In this activity, you will post a practical classroom activity that implements Universal Design for Learning. Based on your assigned principle (found in the course activity directions), post a comment in the appropriate blog post by Friday. Be sure to sign your blog entry.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Principle #3- Assessment
Each member of Team D will post at least one way that a teacher uses flexible methods of assessment that provides students with choices for how they will demonstrate their learning.
Providing students choices in how they demonstrate and share their understandings of a topic is something my school embraces. In every grade, students are encouraged to conduct individual inquiries into questions they generate themselves, with teacher guidance. When it comes to demonstrating what they have learned, students can choose from a variety of forms of expression, so long as they are able to demonstrate their understandings based on a rubric. This way, assessment is flexible, responsive to multiple intelligences, and open to student choice, but it doesn't compromise common expectations for learning.
Examples of forms of expression students might use are: writing and performing a song, performing a monologue, writing a report, creating a poster or work of art, making a graph, writing a poem, performing a skit, and writing a personal reflection.
Obviously, those are all low-tech examples of assessment choices.
There are incredible high-tech options which allow students to demonstrate their understanding in a much more authentic way and to a larger audience. Some options are: maintaining a blog, communicating with students in other far-away schools, creating a glog, using audacity or voice thread to record audio, creating and uploading a video, using webspiration or bubbl.us to create a mind map, and creating a power point presentation.
One unique method of assessing student knowledge is by allowing the students to use digital storytelling to share what they have learned. In addition to assessing vocabulary and grammar, digital stories can be a source of communication between the student and the teacher. Through digital storytelling, students can use visual images while communicating in an environment conducive to lowering the affective filter. Students can use this method to create and narrate projects in a manner conducive to honing their communication skills. Furthermore, they can perform self-assessments by listening to their speech patterns and level of English language acquisition proficiency. Teachers can use this method to assess the progress of oral communication in the areas of BICS (Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills) and CALP (Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency). For an example, please see the following video sample from a student at Honokaa High School in Hawaii. The students were studying the United States’ Bill of Rights in social studies. For their digital story projects, students were asked to find out what rights people have in their home countries and to discuss their own concepts of human rights. This digital storytelling example was made by an ESL designated student. You can access his video on the following website thanks to Pacific Resources for Education and Learning (2005):
Leah, You should share the inquiry model that WIS uses, Kath Murdoch stuff. I think it lends itself to creating the structure so students understand their expectations and teachers can create the rubrics but allows for so much flexibility. The PYP model is fantastic and when coupled with a structure I think teachers can offer more targeted authentic feedback at the different stages because they know what they are looking for, how to ask guiding questions to help a student through that stages and allow students to self-assess.
I'm impressed that your school embraces student choice when it comes to assessment. Students who are able to choose how to demonstrate what they have learned are more vested in assignment. We have struggled with getting teachers to use rubrics and student choice when it comes to assessment so I applaud your school’s attitude.
icruOne of my favorite strategies for student choice in assessments is Think-Tac-Toe. Think-Tac-Toe is an alternative assessment set up like a tic-tac-toe board where students can choose three activities in a row, column, or diagonal. It is up to the teacher to design each set to include a variety of experiences. An example of this can be found at: http://www.rcs.k12.tn.us/rc/instruction/ttt/ttt.htm.
I facilitated a trip for 30 fourth grade teachers in NC where we spent a week visiting historic sites across the state. One of the requirements of the trip was to develop a Think-Tac-Toe assessment to go with the social studies standards. The teachers loved having everyone’s examples at the end of the trip!
For more information about Think-Tac-Toe, visit: http://teach.fcps.net/trt7/Think%20Tac%20Toe.htm
Linda and Leah- I would have said that I do not use student choice in assessment but after reading the UDL, I realized that I do use it. I think that often we need to rethink our definition of assessment. I tend to think of it as "test" but I really do a lot of other assessments- such as the ones Leah listed- but don't think of them as assessments. I am working on reminding myself that they are really an assessment. Just a less painful assessment!
The PYP Inga refers to is the Primary Years Program of the International Baccalaureate. It's a philosophy, curriculum framework, and set of best practices for a concept-driven, inquiry based, integrated learning experience in the elementary years. As I mentioned above, student choice See http://www.ibo.org/pyp/curriculum/ to learn more about it. (By the way, Michelle's school is also a PYP school.)
Kath Murdoch is a well-respected Australian educator who shares a model of inquiry to give structure to student inquiries, whether they be research projects, math problem solving experiences, science experiments, or another type. Kath is coming to our school for 3 days in late March, and we really look forward to learning with her! Find our more about Kath Murdoch's model of inquiry in this pdf: cegsa.editme.com/files/21stCenturyLearning/kath.pdf
Shauntelle, I just took a look at the video you posted. I agree that digital storytelling is a meaningful way for students to share their learning. I think this is especially effective with students who are learning a second language. Our SSL teacher uses video with his students often. He has found the process to be a very rich language experience with his students. (Spanish as a Second Language is our program for students whose Spanish skills are not ready for the main Spanish classrooms, so it's like ESL.)
