I know many of you have been waiting for this next installment with bated breath, laying awake at night wondering 'how will Peter react to the next chapters in his PED3141 textbook?'. Well, worry no more my friends, here are some of the things I reacted to and some of my own related experiences.
Chapter 3: I found this chapter, (like the previous) to be fairly enjoyable and informative. The focus was on implementing the backwards planning model and some of the ways in which essential questions, skills and understanding can be enhanced by that planning process. Right from the beginning, I completely agreed with the idea that any serious planning for a new curriculum or lesson needs to include people OUTSIDE that field of expertise. This allows for honest critiques, a fresh perspective, and also the identification of what really is essential knowledge, and not a teachers favorite subject or lesson, which probably gets included every year despite its lack of relevance. I found this bias was something I've been guilty of in the past, as I have selected and leaned towards projects and lessons based upon how easily and comfortably I could teach them, and how often they succeeded. I see now how short sighted that was, and how continuing to include them robbed my students of richer experiences I should have attempted. I definitely think a lot of areas in academia are too insulated and never allow outsiders to challenge the validity of their common beliefs. This was followed by the concept of INTU's, aka: things I Need To Understand, which reworks the more common themes or topics we normally work with in lessons. This definitely changes the traditional model of assigning topics and students just amassing information on them, which now can be done rather easily and superficially on google or wikipedia. If we have students identify their own INTU's, and base their research on that, they will naturally focus on essential questions and knowledge, rather than adding the first bits of information they find. I have definitely been on both spectrum's of that example, and I can see the inherent merit of adopting this system. Throughout my University career, especially in history, I often approached large papers with the objective "What does my Prof. want to read?" and worked from there. Which is a kind of backwards design, but not in a good way. It allowed me to crank out papers as quickly as possible and just adding the minimum amount of information, while making my papers seem thought provoking and insightful. That probably saved me in a lot of ways, because those papers were always done at 3 am the day they were due. I also used the idea of INTU's before exams throughout high school, and having not really studied, I would ask my friends right before, what information I really needed. This helped me perform rather well, since I completely skipped any rote memorization of facts, dates, etc., and I was able to relate the key essential knowledge points effectively. Conversely my friends who had studied for many long grueling hours, would always score lower than me, since they were bogged down by useless information they couldn't effectively apply. I guess that's another bad example of INTU's being subverted, but I'm glad they helped in get here ;) Hand in hand with the INTU's are the clear indications of what are essential questions, skills and enduring understanding, and how assessment design can strengthen those key areas. The enduring understanding emphasis is something I've benefited from, and I had a wonderful grade 11 chemistry teacher who helped impart real world examples to engage my interest. By illustrating simple applications of chemistry, checking shampoo labels and food nutrient breakdowns, she actually lit a spark within me that connected the boring, dry classroom material with these that actually matter to me. I know a lot of my day to day purchases ever since then have been influenced by that one lesson, which is quite a memorable experience for me. If I can focus my own assessment based planning to incorporate effective situations that model these ideas, I'm sure my own students will be carrying elements of enduring understanding with them into the foreseeable future. Moving along, I was a little surprised by Cooper's attack on the simplified view of problem solving in most assessment rubrics and how shallow those expectations are. I can see by his examples that we really don't try to engage students to problem solve on a deeper level, and even less so, to demonstrate that skill in a quantifiable way. I definitely think a really good way to integrate problem solving assessment would be to tie it into the inquiry based learning we've been talking about in PED3121. If students are driving the lessons, making their own questions and influencing the curriculum and lessons, they are almost by default engaging in problem solving, as they navigate what they feel is important to learn. That would definitely be a measurable metric that would tie into the ideas in Chapter 4. One last thought on Chapter 3 was that I was definitely not liking all the talk about rubrics, creating new one's, modifying or challenging existing one's, etc etc. I'm really more worried about the planning, assessment and technical aspects of teaching than I am about creative lesson ideas, implementing my ideas in class and being in front of students. There is a lot of information, and the amount of content being thrown at us from Ministry books is daunting. So Cooper's emphasis on reinventing rubrics is not all that appetizing at the moment. But I definitely have to admit, what he