curious enough to know that they had just stumbled onto something significant and awesome. 

           
And then came the connection, good teaching, authentic assessment, and student centered classrooms should be about paying attention. We need to continue to grow as teachers in our ability to observe, ask questions when something is unusual, and then study those things we find to inform our teaching and better understand our students. I can't imagine all that we would have missed if Sue Hendricks never noticed those vertebrae in the bluff, or if the Siberian travelers would have ignored the little that was showing of the baby mammoth in the ice. I also can't imagine how much information we miss about our students because of the speed at which we plow through our days, the breadth we sometimes choose to cover over the depth of knowledge we could foster, and the sad truth that sometimes we don't even know enough about what we want our students to be able to do to notice it coming through authentically.

Always more to learn, always more to do. Insatiable learning and teaching is a blessing, not a curse. 

The PLC Stall-out

Recently, I have had the privilege of having conversations with several different leaders in education.  It is always so helpful for me to discuss some of the questions that guide their work and ultimately mine. Collaborative conversations have consistently brought clarity for me, I think its a part of my extrovert personality. One of the most consistent questions that surfaces is focused on the reality of how professional learning communities are actually functioning.

• Is it possible for a school to form, maintain and truly benefit from PLCs if there is little or no district support? 
• How can Q-comp (or similar programs) co-exist? 
• What can be done with a team that is really "off track"
• Why do some teams take longer than others to "get on board?"
• What are some of the most common factors that contribute to unhealthy PLCs? 

There are a few school culture pieces that I consistently see causing problems and unhealthy collaborative teams, but I don't always think that the reason is complicated. As I led a workshop this week with an elementary staff I found myself needing to say out loud that they are not alone in feeling like PLCs started but haven't "lived" very long. I heard myself acknowledging that sometimes the hardest part of getting into the collaborative groove of things is pushing through the tough phase by choosing to use student achievement as the shared goal that anchors us. 

As I listened to Brene Brown's Rising Strong on my recent road trip...I heard this thought actually correlated to research about group work. Brown referenced Bruce Tuckman's (1965) work about group and team dynamics in a section of her book about working with others. The stages Tuckman shared are labeled: FORM, STORM, NORM, PERFORM. The elementary teacher in me is drawn to the rhyming (of course) and I think this graphic is helpful in supporting the explanation. 

As soon as I began to read the descriptions, the correlations to PLCs were even more obvious than I thought. Sometimes when a district or school decides to organize their teachers into professional learning communities there is time and even money invested in training some (in rare cases all) teachers to understand the why behind what was about to happen. There are even stories of places that "launch" this work in really  pumped-up welcome back sessions with t-shirts and keynote speeches delivered by PLC gurus themselves. Regardless, it tends to start with some level of excitement. This stage of a new group or team is called FORM and is generally full of positive energy. 

   The next stage is the one that appealed to me most; STORM. As I read about the normalcy of turbulence between members of a new group, I was actually encouraged. One of the things that was the most significant in some of the descriptions was the fact that this stormy stage is absolutely necessarily. No team or group can skip this step, it is always present no matter how short it's existence and I think this is where we get stuck. There are so many emotions that teachers bring to an interaction where they know they are supposed to "grow" and "share data"...whatever that means. So it shouldn't surprise us when unsupported/unmonitored professional learning communities fizzle out. Leaders need to be ready to push through this phase, hold their PLCs to high standards and consistently remind their teachers that this is about THE KIDS!!! But what I have seen is a so much frustration during this phase, mostly getting hung up on interpersonal adult issues that the work can't even get done, we don't even get to the next phase; NORM. 

If you've been a part of any level of PLC work I hope that the idea of NORMS is not new to you. It is named as one of the essential process pieces for new PLCs to establish and then review at each meeting. Those shared and collective agreements are supposed to keep us on track as we discuss essential learning and authentic evidence, but in this model it goes beyond just a list of agreements. The description for the NORM phase is more about a natural rhythm of function for a team. This phase is meant to describe the time when work is actually being done. So naturally, it would quickly lead into the last phase...PERFORM. Now if you are a teacher of young ones, or disengaged older ones, you may feel like a part of your job is to actually put on a show as you teach...but that's not what we mean here. This stage is really describing the place of being able to fulfill or perform the duties assigned to you...to accomplish something. In our case, the something is effective teaching. 

This model answers some questions that have persisted, but even a brief study of the phases raises even more questions for me as someone who is sometimes coaching PLCs off a ledge. In the end though, any system made by humans, for humans will be imperfect. What matters most is that we acknowledge the truth of what is happening in our teams and stay so focused on student learning that we are willing to do whatever must be done in order to increase achievement for all. Take a moment to reflect on the stages and see if you can determine where your collaborative team might be right now. 

UNW Teacher Institute 2015- Content Area Literacy Session

Here is the link to the presentation slides which also includes the link to purchase the task cards from TPT. Thank you for joining us!

Wendy & Jess

My Space...Why I have no "desk"

After my first year teaching, I made a big decision. I didn't want the teacher desk I had in my classroom anymore. No, I wasn't trying to upgrade to something new or fancier...I didn't want a desk AT ALL. I came to this conclusion for three reasons;

1. Some of my colleagues had huge desk spaces or "teacher-only" areas that gradually seemed to grow and create messes as the year went on
2. I too had noticed a collection of messes accumulating on my desk...and it had only been 9 months!
3. I only ever sat down at my desk for about 30 min before and after school

So, I took the leap and that summer I had them haul it away. I was determined for my classroom space to reflect the actual ratio of kids : teacher. In other words, if there were 24 of them and one of me, I didn't want to be taking up 50% (or even 30%) of the work space. Honestly, a lot of people don't get it, but I am so glad I did it. Now this year, in a new building, in an open-classroom-type space there is even less square footage than I'm used to, but its fine! Because THIS is my teacher workspace:

Lietrally, from the green tape on the counter to the end of the counter on left, that's my space (including the cabinet below)! Now granted, there are shelves above (which are behind the bird/branch curtains in the next photo) but that's just professional books and drawer organizers of office supplies. 

I am glad I down-sized all that time ago because there is so much more space for my students now. It also causes me to stay organized because I literally have no room for a mess! You don't have to be crazy like me, but I challenge you to think about how space is used in YOUR classroom.