Assessing and Grading Differently-Please post any new thinking, ideas, ponderings here!

21st Century Literacy? What about navigating through the Informational Age?

Did seeing Kelly Gallagher's Six Pillars help you think about ways to get kids to read?

What do you think about Responsive Report Card Formats? What is a good way to show what kids really know?

Thank you for sharing your adolescent literature books with us. I hope that the sharing/reading of these books will help us all have new titles to reccomend to our students. Remember that you are a reading role model for them.

"Grading Scales"-What do you think? How do your grades reflect what students know? How do the grades we give help parents know that thier child has actually mastered the content?

Bonnie Tucker, thank you for the wonderfully interactive strategy share. I love the way you previewed the vocabulary, had us work together to do a word sort, and then had us read the FRENCH directions to accomplish a goal. Gee, in one short lesson you had us reading French. I am impressed!!

Thank you all for struggling through the "Metaphors" exercise. It is important for us to remember how it feels to be a struggling learner. Once again, you all rose above my expectations. Thanks for making me think about things I had not considered.

Chapter 10, "Conditions for Redoing Work for Full Credit" sparked a lot of thoughful blogging. Thank you for your thoughtful consideration of all the issues this chapter presented. If you haven't had the chance to read everyone's comments about Chapter 10, I would suggest that you make a point to do so. Reading everyone's comments always makes me think more deeply.

Chapter 11, "Six Burning Grading Issues" made me reconsider the way I record grades. Let me know what it makes you think about or consider.

Reading for a purpose was great.  Thanks, Mitch.   Setting a purpose for our students is so important.  I know that the "Grammar Test" was a little disconcerting, but it is a great tool to use with students to talk about how people are judged by the way they speak and write--fairly or unfairly.  

Thank you for listening to my cultural autobiography.   I am sorry for not modeling it earlier.   How did you feel about being given time to work in class?  Was it productive for you?

Robert Sternberg, former president of the American Psychiatric Association, says that "active and engaged citizens must be creatively flexible, responding to rapid changes in the environment; able to think critically about what they are told in the media, whether by newscasters, politicians, advertisers, or scientists; able to execute their ideas and persuade others of their value; and mist of all, able to use their knowledge wisely in ways that avoid the horrors of bad leadership..." Isn't this what we want for our students? How does our day to day instruction help students to become creative, flexible, and critical thinkers?
I hope the multi-texting lesson we worked through helps us to begin thinking of ways to let our kids do the hard work of making connections, thinking things through, and becoming aware of the multiple sides of every topic. Thank you for trying this out.

In Chapter 9 on page 116 Wormeli uses a very interesting word - confabulation. I had never encountered this word until I read this book. Please tell me what you think about confabulation.

Wow, it's already 2009 and we have so many things to accomplish.

Thank you for being willing to take a second look at Chapters 7 and 8 in Fair Isn’t Always Equal. I have to re-visit these chapters often to keep reminding myself of the true goal of learning and the role that grading plays in my classroom.

As you all saw from my demonstration lesson, reading something once is often not enough to really understand it. I purposefully chose difficult texts to put you in the place of a struggling reader. How did it feel? How can we help our students see that re-reading is important, whether it's a math problem, a poem or directions?

Write around--What did you think about it? What if there was always enough time to let our students respond to a text in this manner? What if we really gave students enough time and space to write, read, and think every day? I do feel that we have to hurry to "cover" so much material that we fail to give students the time and space they need to think.

How did you like browsing through all the different books? I would like to know if this is the first young adult book some of you have read in a long time? As soon as you "get into" your book let us know how it's going.

Chapter 8 in Fair Isn't Always Equal is one of my favorite chapters of the book. It is the chapter that really challenged and even influenced my thinking about grades and grading. I can't wait to hear what you think.
See you next year!