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Welcome to ETFO's new online resource, "ETFO Members Sharing in Assessment".

This website is dedicated to honouring and sharing the assessment tools used every day in Ontario classrooms.

ETFO has a strong position on the importance of classroom assessment and the information that teachers gather on a daily basis. ETFO sees this site as an opportunity to help members enhance their understanding of assessment and learn new strategies and approaches that are meaningful, well-organized and utilized by their peers in the classroom. Teacher expertise is "the foundation for increasing teacher quality and advancements in teaching and learning or this expertise becomes more widely available when accomplished teachers model and share best practices" (York-Barr & Duke, 2004). This site is a professional learning environment where teachers can share successful tools with one another. The website provides a collaborative platform that features a collection of examples of practical tools that ETFO teachers are using to make assessment work efficiently and effectively to enhance student learning.

ETFO recognizes the value of our members' wisdom and experience in all areas of their teaching practice and has long been an advocate for teacher professional judgement. Professional judgement is informed by professional knowledge of curriculum expectations, context, evidence of learning, methods of instruction and assessment, and the criteria and standards that indicate success in student learning.

Professional Judgment is now defined in our new central agreement. Section C. 2.5 of the Teacher/Occasional Teacher Central Agreement reads as follows:

"Professional Judgement" shall be defined as judgement that is informed by professional knowledge of curriculum expectations, context, evidence of learning, methods of instruction and assessment, and the criteria and standards that indicate success in student learning. In professional practice, judgement involves a purposeful and systematic thinking process that evolves in terms of accuracy and insight with ongoing reflection and self-correction.

Because this language is now written explicitly into our central agreement, ETFO believes that members have a valuable opportunity to make purposeful decisions about all areas of their practice and act upon these decisions with protections that they did not have before. ETFO members now have an opportunity to return some balance to their practice. Teacher professional judgement is the cornerstone of meaningful daily classroom assessment.

Teacher professional judgement also applies to diagnostic assessment. Diagnostic assessments are an important part of the craft of teaching and help to inform our instruction.

Section C.10.00 of the Teacher/Occasional Teacher Central Agreement states as follows:

C10.00

b) Teachers shall use their professional judgment as defined in C2.5 above. . The parties agree that a teacher's professional judgement is the cornerstone of assessment and evaluation.

c) ii. Teachers shall use their professional judgment to determine which assessment and/or evaluation tool(s) from the Board list of preapproved assessment tools is applicable, for which students(s), as well as the frequency and time of the tool. In order to inform their instruction, teachers must utilize diagnostic assessment during the school year.

This means that it is you as a classroom teacher who determines which diagnostic assessment tools to use, when to use them and how to use them. A class set of diagnostic data cannot be required.

This website has been designed to further inform ETFO members' professional knowledge and practice to build capacity and confidence. The ETFO Members Sharing in Assessment website aligns with the Ontario Ministry of Education Growing Success policy, 2010.

Why Assessment?
Classroom assessment serves different purposes at different times. Assessment is not an instrument or an event but a collection of practices with a common feature: "they all lead to some action that improves learning."
Chappuis, J. (2010). Seven Strategies For Assessment For Learning

Teachers gather assessment information through a variety of means; informal observations, learning conversations, conferences, group work, demonstrations, peer and self-assessments as well as tests and performance tasks. Research shows that Assessment for Learning and Assessment as Learning are powerful tools to improve student learning and can be especially powerful for students who struggle (Ministry of Education, Ontario 2011 Learning For All: Guide To Effective Assessment And Instruction For All Students).

ETFO Statement and Definition of Equity
It is the goal of the Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario to work with others to create schools, communities and a society free from all forms of individual and systemic discrimination. To further this goal, ETFO defines equity as fairness achieved through proactive measures which result in equality, promote diversity and foster respect and dignity for all.

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This website is dedicated to honouring and sharing the assessment tools used every day in Ontario classrooms. ETFO has a strong position on the importance of classroom assessment and the information that teachers gather on a daily basis.

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Assessment feedback

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a few slides of interest

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Family-friendly explanation about Edmodo as a portfolio of sorts

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download, save and modify to suit your needs

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The Lie of Average (Anne Davies, "Making Classroom Assessment Work")

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The Lie of Average (Anne Davies, "Making Classroom Assessment Work")

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In Making Classroom Assessment Work (2011), Davies uses an illustration first shared by Michael Burger (see figure I-1). Consider this: Three students are taking a course on how to pack a parachute. Imagine that the class average is represented by a dotted line. Student A initially scored very high, but his scores have dropped as the end of the course approaches. Student B’s evaluations are erratic. Sometimes he does very well, and sometimes he doesn’t. The teacher has a hard time predicting from day to day how he will do. Student C did very poorly in relation to the others in class for the first two-thirds of the course but has finally figured out how to successfully pack a parachute. Which of these students would you want to pack your parachute? Student A? Student B? Student C? Most people would choose Student C because they want the chute to open successfully; after all, a parachute course is standards based or outcomes based. The problem is that traditional thinking about grades and evidence of learning was in effect, so all numerical data was valued equally, with no professional judgment being made about which numerical data should be included and why. So, in the past, Student C did not pass the course. When his grades were tallied and averaged, they weren’t high enough. Student A and Student B did pass

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Notice how questions are linked to pre-established criteria

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Student Self Assessment

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Templates for anecdotal teacher observations

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Fundamental Principles

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Here's the link to the Assessment, Evaluation and Reporting section of the Edugains site!

