After talking to my administration, there are multiple improvements that Houston is trying to implement. The first is to continue on the past of formative and summative assessment. With our new grading policy, which will be explained in August, focuses more on formative assessment versus a daily grade on assignments. We will be breaking our grades down to different areas, but I will only have to give five grades in a six weeks. I will also be grading their behavior in a different way as well. I think that while new policies are great, there has to be a blend of good assessment, and what is beneficial to the students and teachers.
One of the goals is to also have more computer time in each of the classrooms. With the technology initiatives that IISD has tried to incorporate, this is becoming more of an issue in the middle school classrooms, because when they become freshman, they are not ready for the one to one incorporation of the laptop. This will be incorporated by having a requirement of each teacher using technology at least once a week.
Data collection is going to be focused more on D2SC to gather not only the current information, but also the information from previous years and make teachers know how to use this and do this. We will be focusing on completing more TEKS checks online as well for students to figure out how to run their own data to figure out what they need.
To know if we are effective for technology, it must be in our lesson plan, and then we will be discussing them in our PLCs that we meet with weekly. The district will also be completing more walk-thrus in our classroom on days that we will be using technology. For grading policy, we will be working on that as the district comes out with more information.
The future assessment in my classroom will be run similar to years in the past. With our district going to a completely new grading policy for next year I don't know what my gradebook will look like or how things will look as a whole. I am also receiving new curriculum which will change how I look at things.
Friday, July 9, 2010
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Student Learning
We do use three different databases for assessment: Gradespeed for daily grades, progress reports, and attendence; D2SC for TEKSchecks, semseter exams, and teacher created exams; and last, Blackboard for test, quizzes, and assignments.
To start, Gradespeed is what I use the most. Since students are able to look into thier grades through a special program, my grades are updated 2-3 times a week so that both students and parents know where they stand in the classroom.
While I love D2SC becuase it scores it for you, I hate that you can't automatically enter them into the gradebook. This has part to do because the score given on these assessments are at scaled for a better numeric score for the gradebook.
Last, Blackboard is hard to use with us not having a 1:1 student to laptop ratio in our classroom. While we can do this, students struggle with the technology and are needing to learn this skill.
Overall, I think each of these programs have benefits to them, but wonder about the cost and the ability to sync them all together. I know that IISD has a lot of work to do with the new grading policy coming into affect, but I believe that we will need a more cohesive form of assessment to match the policies.
I believe that D2SC is the best information for collecting student data and using the information for further growth of student learning. I think that the data is informative and allows teachers to see areas of student growth, but like any assessment, it is only as good as the thought that is taken out of it. I believe that some teachers use the data for educational purposes, and others let the data sit. D2SC is the most beneficial for data collection and use because there are so many different data sets made available and they can incorporate new data sets as new benchmarks are given.
To start, Gradespeed is what I use the most. Since students are able to look into thier grades through a special program, my grades are updated 2-3 times a week so that both students and parents know where they stand in the classroom.
While I love D2SC becuase it scores it for you, I hate that you can't automatically enter them into the gradebook. This has part to do because the score given on these assessments are at scaled for a better numeric score for the gradebook.
Last, Blackboard is hard to use with us not having a 1:1 student to laptop ratio in our classroom. While we can do this, students struggle with the technology and are needing to learn this skill.
Overall, I think each of these programs have benefits to them, but wonder about the cost and the ability to sync them all together. I know that IISD has a lot of work to do with the new grading policy coming into affect, but I believe that we will need a more cohesive form of assessment to match the policies.
I believe that D2SC is the best information for collecting student data and using the information for further growth of student learning. I think that the data is informative and allows teachers to see areas of student growth, but like any assessment, it is only as good as the thought that is taken out of it. I believe that some teachers use the data for educational purposes, and others let the data sit. D2SC is the most beneficial for data collection and use because there are so many different data sets made available and they can incorporate new data sets as new benchmarks are given.
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