Educators implement effective practices in areas of classroom management, planning, instruction, assessment, evaluation and reporting.
Educators have the knowledge and skills to facilitate learning for all students and know when to seek additional support for their practice. Educators thoughtfully consider all aspects of teaching, from planning through reporting, and understand the relationships among them. Educators employ a variety of instructional and assessment strategies.
For this evidence piece, I have chosen a blog post I wrote reflecting on the formative assessment principles of Dylan Wiliam and Damian Cooper. This reflection describes the main points of Wiliam and Cooper’s thoughts on formative assessment along with reflections of how I would like to incorporate these strategies and concepts into my teaching practice.
Through researching and reflecting about prominent assessment theories and practices in the field, I learned about ways to implement effective practices in assessment into my future classroom and gained a better understanding of what formative assessment is and how it can be used effectively. Having had an education that primarily focused on summative assessment, I had very little knowledge about how formative assessment could be used and what it could look like.
This experience was my first look into the theories and approaches behind formative assessment and I have since looked more deeply into other approaches to formative assessment as well as ways to implement it into the classroom. It has strengthened my belief in utilizing formative assessment in my own teaching. Now, in my own planning, instruction, assessment, evaluation, and reporting, I consider formative assessment tools and strategies that can be used to effectively measure student learning and understanding.
I believe that the idea of formative assessment falls into the learning theory of growth mindset. By evaluating student work on a formative basis, it is supporting the mindset that we can grow and improve as we learn and strengthen our understanding. On growth mindset, Carol Dweck says “A student with a performance goal might be worried about looking smart all the time, and avoid challenging work. On the other hand, a student with a learning goal will pursue interesting and challenging tasks in order to learn more.” (Dweck & Legget, 1988). When thinking in terms of mindset, summative assessments are more focused on giving definitive performance goals like letter grades and moving on to the next subject or topic. Formative assessment, however, focuses on the student’s learning as it is progressing, by implementing assessment routines such as triangulation, we can have more of a focus on improvement and progress over getting a good mark. Formative assessment can not only help the teacher tailor their lessons and instruction to where the students are at but it can help students to understand the success criteria and how to achieve it. I believe in promoting a growth mindset in your classroom and you cannot do that without having it modeled and reflected in your assessment tools. This blog post, although it merely scratches the surface of the possibilities of formative assessment, has allowed me to see and reflect upon different strategies and has served as a jumping board for my own ideas, thoughts, and inquiry surrounding the topic.
In the article “Working Inside the Black Box: Assessment for Learning in the Classroom” by Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam, they say that “assessment for learning is any assessment for which the first priority in its design and practice is to serve the purpose of promoting students’ learning.”(Black & Wiliam, 1998) I believe that through formative assessment we can best understand and measure student growth and progress. As educators, one of our biggest priorities is promoting student learning and therefore should be at the forefront of all of our planning, instruction, and reporting. The standard says that 1. educators have the knowledge and skills to facilitate learning for all students, 2. educators thoughtfully consider all aspects of teaching, and 3. educators employ a variety of instructional and assessment strategies. One of the strengths of this piece of evidence is that formative assessment directly affects each of the above points. In order to facilitate learning for all students, we need to understand where they are in order to move forward in a way that benefits their learning. Finally, effectively utilizing both formative and summative assessments to promote and measure student learning as well as to influence your own teaching is employing a variety of assessment and instructional strategies.
The aspects of the standard deal with classroom management, planning, instruction, assessment, evaluation, and reporting. These factors in the classroom are factors in which the teacher has control over and that promote student learning. There are other factors that affect student learning that the teacher does not directly control (such as nutrition, sleep, etc.). Therefore, it is important that the aspects that we can control are things that are effective in promoting learning, that we have the knowledge and tools to ensure we can promote it as effectively as possible, and that we continuously strive to find more effective strategies to help each and every student learn.
As I grow as a teacher, I intend to hold this standard true by staying up to date on the current research and thought surrounding teaching practices. I intend to try new things throughout my career in order to ensure that each of my students is getting the most effective practices for their learning style. Each student and group of students is different, therefore I as a teacher need to remain adaptable and open to new ideas and changes in routines so my students can gain and learn as much and as effectively as possible in my class.
The standard relates to improving knowledge, skills, and attitudes about teaching and learning by promoting having a growth mindset as a teacher. In order to stay current on effective practices, one needs to have a growth mindset belief that people can always be learning and improving in their practices and protocols. I believe this standard goes along with TRB 7 - Educators engage in lifelong learning in that we will always be learning and improving the ways in which we can most effectively teach our students and promote their learning in our classes.