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This website contains information and resources collaboratively developed with educators and school boards across the province. The vision of the Assessment Unit is an 'Assessment for Learning' culture in which every student and educator engages in an assessment process that promotes learning, agency and well-being in school, work and life.

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For those looking for a little more...

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In its various incarnations

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Last week, an online friend of mine sent me a private message via Google+:

The Facebook post my friend sent me showing how far my original graphic had been adapted.

My jaw hit the keyboard...that was my image, but it also wasn't my image. It was the concept behind my image, but completely redrawn (and by someone with actual artistic talent!). I was stunned...and delighted.

How did this happen? Back in 2012, shortly after the US elections, I had crafted up a graphic to illustrate my point in an argument I was having with a conservative activist. I was trying to clarify why, to me, "equal opportunity" alone wasn't a satisfactory goal and that we should somehow take into consideration equality of outcomes. I thought the easiest example of this concept is kids of different heights trying to see over a fence. So, I grabbed a public photo of Cincinnati's Great American Ball Park*, a stock photo of a crate, clip art of a fence, and then spent a half-hour or so in Powerpoint concocting an image that I then posted on Google+.

My original post (below) racked up around 3,000 +1s and over 1,000 shares, which was just amazing to me, especially given that Google+ was barely 18 months old and still fairly small as social sites go.

My original image - December 19, 2012 - https://plus.google.com/+CraigFroehle/posts/AdKcNKesXwa

I felt pretty satisfied, but I didn't consider what was happening to all those G+ reshares. Nor did I think about what might have been happening beyond G+.

The only hint I had early on that this might have a fairly broad audience was that Jonathan Haidt, a Professor of Ethical Leadership at NYU's Stern School of Business, contacted me a couple weeks after I posted the image to ask my permission to use it in his presentations and articles. Of course, as a fellow academic, I agreed. Here's an example of Dr. Haidt discussing the original image in a talk he gave at Duke University in March, 2013.

But, unbeknownst to me, as the Internet is so wonderfully amazing at doing, my original graphic was being adapted, modified, and repurposed in a mind-blowing variety of ways, and then shared and redistributed all over the place.

So, today, I decided to go back and use the magic of Google to see if I could track down some of its many variations and post them here quasi-chronologically. Note that this article documents just a tiny fraction of the thousands of instances where this image and its variations can be found across the Internet, and I can't be sure that any of the links below are the original places these images were first posted. If I missed any instances worth mentioning, please let me know.
ADAPTATIONS
There are literally hundreds (perhaps thousands) of different adaptations, most with wording changes, but some that actually manipulated the original image as well to convey a slightly different idea.

This early revision, posted within four months of mine, replaced my original words to differentiate equality from justice.

This equality/justice version became fairly widespread and was apparently used in at least one presentation:

More equality versus justice, this time on the Huffington Post in mid-2014...

In contrast, Joe Bower got straight to the point differentiating equality from fairness in this mid-2013 adaptation that also stripped off all my original wording.

Another version (crazily enough, this appears to be a photo of a poster??) also saw this issue as one of equality versus fairness.

Verbiage contrasting equality versus equity seems like the most popular version of my graphic, as this early example shows. Note that someone added some kind of white watermark or logo of their own in the middle of my original image. :-[

Later in 2013, Shafin Verani integrated my images into a Slideshare presentation entitled "Matters Related to Gender in the Quran."

In late 2014, it was adapted again and posted on https://outfront.org/strategicplan in this form, with the footnote as shown:

Note: This image was adapted from the original graphic: http://indianfunnypicture.com/img/2013/01/Equality-Doesnt-Means-Justice-Facebook-Pics.jpg

That footnote suggests that the first wording changes happened in January 2013, pretty soon after I posted the original.

In a 2015 DailyKos story, it attributed my image as follows: "Equity image credit: Please note, this image was adapted from an image adapted by the City of Portland, Oregon, Office of Equity and Human Rights from the original graphic: http://indianfunnypicture.com" Well, no, not exactly. ;-p

A version (and then versions) with extensive wording clearly spelling out what people thought the lesson should be began appearing, often with minor tweaks to phrasing to reflect the adapter's particular take on the matter, such as this one that was fairly widely shared:

One teacher even felt compelled to print out that version for her classroom:

My original image was even dissected (maybe using MS-Paint?) and integrated into a video poem about equality and equity.

