Mighty Morsels
Helpful snippets for inspiration.
Balancing Best Practices
The graphic linked here sums up educational best practices and provides links to resources for each area. Be sure to check out the "progressions" linked in each area.
Which area is your favorite? Which area is most difficult for you? Which one do you wish could polish up just a little?
So what are the the best of the best practices?
It is hard to juggle everything you're inundated with as a teacher. The results of a study conducted by John Hattie and his Visible Learning Team are a nice reminder of the things that have the most value in education, as well as those that don't.
One of the variables with the highest valuable positive impacts is formative assessment. This is the linchpin that keeps all the wheels in motion in your well-oiled machine. According to Hattie's study of over 1,000 meta-analyses, specific and timely feedback based directly upon ongoing formative assessment data are two of the most effective variables teachers can have upon student achievement in the classroom. These have double the impact of the average classroom variable (average effect size = 0.4). Check out John Hattie's study to find more teaching practices and their effect sizes.
Favorite Assessment Resources
- MAP - Even though MAP is technically summative, you can use it in a formative way by using RIT band data from the learning continuum to goal-set with students, then personalize their instruction with aligned activities that match learning statements in the continuum. Schools piloting NWEA Skills Navigator could assign aligned activities, such as Khan Academy, then use the Skills Locator as a progress check point for each RIT band.
- Mastery Connect - All schools have a premium subscription. Login here just like you do for SLOs. You can find standards-based assessments (assessments tab) and/or keep a record of your students' performance on SCCCRs (trackers tab).
- Kahoot - Students find these so fun, they don't even realize you're gathering data. Create or find quizzes here.
- Google Forms Quizzes and Flubaroo Add-on - Create and send quizzes using Google Forms. Then use the Flubaroo Add-on to grade responses automatically. You can even create templates for frequently used quizzes, such as spelling. Here's a tutorial video.
- Running Records - Most of us do these at benchmark periods like a summative assessment. But you do these unofficially and formatively in your head every time you listen to your students read and provide your specific feedback to the student. You likely use the paper version of a running record, but you can splurge a little and buy a subscription to the F & P BAS app, making recording a breeze. The app itself is free, then you buy only one subscription for your own device.
Links for Further Exploration
Blog Post - Improving Performance and Personalization Through Powerful Data, from Competency Works
Video - John Hattie's Keynote
Infographic - John Hattie's Visible Learning Effects in a visual
Video - John Hattie, Why Are So Many of Our Teachers and Schools So Successful?
Blog Post - Education Innovation in 2017, from Competency Works
Progressions - these give some guidance on how to develop even further in each area of the Core Four
Cool Tool: Thinglink
Courtney Kozelski, Innovation and Digital Learning
Email: courtney_kozelski@charleston.k12.sc.us
Website: http://www.ccsdinnovation.com/
Location: 75 Calhoun Street, Charleston, SC, United States
Phone: 843-937-6466