Learning Project Day ELA

1. Learning Project DayELA January 26, 2011

2. Purpose for coming together • Refine our understanding of ELA and how the new curriculum imagines learning for students • Review additional support materials for unit and year planning • Explore formative assessment, feedback, summative assessment and reporting • Provide time to plan and design assessments

3. Learning project day #2 • ELA is unique in many ways. • We have so much to cover in such a short time so a Learning Project Day #2 will be offered on April 6. • At that time, we will put all the pieces together (curriculum, planning supports, assessment, learning plan) and work together to advance our planning.

4. Agenda 9:00 – 9:10 Welcome and introduction 9:10 – 9:40 Activating prior knowledge 9:40 – 10:00 ELA key points 10:00 – 10:20 Planning supports review 10:20 – 10:30 Destination partners and coffee 10:30 – 10:45 Assessment introduction 10:45 – 11:30 Rubric inquiry 11:30 – 12:00 Rubric design 12:00 – 12:45 Lunch 12:45 – 1:20 Making rubrics 1:20 – 1:50 Formative assessment, feedback and learning plans 1:50 – 2:00 Curriculum Corner 2:00 – 2:10 Coffee 2:10 – 3:00 Work, Parking Lot and “Final go round”

5. Essential Question Pre-assessment • In groups of four, consider the questions on your table and record your thoughts (15 minutes) • Whole group de-brief (10 minutes) • Transfer unanswered questions to the Parking Lot (5 minutes)

6. English language arts: Key points What is this subject all about?

7. Goal Areas • Compose and create - expressive strand and includes speaking, representing and writing • Comprehend and respond – receptive strand and includes listening, viewing and reading • Assess and reflect – reflecting on self and others and setting goals for language learning

8. emphasis • In the C and C goal area, the greatest emphasis rests on the work students do before producing a product • In C and R, this emphasis shifts to the work students do during their interaction with texts

9. Goal area connections • Children demonstrate their learning and understanding in the receptive strands (comprehend and respond) through expressive means (compose and create). • Example: I show I can comprehend what I read by talking about it, writing down my thoughts and representing myself through drawings, charts, diagrams, videos and so on. • Therefore: You cannot teach each goal area in isolation. • EVERYTHING IS CONNECTED

10. Contexts • Broaden and deepen students’ understanding of themselves, others, life and the world • Language learning happens within a context…we communicate and think about things -not as isolated skills

11. Minimum of five units in five contexts Five Contexts: Personal and Philosophical Social, cultural and historical Imaginative and literary Communicative Environmental and technological

12. Students need opportunities to: • Learn to use language • Learn about language • Learn through language

13. What we do with students before, during and after engaging in a text will determine their growth, engagement and success.

14. What is a learning strategy? • Learning strategies are the thoughts and actions we engage in, consciously or not, to learn new information. • The goal of explicitly teaching learning strategies is to help students consciously and metacognitively focus on how they learn so they apply strategies before, during, and after engaging with texts across all subject areas. Students, over time, will develop skill in using multiple strategies which they can then independently apply to new and different situations.

15. So how is a learning strategy different from an instructional strategy?

16. We must continually ask ourselves if our students are thinking and learning, and what we need to do differently in order to help them.

17. Planning Supports Key elements

18. How do these supports help? • Unit planner – 6 strands • BDA charts – focus on learning strategies, essential questions, enduring understandings and knowledge • Sorting documents – menu for tracking learning; tasks, strategies and criteria

19. Destination partners • Find your destination partner sheet • Sign up four different people for your four different pairings

20. Assessment How do we define assessment and what tools should we use?

22. Find your Argentina partner. • Consider: • What is authentic assessment? • Why do we assess? • What do we assess?

23. Authentic assessment • Authentic assessment clearly assesses the outcomes in a context that reflects the actual learning experience. In other words, we assess in the exact same way we have invited students to learn. • Authentic assessment also invites us to ask how students may come to apply the knowledge and skills they have gained and assess them based on that information.

24. Assessment plan An assessment plan clarifies the learning destinations through establishing criteria. It clarifies how evidence of learning will be collected – through products, observations and conversations. An assessment plan is realized over the course of an entire unit and, ultimately, over the course of a year. It aims to provide multiple opportunities for students to demonstrate their learning. It clarifies how students will be assessed formatively and summatively, how they will be offered feedback and how their progress will be reported.

25. In the North East School Division we believe: • that effective instruction depends on high quality assessment. Therefore, we expect all assessments to provide accurate and timely information about student achievement. Each assessment must adhere to standards of quality that all staff know and follow. • the primary purpose of assessment is to improve student learning. It is the expectation of the NESD that all assessments will be directly linked to specific student learning outcomes, use assessment methodology appropriate for the subject/grade level, and will allow for the effective communication of results. • that assessment can serve as a powerful form of instruction. By involving students in the assessment and evaluation of their own achievement under direct supervision, teachers can use assessment and feedback to help students progress towards meeting the expected learning outcomes for each subject, at each grade level. • that a variety of assessment tools are considered appropriate for use within the NESD.Any ‘grade’ should include varied forms of assessment. • that a differentiated approach allows all students to be assessed on student learner outcomes in a manner that is appropriate to each individual. • that achievement and behavior should be assessed and reported separately.