In another example of tweaking the original image, leave it to the Aussies to replace my baseball background scene with a cricket match (and to also get some girls involved):

And some people disagreed with having to look over a fence in the first place:
REINTERPRETATIONS
Not satisfied with manipulating my images and words, many have gone on to create their own versions out of whole cloth. Here are some examples.

In June of 2014, blogger (and artist!) Mary at "Off She Goes" adapted the concept into a multi-part lesson on the differences between equality and equity using girls standing at a fence (not looking at anything in particular). The below image (adapted from Mary's original post) was reblogged at http://www.jtolds.com/writing/2015/11/equity-vs-equality/ in late 2015.

My only complaint about this otherwise charming rendition is that the equity side has more boxes than the equality side, making it inherently more resource-intensive. That doesn't seem like a fair criticism of equity, which is why I made sure to simply reallocate the boxes in my original rather than introducing more.

This version with apple trees first (as far as I can tell) appeared in a 2014 Saskatoon Health Region report to illustrate how equity/fairness can be useful in ensuring health and wellness for everyone. And yes, again, there are now more boxes on the equity side. [sigh]

That same image was then reused on several other sites, such as this article on equality and equity using fantasy football (??) as a metaphor.

And here's just a blatant example of re-use without attribution. Good going, United Way! /s

Sometime in 2014, the Annie E. Casey Foundation published its " Race Equity and Inclusion Action Guide," which included a variation on the original graphic. The Annie E. Casey Foundation describes itself as "a private philanthropy that creates brighter futures for the nation's children by developing solutions to strengthen families, building paths to economic opportunity and transforming struggling communities into safer and healthier places to live, work and grow." If I was able to help them advance their mission even a tiny amount, I'm overjoyed.

Actually, I was led to that Annie E. Casey Foundation publication by way of this late-2015 post that reused their adaptation of my image. I was touched by this comment they included: "This little graphic has helped us to think about equity vs equality. "

This next one appears to be the product of someone in the Portland, Oregon Office of Equity and Human Rights, because Google only knows of one instance of it on the Web. Nicely done, whoever you are.

In yet another reimagining, one blog used the equality/equity difference as a way of differentiating egalitarianism from feminism. It's amazing how many ways there are to reinterpret this core concept, and apparently there are nearly as many labels for it.

And on that same theme of feminism is this (perhaps not-so-serious) extension. Sucks to be that poor red-haired kid now. :-(

The Association of American Colleges and Universities used still another variation in a slideshow titled "Step Up and Lead for Equity: What Higher Education Can Do to Reverse Our Deepening Equity Divides":

The Metropolitan Council for the Minneapolis-St. Paul region used the following variation (apples again!) in its late-2015 website update about the role of equity in long-term urban planning.

Even UNICEF (the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund) in Australia came up with yet another adaptation, this time with two kids hoping to see a sunrise (or maybe a sunset). Once again, though, additional boxes magically appear.

The La Crosse Tribune (La Cross, Wisconsin) posted this version on December 31, 2015, apparently drawn by Mike Tighe, the paper's in-house artist. I find the description a bit shocking: "This graphic and variations of it commonly are used by health educators..." Commonly?!? Holy cow...this image was only about 3 years old at this point. In this version, the stepstools magically reproduce:

An Oregon literacy program recently used an adapted version of my graphic, but cleverly employed two kids reaching for books as the context.

Earlier this year, the Interaction Institute for Social Change hired an artist to redraw my original image as a comic, with the stunning results below:

Thanks to Tonya Love (@tdlove5) for pointing me towards the source of that fantastic reimagining.

And, of course, the Internet only needs a millisecond or two to come up with an even newer take:

Indeed. Or this one:

Hmm.

I'm not exactly sure this next one is consistent with any of the previous messages, given that all kids really should be getting great teaching and individual support. Hmm...

And the most recent new interpretation I found was this really nicely drawn version. I just hope those kids don't get in trouble for stealing extra books to stand on.
CRITIQUES
But, as with anything, it was not universally appreciated. There were more than a few critiques and condemnations of my original image as well as of some of the variations that appeared. For example...

Curiously, there was no shortage of complaints that the kids were just freeloaders and should buy a ticket to be inside the stadium if they want to watch the game. Which, I think, entirely misses the point.
CONCLUSIONS
I am giddy at the thought that this little graphic I cooked up has helped so many people think about this issue and spawned so many conversations in just the past few years. Personally, I'm not at all upset that it's been modified and extended and redone in so many ways (well, except for putting your own watermark on someone else's work...that's just kind of douchey) - in fact, I'm delighted because that just makes it that much more useful to people. The Internet's ability to take a meme and quickly run it through a massively parallel evolutionary process is both fascinating and awe-inspiring. We all benefit from the free and open exchange of ideas, and I'm just glad this image has been part of that exchange.

