I'll give this a try...

I am putting some of the final touches on my version of Skill Based Assessment and will be sharing the process with you.  Things are kind of crazy for me right now as I am juggling my ever so busy teaching workload with the added tasks of being an assistant coach for my son's high school baseball team.  Top that off with being the "commissioner" of our communities youth baseball program and you realize there just isn't enough time in a single day to do all that you want/need to do.

My first post...which should be up later this week, will be about the creation of my "skills" list for Algebra 2.  This was seemingly going to be an easy task but now that I am in the third trimester of the school year I have found my self revising the list more often.  As you follow my posts keep in mind that this is a work in progress and the nature of everything is tailored to how things occur in my classroom.  Your environment is certainly different than mine to some degree.  Please feel free to comment (I tend to take constructive criticism quite well).

More on Assessing in the Classroom

Skills Based Assessment, Formative Assessment, Summative Assessment,...asess, assess, assess...

I have spent much if this school year thinking about how I assess my students within the classroom.  What I have discovered/realized was not to comforting or professionally reassuring.  I think I have been doing it wrong.  Not completely wrong, but wrong in the sense that I was simply giving assessments "of" learning rather than "for" learning.

I have been visiting numerous blogs written by those that are walking in the same shoes that I am.  Teachers from throughout the country who have implemented some sort of skills based assessment and are seeing it the way that I see it.  From my readings (thier writings) I have been creating my own system to assess students in my Algebra 2 classes.  It is something that has taken a lot of time and energy to develop and I am still not where I want to be with it.  I am seeing students respond to it and as I get better at implementing it, they too will respond better (I hope).

MCAII Test is on the Horizon

All 11th grade students in Minnesota, including our very own NBAHS Class of 2011, will be taking the MCAII Test in Mathematics on April 13th and 14th.  The whole testing thing certainly gets me worked up a bit when it comes to teaching and learning.  I have been very proactively assessing my students the past 12 weeks to get some sort of measure as to whether or not they will be successful on the MCAII test.  I currently teach about 110 11th grade students and I am confident that 40 of them will be successful/proficient and "Meet" or  "Exceed" the standards.  There is another population of students that could "meet" the standards of "Partially" meet the standards.  I am hoping we can get these students to do some extra prep work the next few weeks (unfortunatley we have spring break and easter break before the test...fewer classrooom days).  Then there are the 15 or so students that I am most certain will not meet the standards at all.  What do you say to an 11th grade student who, when asked what the radius of a circle with a diameter of 6 inches is and he replies with "huh?" or "I don't know!" 

Assessing Assessments in my Classroom

The past several months have been an all out soul searching, though provoking, head slapping, paper ball throwing adventure as I spent unthinkable hours examining how I assess my students in my classroom.  In the day of standardized testing (in Minnesota it is the MCAII tests) everyone is focussed on the numbers...that's all they seem to care about.  I know it has a part in the overall, big picture, or education but I have a really hard time putting so much emphasis on what students do on one single assessment.

My plight began when I started reading numerous blog's written by teachers as I tried to find a way to teach "better" not "harder."  As I was doing so I started to see a pattern evolving as more and more of these teachers were using a skills/standards based approach to assessing students.  The further I trodded along the more I began to see that I was not necessarily going about assessments the best way.  Just two years ago we purchased new textbooks for our math curriculum and along with it came an assessment system...you know what I mean...the canned, ready to use, textbook made tests.  I sadly admit that I have used them in the past...and the more I look at them the more I think they are not all that useful.  They can be used as an assessment of learning but certainly not for learning.

This is where my journey took a turn.  My new focus was on creating assessments for my classroom that are skill/standards based and are formative in nature...that is...students and I can use them to guide our learning/teaching.  To do this I was excited to enlist the help and advice of the other math teachers on our staff (we are all in a PLC together and we made common assessments one of our tasks for the year).  I thought this would be a no brainer and we would be able to crank out some really good stuff....oh was I wrong.  Nothing but resistance!

Well...gotta go now but I will continue on with this discussion.

Finding Time and Energy

I really do want to post more often but the time really flies and seems to disappear at times.  I like reading blogs a lot more than I enjoy writing my own.  Several blogs that I read truly do keep me inspired/motivated to become a better teacher.  I have to thank Dan at dy/dan for all of his refreshing ideas as welll as Kate at f(t).  I am in my 17th year of teaching and I often feel I have lost the creative drive to develop lessons that grab student attention and, more importantly, promote valuable classroom discourse.  I have been working diligently with my Enriched Geometry students to engage them in daily math discussions rather than me simply passing along some information that is printed in our textbook.  This years group of students have taken to this much better than in the past and I am seeing some progress and real value in what they are accomplishing.

Another student is at my door for some after school help...gotta go!

Mr C