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Providing ideas and resources for K-12 teachers and school-based administrators.
Episodes
Sunday Mar 16, 2014
Sunday Mar 16, 2014
The State of Georgia has a Statewide Longitudinal Data System. What's that? You don't know what that means?
Thursday Mar 06, 2014
Thursday Mar 06, 2014
Kelli is a recently retired public educator. She was a special education and general education teacher. She also served in many different capacities within public school systems. Her most recent role, prior to retiring and going to work for the Georgia Department of Education, was as the Director of K-12 Teaching and Learning for a large Atlanta school district. She now oversees the FIP or Formative Instructional Practices program which falls under the Division for Assessment and Accountability at the DOE.
FIP is based upon the work of Rick Stiggins, Jan and Steve Chappuis, and Judith Arter. According to Kelli, “It focuses on the formal and informal methods that teachers and students collect information about student learning. It is about the use of the information that is collected.”
Formative Assessment helps teachers to understand the strengths and weaknesses of their students. The collected information then enables the teachers to modify their instructional practices to address the needs of the kids.
One aspect of this program is that the teachers learn how to create learning targets based upon the standards for the unit content. These help the teacher understand what it is that needs to be taught.
Formative assessment is purposeful. The teacher creates activities that provide information about the understandings of the students. As a result, these activities typically are not graded and should not be graded. It shows what the students know or don’t know therefore, a grade cannot be administered.
The actual training for teachers happens through professional learning networks, overview sessions, and on-line modules. There are five on-line modules for teachers.
1. Overview of the Research about Formative Assessment
2. Learning Targets
3. Ways to Collect Evidence of Student Learning
4. Analyzing the Evidence of Student Learning/ Effective Feedback
5. Student Ownership of Learning/Peer Feedback
There are two additional modules: One for leadership personnel and another for coaches and teacher leaders.
Kelli recommends three books to help with understanding formative assessment:
Seven Strategies of Assessment for Learning
Jan Chappuis, Pearson Assessment Training Institute
©2010 • Pearson • Paper, 272 pp
Published 03/01/2009
Assessment Balance and Quality: An Action Guide for School Leaders, 3/E
Steve Chappuis, Carol Commodore, Rick J. Stiggins, Pearson Assessment Training Institute
Pearson • Paper, 240 pp Published 03/02/2010
Formative Assessment and Standards-Based Grading
Robert J. Marzano, Publisher: Marzano Research Laboratory
November 11, 2009
You can find more information about Georgia’s use of FIP at www.gadoe.org/fip or simply google Georgia FIP.
You can contact Kelli at
Phone: (404) 463-5047
Fax: (404) 656-5976
Email: Kharris-wright@doe.k12.ga.us
Length 34:09
Wednesday Feb 26, 2014
Wednesday Feb 26, 2014
Darby Jones is the CEO of Arts Now.
Darby comes from the classroom; He taught in an Atlanta middle
school for 10 years and he was the fine
arts department chair. During his teaching days he started working with The
High Museum of Art in Atlanta which lead to him working with the Atlanta
College of Art and then the Savannah College of Art and Design as an adjunct
professor in visual arts instruction.
ArtsNow is about integrating the arts into schools. Darby calls it, “A true collaborative.”
The program has local, state, and national support. It's not
seeking to replace arts in schools but instead is focused on the integration of the
arts in all content areas.
Darby comments that too often “kids learn in silos” and this
program breaks those down. It develops connections. It is about increasing
engagement. It helps make learning meaningful.
I had the pleasure of seeing the program in action with the
teachers and kids in an elementary school in Dublin City Schools, GA. The kids
were truly excited to be participating together and using the instructional
strategies. They were discovering and excited to be involved in the activities
throughout all content areas.
Find Darby and Arts Now on the web at www.artsnowlearning.org or on
facebook at Arts Now Learning where you can find contact links for Darby.
Length 29:34 minutes
Tuesday Feb 11, 2014
Tuesday Feb 11, 2014
This is our 10th episode!!! Yay!!!
Monday Feb 03, 2014
Monday Feb 03, 2014
Dr. Larry Cuban has been in education for over 5 decades! He
earned his PhD at Stanford and is an Emeritus Professor in Stanford’s Graduate
School of Education.
He is the author of
many books a few of which are: As Good as
it Gets: What School Reform Brought to Austin (2010), Hugging the Middle: How Teachers Teach in an Era of Testing and Accountability
(2008), The Blackboard and the Bottom
Line: Why Schools Can’t be Businesses (2007), Tinkering Toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform (with
David Tyack, 1997), Teachers and Machine:
The Classroom Use of Technology Since 1920 (1986).
This interview took place on the campus of the University of
Georgia this past fall. Dr. Cuban had just completed a key note presentation
with an audience of Georgia educators and Graduate students from the University
of Georgia.
Listen to him explain that what is the weakest link in
school reform is the implementation.
He uses the metaphor of the hurricane to compare the
political talk about school reform being like the swirling, turbulent winds at
the surface during the hurricane and the calm at the bottom of the ocean being
the implementation in the actual classroom.
He is very personable and I enjoyed our talk!
Take time to follow up with him on his blog. Check out his
books, they are excellent!
12:40