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Updates since this article was first published:

May 13, 2016: Some friends notified me of the following extension posted on Twitter (and on Google+) by different people, and it uses the original two frames to motivate a third option and conclusion. Clever! Original source unknown.

May 23, 2016: Continuing along that same thread is this graphic, which I found posted on Twitter last month. I'm not sure if the Center for Story-Based Strategy created this extended version of Angus Maguire's original art or merely co-opted it from somewhere else.

May 26, 2016: Well, this story just keeps evolving (amazing!). Angus Maguire, the artist mentioned above, reached out via Twitter to update me on his collaboration with this meme and the IISC. He said this:

@CRA1G Thanks of much for your work here, on the original and on this history! I wanted to add a few notes to your comprehensive review... The @smartMeme (Center for Story-based Strategy) version you added in the update was a collab with me and @IISCBlog... and because of all the in-the-wild remixes we were finding, we also created two other evolutions, at http://www.the4thbox.com [which] has two versions: digital kit with layers for remixing, and a paper-based cut out activity for workshops... you might add #the4thbox to your history, if you have a chance! Thanks again. It's great to connect with you!

May 4, 2016 - Angus and IISC's extended remix of the equality/equity meme at https://twitter.com/IISCBlog/status/727891199957315585 or http://interactioninstitute.org/the4thbox-cutout/

Since this meme seems to show no signs of fading away in the near future, I'll post more updates here as I hear about them.

June 1, 2016: I just stumbled across this variant, apparently posted sometime in 2014 on a Slovakian website. Nice artwork, although the lack of hands and pointy stump-arms have me weirded out a teensy bit. Also, did the blue box on the left suddenly become pink, or did they get rid of the blue one and fetched a second pink one so the kid with the backpack doesn't have to stand on mismatched boxes?

Also, I found this rather funny comic strip by Kent Bulmer offering commentary on the concept of my original meme. He also has some discussion about it, including wondering about the meme's origin; check it out on the comic's webpage.

Finally (today), I found this minimalist variant. It was posted on LinkedIn by Bernard Tyson, Chairman and CEO of Kaiser Permanente, one of the US's largest healthcare organizations. In discussing the need for better healthcare options for all Americans, he explains the graphic this way:

Let me explain. Imagine you're standing behind a tall fence outside a ballpark. You're with some friends of varied height and you all want to watch the game. You see some milk crates nearby, all the same size, and the group decides to stand on the crates. But the shortest person still can't see over the fence to watch the game. So all three friends received equal lift, but the outcome was that only two people got to see the game. This example explains the importance of focusing on equity as part of equality.

June 25, 2016: Someone sent me a link to a blog post showing probably the most minimalist take on my graphic yet (the post also includes some discussion worth reading if this general topic interests you):

And then there's this extension, about which I'm not quite sure what to think:

And this original image, which (oddly) doesn't include contrasting ideas:

And another original (minimalist) reinterpretation...

And here's another new version, which appeared on an architecture blog. I never thought about how architecture might relate to equality and equity, but it totally makes sense that it would...and should.

Voices for Utah Children, a youth advocacy non-profit, used this rendition on its website. You could also interpret this to mean that we shouldn't put up fences blocking the view of amazing natural vistas in the first place.

An education advocacy group used this version, which somewhat misses the point of the original. Why does the little girl on the right need to be higher? She can already reach the chalkboard in the top panel. Does being on two stools instead of just one magically make her able to do addition??

And here's a critique of not just my original image, but of all variants. I'll quote the choice part:

The problem with the picture is in its implicit bias that many do not see. If we believe, fundamentally, that all people regardless of race, class or creed are comparably able, there should be little difference between the individuals in this picture. What should be drawn as dissimilar are not the individuals but rather the bottom boxes they are standing on in the first frame.

While I fully appreciate the intended purpose of the image, its point regrettably rests upon a deeply ingrained belief of the inherent inequality of people. And, despite the sincere explicit intention for increasing understanding, empathy, and justice for redressing social inequities, the picture's sentiment implicitly reinforces the idea that minorities (or those otherwise unprivileged) have inferior abilities.

I can see her point, but I disagree with it for two reasons. First, and most obviously, people do actually differ on their abilities. Short people and people who have chronic lung disease will have a much, much harder time playing professional basketball than tall, healthy people. People with below-average intelligence or just a high-school education, while still able to pursue a great many careers, may never be able to get a job as a physics professor. People who are less creative may just not be able to compete for a job in one of the many careers that rely extensively on creativity. We all have strengths and weaknesses - that's part of what makes each of us unique. To pretend that we're all equally capable of doing everything equally successfully is not only untrue, it's unhelpful.