is saying makes sense, and that students need to be evaluated in an effective manner that targets the goals we've set in the backwards design. Chapter 4: For me, Chapter 4 had a few areas which really interested me, and more areas where I simply nodded my head and thought "yeah this makes sense". So I'll focus on some of the areas which piqued my interest. First was the development of the one sided method in which most assessment occurs, namely based on solely writing input based criteria; tests, papers, reports, exams, etc. I know that many school boards and methods of education focus WAY to heavily on memorization and standardized testing. My time in Korea and Japan were probably the most EXTREME examples of that (it's literally all they do, all day, all the time), which caused me to appreciate the Ontario school system. Now that I think about it, we do have a lot more opportunities for student involvement, creative projects and cross discipline lessons, however we usually end all of those with some kind of written marking scheme. Marks for performance and oral portions are usually severely limited in comparison to the handed in work. I've personally been against the heavily weighted exam systems or final papers of post secondary institutions, but I didn't realize how much of a change we could initiate in the lower school levels. I found Cooper's reference to the driving examination kind of amusing. Yes it does support his point of needing multiple kinds of assessment, including performance of knowledge, like driving, but the written multiple choice portion is probably one of the worst examples of enduring understanding or essential learning :p I mean, who has ever retained demerit point information from that test? I also liked the example of Leanne's approach on page 52, since that tied directly into our class today in PED3121, where we were tasked with creating a usable and effective assessment rubric for one math category. Reading Leanne's rubric helped put my own into better perspective and I have a better grasp of why specific, fully flushed out rubrics are key to both teaching and assessment, instead of academic jargon based one's sent out by the Ministry of Education. The last point I'd like to touch upon, and probably the most interesting to me from this chapter, was the various ways to approach late and incomplete work. Removing the rigid, binding timelines and due dates seems like a somewhat risky move, especially speaking as someone who was delinquent and lax on all my assignments at all levels of schooling. I don't think I would have benefited from extended or looser time frames, as I constantly took every possible moment to procrastinate and would still have been late regardless. I do recognize that the check ups and timelines might assist many students, but I believe those are already in practice quite a bit. I always had timelines for brainstorming, rough drafts, first drafts and then final copies. Ultimately though, since none of those steps were really being graded, the outcome of being late at the end rarely changed. I think maybe an incentive based approach might have helped a student like myself. What I was thinking was having those other processes in place, timelines, process check, etc., but then in addition to having the final due date, add a stipulation that students who complete their assignments in a reasonable time around that due date, will have feedback from the teacher on the finished work, and if they want, a final chance to make some adjustments. This kind of retains the notion of being on time and time management skills, but also adds one more layer to the developmental process, while not outright saying it. Maybe it's all the same thing, but I thought perhaps if approached in the right away, it might entice both high performing students to further develop their assessment for learning, while allowing the students who are under performing or struggling a means to help themselves. The completion contract was also a novel idea, since it brings more responsibility and understanding to the student, and hopefully with that ownership, more drive to complete their assignments. Well once again, there was quite a bit going on in these chapters, and I definitely feel I might benefit from writing some Cole's Notes styled summations, but I am enjoying the learning process, and I'm optimistic that all these lessons will stick in my head somewhere, with all that enduring understanding jazz, and help me in the near future. Thank you for reading, Peter~
2 Comments
Linda Radford
9/24/2015 11:59:44 pm
Hi Peter, It is 2 AM in Mexico City right now and I should be packing to catch my flight in the AM, but your great little lead in to this week's Cooper readings caught my eye and I couldn't resist. I have not been disappointed :) Many thanks for responding to with such a high level of engagement. No doubt your lively exchange with Cooper so far will help you to digest Ontario's assessment policies. Don't forget to check out the Growing Success document! There is a power point of its key ideas on BBL.
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Peter
9/25/2015 04:29:12 pm
Thank you Linda :D I'm glad I wasn't the only one up late last night! And yeah, Cooper is definitely helping me slowly get my brain around all this planning and assessment, hopefully it all sticks :) Cate (Kate?) did a great job today in class and it was nice trying to use some of those big ideas and essential questions strategies to brainstorm. See you soon! Don't burn too much of that midnight oil!
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