Marlo, The tic tac toe site you provided is so helpful- thanks! I agree that it's a great strategy to give students' a choice, but in a structured way so that expectations are appropriately challenging for their level.
All of these are so good that I added this to the blogs I follow on google reader. I don't want to miss any of the ideas I could try. There is a wealth of knowledge here. Have you used rubistar (http://rubistar.4teachers.org/) or Teach-nology (http://rubistar.4teachers.org/) for rubrics? They have some great rubric generators that students can use (or you can use) to differentiate assessments. Renee
Marlo, I love the T-T-T site! I will definitely share this with my teachers. Please send me more! You always have such great resources to share. Thanks! Anita
Where's my comment? I submitted my comment or at least I thought I did. So, I think I figured it out. I had started my comment to the post, then clicked on "Show Original Post" and okay. Then was called away and got distracted and came back and went onto something else without checking out to see if my comment was there. Anyway, here it is again but what I had written before was better, or I think it was. ;-)
One flexible method of assessment that provides our students with choices on how they can demonstrate their learning is allwoign them to create their own artifact. For example, I have been working with a history teacher and her class. I taught them how to use Photo Story and Inspiration. They already knew how to use PowerPoint, Word and Publisher.
The teacher's assignment was to pick a person from the Civil War era and do a report on that person using a technology of their choice. We had students not only choosing Photo Story because of the options of being able to add in voice-overs, text and music, but also use PowerPoint the same. Some chose Inspiration and put in links to websites and movies. Still others chose to create bio cubes using PowerPoint and bio bookmarks of their person. What the students liked the most from this activity was the freedom of choice!
What was then shared in a faculty meeting was complaints from other teachers that their students wanted to do the same with their projects in those classes as they did in the history class. Now, they really were not complaints but comments. However, it did start other teachers into offering more choices for students to show what they have learned. The part I was impressed with after it was done was how that history teacher took the learning further and required her students to take notes on everyone's presentation and submit to her their top 3. That spurred me to ask her to start a blog about it all. She has not done it yet but plans on doing that for her next project.
15 comments:
Providing students choices in how they demonstrate and share their understandings of a topic is something my school embraces. In every grade, students are encouraged to conduct individual inquiries into questions they generate themselves, with teacher guidance. When it comes to demonstrating what they have learned, students can choose from a variety of forms of expression, so long as they are able to demonstrate their understandings based on a rubric. This way, assessment is flexible, responsive to multiple intelligences, and open to student choice, but it doesn't compromise common expectations for learning.
Examples of forms of expression students might use are: writing and performing a song, performing a monologue, writing a report, creating a poster or work of art, making a graph, writing a poem, performing a skit, and writing a personal reflection.
Obviously, those are all low-tech examples of assessment choices.
There are incredible high-tech options which allow students to demonstrate their understanding in a much more authentic way and to a larger audience. Some options are: maintaining a blog, communicating with students in other far-away schools, creating a glog, using audacity or voice thread to record audio, creating and uploading a video, using webspiration or bubbl.us to create a mind map, and creating a power point presentation.
One unique method of assessing student knowledge is by allowing the students to use digital storytelling to share what they have learned. In addition to assessing vocabulary and grammar, digital stories can be a source of communication between the student and the teacher. Through digital storytelling, students can use visual images while communicating in an environment conducive to lowering the affective filter. Students can use this method to create and narrate projects in a manner conducive to honing their communication skills. Furthermore, they can perform self-assessments by listening to their speech patterns and level of English language acquisition proficiency. Teachers can use this method to assess the progress of oral communication in the areas of BICS (Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills) and CALP (Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency).
For an example, please see the following video sample from a student at Honokaa High School in Hawaii. The students were studying the United States’ Bill of Rights in social studies. For their digital story projects, students were asked to find out what rights people have in their home countries and to discuss their own concepts of human rights. This digital storytelling example was made by an ESL designated student. You can access his video on the following website thanks to Pacific Resources for Education and Learning (2005):
http://www.prel.org/eslstrategies/moviejacksonpage.html
Leah, You should share the inquiry model that WIS uses, Kath Murdoch stuff. I think it lends itself to creating the structure so students understand their expectations and teachers can create the rubrics but allows for so much flexibility. The PYP model is fantastic and when coupled with a structure I think teachers can offer more targeted authentic feedback at the different stages because they know what they are looking for, how to ask guiding questions to help a student through that stages and allow students to self-assess.