Second, the kids' height differences were not intended to represent differences only in their innate characteristics. They were meant to symbolize any kind of advantage/disadvantage/difference, whether temporary (e.g., being between jobs or injured) or long-term (e.g., age, height, education level) or permanent (race, gender identity, etc.). But, frankly, most of those differences are much more challenging to represent pictorially than kids of different heights. Just realize that this one difference is meant to represent any kind of difference, be it personal or situational. I hope that clarifies my intent.

And finally (for today), the Connecticut Fair Housing Center used an original variation on my theme for its fair housing poster contest (click the link below the image for more info; sadly, the deadline has already passed).

July 6, 2016: The meme has crossed the oceans! A friend (thanks, Bryan!) notified me of this variation in German. If anyone can translate the essence of this into English, I'd be grateful.

Update on the German version! Vaughn wrote in with this translation:
Often, what one believes to be right is not what is really right. Left: equality (could also be translated equal rights) Right: justice
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An eagle-eyed baseball fan clued me in to the fact that the baseball image I ended up using wasn't actually from Great American Ballpark, despite my search terms. It's of Angels Stadium in Anaheim.

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If you wish to cite this story, feel free to use this citation:
Froehle, CM. The evolution of an accidental meme. Medium.com, 2016. Accessed at https://medium.com/@CRA1G/the-evolution-of-an-accidental-meme-ddc4e139e0e4 on [date]

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My jaw hit the keyboard...that was my image, but it also wasn't my image. It was the concept behind my image, but completely redrawn (and by someone with actual artistic talent!). I was stunned...and...

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Feel free to download this word doc, modify and save.

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Agenda for our three days together, and a template to collect info about various strategies used

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Word doc - download and save a copy, or use the hard copy provided

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Begin here, and add your 2 cents worth!

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Try it out with your students!

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a blog post reflecting on the role of descriptive feedback

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Teaching as an act of social justice was a concept frequently discussed among staff during my time at Tyndale in the early years of their Teacher Ed program. The idea of service leadership through teaching was one that seemed like a good match in theory. Over the past few years, back in the high needs classroom environments I so enjoy, I've been wrestling with how best to make this theory a reality.

Of particular interest to me has been the assessment lens.

lens image reblogged from finepix
High Expectations for All
A colleague from the Ministry of Education's Assessment Branch recently suggested that I think about "how assessment can offer support for closing gaps in student outcomes for groups of students who are doing less well than others: e.g., LD students, FNMI students, students in Applied math", etc. In particular, she encouraged me to consider how can we have high expectations for the achievement of all students? "We cannot have equity of outcomes", she noted, "unless we start with equity of expectations."

My colleague suggested that this would mean fewer modified expectations, but, perhaps, greater access to accommodations to meet the expectations.

And indeed, that philosophy does seem to align with the guiding principles from Growing Success. But what does that actually look, sound and feel like in practice in a real life classroom?

Increasingly, I am thinking about not only how we assess, but what we assess. Sure, I can have a student conference with me about her understanding in math, rather than write a math test, and I can ask another student to create and send me an Adobe Voice file telling me about the book we read together, rather than a written recount or summary... but at the end of the day, if the math task involved designing and describing dream house floor plans, and the book we read promoted themes of patriarchy, colonialism and hetero-normativity when my student is a transgender black kid from a fundamentalist family living with poverty, then I would argue that even the most differentiated assessment methods may be, well, equitable!

I'm not saying that my students have to immediately connect on a visceral level with every task I give them -- indeed, I would be the first to say that one advantage of public education is the opportunity for students from all walks of life to be exposed to all manner of new schema... but there has to be some saliency at least of the time! some

In this regard, assessment and curriculum are inextricably linked.

What's Important?
I also feel like although learning to read and write and "do math" (whatever that means) and just generally become a literate citizen is still important, the very definition of literacy itself is changing. What students need to be "competent" at in order to lead successful, fulfilling lives in the 21 Century is vastly different than the skills our parents and grandparents needed to thrive.

As page 10 of this new resource from the Ministry notes, "Studies in health and well-being have found that characteristics such as perseverance, grit, and tenacity are sometimes a more accurate predictor of success than IQ scores. For example, among intrapersonal competencies, the characteristic of conscientiousness (a tendency to be organized, responsible, and hardworking) is "most highly correlated with desirable educational, career, and health outcomes" (Pellegrino & Hilton, 2012, pp. 4-5).

While some jobs still require "knowledge" and basic arithmetic skills, increasingly, the working world demands skills like effective collaboration and teamwork, creativity and problem solving, responsibility, positive attitude, the ability (and demonstrated desire) to learn continuously.

