What if you were told that a weekly spiraled assessment was a vital part of preparing your students for the end-of-year summative assessment? When we, an eighth-grade math co-teaching team, started working together in 2017, we were not convinced. Now, six years later, we not only believe in weekly spiraled assessments (WSAs) and use them
Read More… from A New Mindset: Assessment Strategies that Work
Do you ever dread when it’s time to review for an assessment? More importantly, do your students? Tara Maynard, a middle grades math teacher and 24-year veteran of the classroom, has been crafting review activities for decades designed to provide meaningful practice without totally boring students. We sat down with her to ask what makes
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A beloved activity in my 7th grade science class was the mitosis dance activity. The kids worked collaboratively to choreograph a complex performance set to music and complete with a human cell wall and spindle fibers pulling apart the sister chromatids (aka their fellow classmates). I was pleasantly surprised to see that the activity engaged
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Conversations with students are a highlight of many administrators’ day. Often, the conversation turns towards the child’s academic progress. During the first quarter of my first year at the middle school, I met with a child who had been given a homework assignment described as “progress report signed” for which he had received a grade
Read More… from Defining Grades: A Middle School’s Approach to Grading Reform
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Not everyone is comfortable with re-do’s and re-takes, which are more appropriately recognized as re-learning (or learning properly) and re-assessing. Some of us experience pushback when suggesting these practices to colleagues, then succumb to those pressures thereby denying their use in our classes. As a result, our students don’t learn the required content and skills.
Read More… from Re-Learning and Re-Assessing: Practical Tips
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It is time to reframe how we talk about this learning interruption There is a lot of discussion right now about the “learning loss” experienced by our students after a year of disrupted education. Yes – it is true that many students have not attended school in-person five days a week with immediate access to
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