Works Cited: Dweck, C.S. & Leggett, E.L. (1988). A Social-Cognitive Approach to Motivation and Personality. Retrieved from https://www.mindsetworks.com/Science/Impact Black, P., Harrison, C., Lee, C., Marshall, B., & Wiliam, D. (2004). Working Inside the Black Box: Assessment for Learning in the Classroom. The Phi Delta Kappan,86(1), 8-21. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/20441694
For this evidence piece I have chosen a unit that I planned and implemented during my 6 week practicum. This unit was cross-curricular and focused on the theme of significance, one of the curricular competencies in the grade 3 social studies curriculum (“Explain why people, events, or places are significant to various individuals and groups”). This unit also crossed over into my science unit on Landforms, specifically with regards to the content on “local First Peoples knowledge of local landforms” and “the knowledge of local First Peoples of ecosystems.” (Unit linked above) This unit had a variety of different types of lessons and activities that required effective planning and instruction practices. The variety of activities also required me to implement a variety of effective classroom management practices. This unit was comprised of activities on the carpet (stories and discussions), interactive “lab” activities, independent journal writing, drawing and coloring, and a field trip to the Millstone River at Bowen Park. Each of these activities required different effective planning, classroom management, and instruction strategies and approaches in order for them to be successful and meaningful. In my planning, I thoughtfully considered all aspects of teaching in order to facilitate learning for all students; desired learning outcomes, potential adaptations for some or all students as well as possible extensions can be seen in the lesson plans provided. My biggest learning experience came from planning and leading the field trip, it required me to come up with and implement management and instructional strategies unique to the space we were in and I needed to thoughtfully consider all aspects of teaching that were going to happen on this trip. In order to do this I did a site visit before planning the actual trip activities to ensure I had a plan on where to go and where to stop, as well as what my expectations at each stop were. I also connected with resources in the community (Strong Nations bookstore and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Education Coordinator) to seek additional support for my practice in order to create a unit and a field trip that was diverse and rich in learning both in terms of content and activities.
This evidence piece has impacted my knowledge about teaching and learning relative to the standard by allowing me to learn about and implement a variety of instructional and assessment strategies throughout the unit for the different activity settings/types as well as the different learning needs in the class. I was challenged in this evidence piece with the field trip component to find and implement effective classroom management practices, taking into account the outdoor environment and the unique challenges that come with it (the walking/stopping/talking, giving instructions, and ensuring students were staying on task).
This evidence piece reflects the First Peoples Principles of Learning, incorporating the following principles which highlight:
“Learning is holistic, reflexive, reflective, experiential and relational (focused on connectedness, on reciprocal relationships, and a sense of place)
Learning requires exploration of one’s identit
Learning involves recognizing the cause of one’s actions
Learning is embedded in memory, history, and story.”
(FNESC, 2014) In this unit, the students were asked to represent and explain through drawing and writing things that were significant to them (reflective learning and exploration of one’s identity). We also discussed our reciprocal relationship to the land and consequences of one’s actions through our discussions during our lesson featuring the book Nous habitons ici (Boreham & Mack, 2016), our “Who Polluted the River” Activity (adapted from Population Education), and our trip to the Millstone River in Bowen Park. The field trip portion of the unit also made the learning experiential. Finally, the principle that learning is embedded in memory, history, and story is reflected in the types of activities we did that featured First Peoples knowledge and stories of the land (Nous habitons ici) and the reflection activities that required students to refer to their own memories to express what was significant to them. All of the above activities and principles reflected show the variety of methods and strategies used in order to facilitate authentic learning for all students. This evidence piece, because of the variety of activities and strategies used, addresses many different learning styles and was designed to facilitate learning for all students. This is a strong evidence piece because since it is a cross-curricular unit, it showcases a variety of instructional and classroom management strategies, fulfilling a large portion of the standard. Another strength of this evidence piece is that it meets both the B.C. curriculum requirements as well as the First Peoples Principles of Learning, showing that the two can be effectively met and represented seamlessly throughout our teaching practice.
As I grow as a teacher, I intend to hold this standard true by staying up to date on the current research and thought surrounding teaching practices and implementing them into my own teaching. I intend to try new things throughout my career in order to ensure that each of my students is getting the most effective methods for their learning style. Each student and group of students is different, therefore I as a teacher need to remain adaptable and open to new ideas and changes in routines so my students can gain and learn as much and as effectively as possible in my class. The standard relates to improving knowledge, skills, and attitudes about teaching and learning by promoting having a growth mindset as a teacher. In order to stay current on effective practices, one needs to have a growth mindset belief that people can always be learning and improving in their practices and protocols. I believe this standard goes along with TRB 7 - Educators engage in lifelong learning in that we will always be learning and improving the ways in which we can most effectively teach our students and promote their learning in our classes.
Works Cited B.C. Ministry of Education, 2018. Retrieved from: https://curriculum.gov.bc.ca/curriculum on September 28, 2018.
Boreham, Brenda & Mack, Terri. (2016). Des montagnes à la mer: Nous habitons ici. Nanaimo: Strong Nations Publishing. FNESC (2014), First Peoples Principles of Learning. Retrieved from http://www.fnesc.ca/wp/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/PUB-LFP-POSTER-Principles-of-Learning-First-Peoples-poster-11x17.pdf