How to divide fractions can be googled. Developing tenacity? Well...

The Role of Descriptive Feedback

I believe that offering students timely, specific feedback can help to develop growth mindset, perseverance and an interest in learning. It also models a collaborative spirit: When I take the time to offer my students feedback, I am suggesting that we are partners in learning, that we are in this together, and can help each other figure it out.

​For example, when two of my students recently submitted this "product" in response to a call to explain their understanding of area measurement after a class activity we had engaged in earlier in the day: https://voice.adobe.com/a/BBO3L/ I recognized the value of what they had created, while also identifying the gaps in mathematical understanding.

It was their first time ever using this app, and I thought they did a fantastic job of collaborating, especially considering that both students have special learning needs.

The task had been to define the concept of area.

My feedback?
What an engaging multi-media product you have created to share your current understanding of area! You've defined the concept of area reasonably well, using relevant words and symbols. Next steps: Include the type of unit it is measured in (square units), and describe whether and how the area of different shapes can be found using the same or similar methods (formulas).
For another student who had written a short paragraph noting that area was simply the "inside of a shape", I offered this confirmation and provocation to stretch their thinking: You are right, area is the inside of a shape. How is it calculated? What units are used? Is there a formula that works for ALL shapes? Why or why not?

Taking the time to provide specific feedback and appropriate challenge to move students forward in their thinking, wherever they are, is an example of equitable assessment. Not every student will get identical feedback, but every student will get what they need to move ahead. And, if the purpose of assessment is to improve student learning, then isn't this the whole point?
Gaining Learner Trust
A student in my class recently told me I was the best mentor in the whole world! We'd had some guest speakers in who were talking about mentorship, and after defining what it meant to have a mentor and to be a mentor, students were invited to share their own "mentor stories" if they wanted to.

This student has significant learning needs, and superficially presents as much "lower" than grade level. The more I got to know this student, however, the more I wondered to what degree their learning needs and subsequent anxiety were interfering with their ability to truly show what they knew.

I suspected that the student knew more than they were currently able to show, and I treated the student with respect, dignity and love. Assessment became a conversation we had, over many weeks and months, about what was "important" for the student to show me, and how I could best support that student in showing me.

Not only is this student showing a significant improvement in achieving many grade level expectations in various subject areas, but they are also smiling considerably more than they were in the fall.

The student's explanatory comments that accompanied their "Ms. Teschow for Mentor of the Year" story underscored the role that gaining their trust had played in earning this title in their eyes!
Communication & Collaboration: Diversity in Action
My students bring a rich diversity of culture, language, and personal schema into our classroom, and as a public educator, I feel compelled to honour this diversity and build on it -- not just within the classroom, but beyond it as well.

reblogged from diversipro

The Ministry of Education document referenced above notes that "Communication in a 21st century context refers not only to the ability to "communicate effectively, orally, in writing, and with a variety of digital tools" but also to "listening skills" (Fullan, 2013, p. 9)

The range of ability and experience in my classroom makes practising and developing these competencies a breeze! We do a lot of talk and paraphrase in my room, since my students have such diverse experiences to share and connect to in-class learning activities.

Digital technology is our tool of choice when it comes to collaborating and sharing our learning with others.

We recently begun collaborating with a class in Perth, Australia, to learn more about one another's cultures and currency, and to develop our financial literacy. Students who had never used a computer with any regularity until this schoolyear are commenting on one another's work, are creating Thinglinks, Animotos and other Media products that include input from students on the other side of the world, and are chastising their cross-global peers when an assigned deadline is not met!
Needed: More Time
Learning ourselves so we can model for our students, providing descriptive feedback rather than a mark on a page, and getting to know our students multiple identities as learners, as people, as citizens takes TIME, and it ofte seems as though there is never enough of it!

If I could change just one thing about public education, it would be the amount of time we have to prepare for and spend with each student. (I would do this by drastically reducing class size, particularly in socio-economically challenging school communities, and by ditching the provincial report card in its current incarnation, but that's all fodder for another blog post, and one I may never get to write!!!) Freeing up more time for teachers to read, research and collaborate with colleagues, and to spend directly with their students, supporting their learning, would -- in my opinion -- profoundly change (for the better!) the access that students have to robust assessment opportunities with their teachers.

If we don't make space for our students to explore the future with the guidance and supports they need to do so effectively, and offer them the descriptive feedback they need to progress along the way, we risk inadequately preparing them for that future.

Teaching as an act of social justice can be extremely rewarding, especially in concert with equitable assessment practice. But to do it effectively is incredibly time-consuming. Time for pedagogical self development would be an excellent first step to achieving better outcomes for our students!

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Teaching as an act of social justice was a concept frequently discussed among staff during my time at Tyndale in the early years of their Teacher Ed program. The idea of service leadership through teaching was one that seemed like a good match in theory.