26. When thinking like an assessor, we ask… When thinking like an activity (only) designer, we ask… Two approaches to thinking about assessment • What would be sufficient and revealing evidence of understanding? • What are the different types of evidence I can use to assess student learning? • Against what criteria will I consider work and assess quality? • Did the assessments reveal and distinguish those who really understood from those who only seemed to? Do I know why mistakes were made? • What would be fun and interesting activities on this topic? • What projects might students want to do? • What tests should I give based on the content I taught? • How will I give students a mark and justify it to their parents? • How well did the activities work? • How did students do on the test? Wiggins and McTighe (2005)

28. Looking at rubrics • Remain with your Argentina partner and look at the four rubric samples provided. • All four rubrics were designed to assess the same task. • Consider: • What task are these rubrics assessing? • What values do these rubrics communicate? What do they say is most important about this task?

29. Sticky note brainstorm5 minutes Using the same rubrics, write down your observations, comments or questions about the rubrics provided. Put one idea/ sticky note.

30. Sharing10 minutes Join with another pair. Share your sticky notes with each other. Sort sticky notes into general categories of commentary/ questions.

31. Here’s what/ so what/ now what 10 minutes Choose three and use the following prompts to reflect: 1) Here’s what we notice… 2) So what does this say about rubrics/assessment/ learning, etc.? 3) Now what we propose is… Be prepared to share 5 minutes

32. Criteria • Ask yourself: What will students need to do in order to demonstrate the knowledge and skills required in this outcome?

33. Performance Standards • How will I know how far and deep they need to travel in their understanding? • What is the continuum of learning for this outcome? What will it look like? • How can I help myself and others come to understand how learning progresses?

34. Two types of rubrics: • Holistic rubric – Provides an overall impression of a student’s work. These rubrics yield a single score or rating for a product or performance. • Analytic rubric – Divides a product or performance into distinct traits or dimensions and judges each separately.

35. Compose and create • Message – clear and specific • Organization – coherent and clear • Ideas and information (grade four only) – complete and support message • Language and conventions – appropriate for audience and purpose

36. Comprehend and respond Grade four: • Ideas and information – retell and explain • Text structures and features – recognize and understand role in message • Respond to and interpret texts – using support and evidence

37. Grade five: • Ideas and information – understand, retell and explain • Text structures and features – analyze • Respond to and analyze texts – support from text, personal experience and research

38. Linking it back to criteria Sorting sheet Process/ Product connection Holistic and analytical Example - Narrative

39. Rubrics answer the questions: • By what criteria should performance be judged and discriminated? • Where should we look and what should we look for to judge performance success? • How should the different levels of quality, proficiency, or understanding be described and distinguished from one another? • How can learning continue?

40. Remember: Understanding is not yes or no; it is a matter of degree. It is a continuum!

41. Rubric design • If possible, gather samples (written, video, photos, etc.) of student work • Brainstorm criteria based on outcomes • Use samples to begin writing performance indicators • Start with the level you want all students to reach (ex. a 3 on a 4 point rubric) • Avoid numbers in performance indicators (ex. Is able to list three out of four…) • Test-drive the rubric on more student samples • Field test the rubric with students (make sure the language is student-friendly)

42. Focus on language in rubrics • Keep descriptors positive - For example “Needs editing” instead of “Many mistakes.” The first descriptor tells a student how to improve. • Formative rubrics should contain no numbers, just descriptors. Summative rubrics would contain numbers, and this may be the only difference between them. • Numbers are challenging because some students track for “just enough” instead of for success. • Avoid including criteria that measure adherence to directions of a task instead of mastery of the outcome (ex. Included title).

43. Rubric for Narrative Text – Grade 5

44. C and R – Visual representation

45. Assess and reflect

47. Making a rubric • Find your Hawaii partner. • Together, construct the criteria for reading a narrative text rubric at your grade level. • Consider: • How can our sorting documents help us? • How can our rubric supports help us? • Be prepared to share and discuss

48. sharing • What criteria are part of this task? • Where did you fit it on your rubric? • Does it matter if it is in the wrong spot?

49. Filling in the guts • With your partner, choose one criterion and fill in the four levels (review if necessary)

50. Compare Compare your new rubrics to the samples you looked at in the beginning. How do we know what the criteria are for a given task? Where do we get clarification about the degree to which levels of understanding or skill are required (descriptors or performance standards on a rubric, for example)? Were there aspects of the online rubrics that were appropriate according to our curriculum?