About the Identity Safe Formative Assessment Five-Part Blog Series Formative assessment (FA) operates as a feedback loop. Together, educators and students set goals, assess, and adjust learning in real time based on collected evidence combined with feedback. Identity Safety is an equity-focused approach where students of all backgrounds feel
From the series: Developing Students’ Ownership of Learning—from a Distance, too! Post #1 Post #2 Post #3 Post #4: Selecting Tools to Guide Learning Let’s continue our journey to developing assessment-capable, visible learners. At this point, students know what they are supposed to be learning, what success looks like,
We have so much to learn from the recent “pandemic teaching and learning” experience. The strongest message is to learn from what went well during COVID, and ensure we do NOT return to the old ‘grammar of schooling’. We should be collating and sharing all
The Professional Learning Community movement, dating back to the 1970s if not before, has focused on students’ learning and the ways in which teams of educators can respond when students do not learn. Over time, adjustments have been made to the processes teams use to
In this time of coronavirus, when our lives have been turned upside down, the gift of listening well, the first phase of the evocative coaching model, is especially precious. Listening well is important not just in the context of coaching but with all those we care for and care about. In these topsy-turvy times,
Several ago, a video meme of an exuberant penguin went viral. The penguin was scurrying back and forth in front of its fellow penguins – flapping its fins wildly. There were actually two versions of that meme. The descriptive text underneath one version read something like: “He’s just returned from a weekend business conference.” And the second: “He’s just finished
Recently my husband has experienced a difficult medical situation. At the onset the doctor told us that he would be cured, but the journey to get there would require painful treatments and months of not feeling so great. I have been referring to the experience as “the
Winston Churchill once said, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” This is an incredibly challenging and difficult time for us and yet I believe we have an opportunity as educators to reshape and transform our education system from what we learned about COVID-19.
“It is during times like this that you will learn what you are made of; this is what you have been preparing for all these years,” Don said last week in a Zoom conversation he leads with a group of new and veteran principals and
When the governor of Massachusetts declared that learning would continue while schools are closed, he added that the creativity of teachers would get us through this quarantine. Indeed, the creativity and hard work of teachers keeping students focused and engaged with learning has been impressive. However, we all have to shift our thinking in order to make distance learning work for each student. Teachers are only one third of the equation. Teachers must rethink how to structure learning so that parents and students can develop routines and apply self-direction skills to accomplish