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a blog post with some examples

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I'd been talking about descriptive feedback, and moving away from letter grades and percentages (based on research that demontrates that marks actually interfere with student learning), and sharing a criteria-linked observation recording template. Despite the research in favour of timely, descriptive feedback, teachers in Ontario are still forced to report with letter grades twice a year. So how, the teacher at my workshop wanted to know, do we translate our descriptive feedback and anecdotal comments into a mark on the report card?
Report Card Marks, Translated
A further look at what an "A", a "B" or a "C" even means may be in helpful here. Since in Ontario, we evaluate student work in accordance with curriculum expectations (as opposed on grading on a bell curve) Levels 1-4 and Letter Grades A-D have very specific meanings.

Because we're not ranking students, but rather, assessing and reporting on how well their work demonstrates the grade level (or possibly modified, if they're on an IEP) expectations, we use letter grades to synthesize and label this description: A Level 4 (or A), for example, is basically a shortened way of saying, Hey, this student's work shows most or all of the criteria for assignments, tests or class work. The student consistently does them really well ('proficiently" or "to a high degree").

A B (or a Level 3) indicate that the student demonstrates most of the expected criteria considerably well, a good portion of the time. A student working through Level 2 would earn a C, demonstrating that work is getting close to meeting the grade level expectations, and a D, or a Level 1, would indicate that a student is just beginning the journey towards meeting grade level expectations.

Even percentages, used to report on Grade 7 & 8 report cards, are aligned with these 4 levels (Growing Success, page 40), and in an attempt to make assessment more holistic at the intermediate/senior levels, many boards have even taken to using anchor marks, where a B, for example, is given a certain specified percentage.
Spinning Gold from Straw...
Given that marks therefore basically describe the degree to which a student's work meets a set of pre-determined criteria, teachers should be able to translate comments to marks with relative ease.

I recently had a unique opportunity to practise what I am preaching here.
... Even in a Pinch!
As I am often out of my classroom due to various professional projects I am invited to participate in at the board or provincial level, I try to work closely with a regular OT to almost "co-teach" (or at least co-plan for) our class curriculum. This term, that included my OT assigning a small group research project to the students in my class. They'd been learning about substance use and abuse, and about addictive behaviours. My OT and I decided that the students would work in groups to develop and deliver a short multi-media presentation about a drug they had researched. The OT and my students worked together to develop and record a list of criteria according to which their presentations would be evaluated. Shortly before the day they were to present and be assessed on their work, my regular OT got a long-term contract to the end of the school year, and had to cancel the rest of the dates I had booked her in!

A new OT took over the job, and -- with a little guidance from me and the help of my students who by now have been well-trained in the process -- she stepped fairly seamlessly into the gap and assessed the students' presentations.

The feedback she offered them was directly linked to the criteria they had co-constructed, and her observations were noted in considerable detail on a template I had developed and sent her ahead of time.

The comments were detailed (and distinct!) enough for me to translate into marks for both Language and Health. I recorded the corresponding letter grades in my marks folder on my iPad with relative ease, and also made a few relevant notes in the folder were I collect anecdotal evidence to inform my learning skills comments when reporting. Then I cut each student's comments from the farthest column on the right and pasted them into their online portfolio on Edmodo, where they had submitted the presentations they'd created, so that they could see their specific feedback (and so that their families could also read how they had done on the assignment in my absence).
Holistic Reporting
While I am still cautiously optimistic that the formal process of reporting to families in this province will one day encompass a less contrived (and less stress-inducing!!) and more wholesome approach, I do rest more comfortably in the fact that even with the existing letter grades we are obliged to assign twice a year, assessment-literate students and their families can read between the lines and find specific feedback to inform their future learning goals.

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From Descriptive Feedback to Report Card Marks

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I'd been talking about descriptive feedback, and moving away from letter grades and percentages (based on research that demontrates that marks actually interfere with student learning), and sharing a criteria-linked observation recording template. Despite the research in favour of timely, descriptive feedback, teachers in Ontario are still forced to report with letter grades twice a year.

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A blog post I wrote, in which I share a few ideas...

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My tech journey this year has led me through Edmodo to the Google suite. Recently, I have adopted with gusto a few GAFEs, and for those of you who -- like me -- are still newcomers to ed tech, I wanted to share a few ways I've used these resources in my Grade 6 classroom this term...
1. Science: Class-Wide Google Doc
Recently, we completed a study of Electricity in Science. Students read about and built circuits as well as simple motors. The latter were designed using a magnet, a battery and a wire. We used an experiment guide from U of T Physic Department, and consulted multiple YouTube videos for inspiration and guidance.