Leah,
I'm impressed that your school embraces student choice when it comes to assessment. Students who are able to choose how to demonstrate what they have learned are more vested in assignment. We have struggled with getting teachers to use rubrics and student choice when it comes to assessment so I applaud your school’s attitude.
icruOne of my favorite strategies for student choice in assessments is Think-Tac-Toe. Think-Tac-Toe is an alternative assessment set up like a tic-tac-toe board where students can choose three activities in a row, column, or diagonal. It is up to the teacher to design each set to include a variety of experiences. An example of this can be found at: http://www.rcs.k12.tn.us/rc/instruction/ttt/ttt.htm.
I facilitated a trip for 30 fourth grade teachers in NC where we spent a week visiting historic sites across the state. One of the requirements of the trip was to develop a Think-Tac-Toe assessment to go with the social studies standards. The teachers loved having everyone’s examples at the end of the trip!
For more information about Think-Tac-Toe, visit: http://teach.fcps.net/trt7/Think%20Tac%20Toe.htm
Linda and Leah-
I would have said that I do not use student choice in assessment but after reading the UDL, I realized that I do use it. I think that often we need to rethink our definition of assessment. I tend to think of it as "test" but I really do a lot of other assessments- such as the ones Leah listed- but don't think of them as assessments. I am working on reminding myself that they are really an assessment. Just a less painful assessment!
The PYP Inga refers to is the Primary Years Program of the International Baccalaureate. It's a philosophy, curriculum framework, and set of best practices for a concept-driven, inquiry based, integrated learning experience in the elementary years. As I mentioned above, student choice See http://www.ibo.org/pyp/curriculum/ to learn more about it. (By the way, Michelle's school is also a PYP school.)
Kath Murdoch is a well-respected Australian educator who shares a model of inquiry to give structure to student inquiries, whether they be research projects, math problem solving experiences, science experiments, or another type. Kath is coming to our school for 3 days in late March, and we really look forward to learning with her! Find our more about Kath Murdoch's model of inquiry in this pdf: cegsa.editme.com/files/21stCenturyLearning/kath.pdf
Shauntelle,
I just took a look at the video you posted. I agree that digital storytelling is a meaningful way for students to share their learning. I think this is especially effective with students who are learning a second language. Our SSL teacher uses video with his students often. He has found the process to be a very rich language experience with his students. (Spanish as a Second Language is our program for students whose Spanish skills are not ready for the main Spanish classrooms, so it's like ESL.)
Marlo,
The tic tac toe site you provided is so helpful- thanks! I agree that it's a great strategy to give students' a choice, but in a structured way so that expectations are appropriately challenging for their level.
Marlo,
I bookmarked think tac toe too! It's a catchy phrase and the concept is easy to remember. Thank you for sharing your resources.
Karen
Wow, that think, tac, toe is a great website. I'll use it from now on. You guys are so smart.
All of these are so good that I added this to the blogs I follow on google reader. I don't want to miss any of the ideas I could try. There is a wealth of knowledge here. Have you used rubistar (http://rubistar.4teachers.org/) or Teach-nology (http://rubistar.4teachers.org/) for rubrics? They have some great rubric generators that students can use (or you can use) to differentiate assessments.
Renee
Marlo, I love the T-T-T site! I will definitely share this with my teachers. Please send me more! You always have such great resources to share. Thanks! Anita
Where's my comment? I submitted my comment or at least I thought I did. So, I think I figured it out. I had started my comment to the post, then clicked on "Show Original Post" and okay. Then was called away and got distracted and came back and went onto something else without checking out to see if my comment was there. Anyway, here it is again but what I had written before was better, or I think it was. ;-)
One flexible method of assessment that provides our students with choices on how they can demonstrate their learning is allwoign them to create their own artifact. For example, I have been working with a history teacher and her class. I taught them how to use Photo Story and Inspiration. They already knew how to use PowerPoint, Word and Publisher.
The teacher's assignment was to pick a person from the Civil War era and do a report on that person using a technology of their choice. We had students not only choosing Photo Story because of the options of being able to add in voice-overs, text and music, but also use PowerPoint the same. Some chose Inspiration and put in links to websites and movies. Still others chose to create bio cubes using PowerPoint and bio bookmarks of their person. What the students liked the most from this activity was the freedom of choice!
What was then shared in a faculty meeting was complaints from other teachers that their students wanted to do the same with their projects in those classes as they did in the history class. Now, they really were not complaints but comments. However, it did start other teachers into offering more choices for students to show what they have learned. The part I was impressed with after it was done was how that history teacher took the learning further and required her students to take notes on everyone's presentation and submit to her their top 3. That spurred me to ask her to start a blog about it all. She has not done it yet but plans on doing that for her next project.
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