​While students worked in pairs and small groups, I circulated the classroom, snapping photos, offering assistance and recording my observations. Afterwards, I posted a few of the photos into a Google Doc and shared it with my class, inviting comments on one or more photos. (And yes, I discovered you can change the background colour, and quickly availed myself of that feature, hehe.)

Communication is a critical component of the Science curriculum, and in my classroom, it's a particularly important part of the program, as so many of my students are either new to English, or have special learning needs, or both, and struggle with the academic language.

​As the unit progressed, one of my occasional teachers (OT) co-created (with the students) a list of vocabulary relevant to the study of electricity. We added to said list throughout the unit, and it remained posted while the students completed this assignment.

I also gave them some sentence starters on the first page of the doc, so that in essence, they could cut and paste these right into their comment, and then complete them using their own ideas and -- hopefully -- relevant words from our vocab list. (Using sentence starters is a wonderful way to scaffold for English language learners, and I have found it quite beneficial in supporting my students to complete both oral and written reflections in a wide variety of curricular areas.)

This was the first time I had used a Google doc with my whole class, and I really found the comment feature quite beneficial: Since it was shared through my board google acct, every student had to be logged in to access it, which meant that I could automatically see who had written each comment.

Students could also see and read one another's comments, and build on what others had written.

I tried to read as many comments as possible, and respond by asking questions to stretch their thinking or further clarify what they had written.

I can see many applications for such an assignment, particularly as it includes visuals, which would be super helpful for students who may have been absent from school and missed the experiment/activity.
2. Global Digital Collaboration
Another way I've used Google Docs (and Slides) is to foster collaboration among peers beyond the physical classroom: Earlier this year, I met a teacher online, on Edmodo. She was from Australia, and was looking for a colleague from another English-speaking country to collaborate with on a financial literacy project.

After some initial mucking about online, our two classes got serious, and became involved in a two-month project that would encourage the students to research and compare taxes in their respective countries, develop savings plans, and more, using Google docs or slides to share their work. We co-created the assignment and rubric (and alternates for our modified students) to encompass math, literacy, media and learning skills.

We posted everyone's work on a Padlet, so that students could see one another's work and be inspired to do their best throughout the assignment period.

It's been exciting to watch the work unfold, and the results have been quite amazing!

Below are a few screen shots from various groups' projects... you will see how they have incorporated the use of tables to organize their work, and how they are developing their mathematical communication skills for various tasks.

I also love how they have started using the comments as a chat feature, and are developing real working relationships with their peers across the globe!

The time difference has made live chat a challenge, but every now and again, my Australian colleague and I will discover a few students who have been on simultaneously early in the morning or late at night in their respective countries, and thus are able to chat in real time.

More information about this project can be found here and here.

3. Class Surveys Using Google Forms

My third and final use of GAFE this term has been the discovery of Google Forms. Using forms, I have created both assessment observation checklists and also full class surveys.

Recently, I created a survey about student involvement at school this year, both in terms of extra curricular and in-class leadership. More than 80% of the class completed the survey, and the data I collected was extremely helpful to me as I was writing my learning skills comments for report cards.

I particularly liked how one could include images within the survey; I elected to throw in a meme here in there to make the kids smile and to keep them motivated to complete the survey (it was quite lengthy, and a few needed help with reading/understanding the questions).

I even included a clever meme and silly "bonus" question at the end (which 90% of respondents answered "correctly", hehe)...

I'm now using forms to develop a survey to collect students' reflections on our use of technology as a learning tool this year, and I have already created two surveys to send out to participants in my summer programs, in order to plan better, more customized workshops for my colleagues.

I can see students using google forms in many capacities, particularly in the Data Management strand of math. Data collected is automatically disaggregated, or can be seen en masse, and Google instantly creates pie charts and other visuals. These could be analyzed by students in class.
Onwards with Technology
As I reflect on how my chosen profession has evolved since I began my career in 1998, excited when I got my own overhead projector and set of acetates in my classroom at the time, I am amazed by the leaps and bounds with which technology has changed the teaching and learning landscape.

While the plethora of tools and resources can sometimes be overwhelming, and navigating them requires a strong commitment to critical literacy, it is certainly an exciting time to be an educator. I'm excited to have had the opportunity to play with GAFE in my classroom this year, before heading to my next adventure in public education in September.

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My tech journey this year has led me through Edmodo to the Google suite. Recently, I have adopted with gusto a few GAFEs, and for those of you who -- like me -- are still newcomers to ed tech, I...

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SAMR and TPACK Models

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Participating in a little professional learning with Crystal Lake through OTF... love the video she shared of the SAMR model -- explained by students!

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A few words from President Sam Hammond

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President Hammond discusses teachers' use of professional judgement.

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Student Identity

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Asking Effective Questions

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Culturally Responsive Pedagogy

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Pedagogical Documentation Revisited

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Poverty & Schooling