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MARSHA
RATZEL
Diary #4
Even
Assessment Has
Its 'A-Ha' Moments
I
worked on assessment this week. Or should I say, it worked on me!!! Why
is it that assessment messes with your mind? You know what you want, but
you just can't get it out onto paper?
I couldn't really
figure out how I was going to design assessments that would be universal
enough to fit all buildings, but specific enough to create documentation
that this Amazon fieldtrip was something beyond
fluff. I cannot allow our district to spend this much money and effort and
not have "evidence to support student learning".
After many hours
of agitation, I figured out that the common threads of language and math
span the other disciplines. I needed to build a matrix . Our teachers know
these threads already, which could reassure them that their existing knowledge
was the critical piece. Technology was simply going to be the way they expanded
their walls out into the world.
Then my task
crystallized and I knew how to write the rubric. I used the district's reading,
writing and math indicators to measure how well students were answering
the big overarching question about science or social studies. Once I knew
what I wanted to do, I knew where to go --- the San
Diego State WebQuest site has a multitude of outstanding
rubric references. That way I didn't have to struggle with the form,
now that I had the content.
I used those
rubric tools to create a "Chinese menu" for teachers. I had the advantage
of being able to "helicopter up" and think about 7th grade broadly. From
this matrix, I would create more rubric strands than they needed and they
could pick and choose. I worked and worked to look carefully at each grade
level and build these rubrics. Since I just figured this out on Friday after
wrestling around with the ideas, I'll take it out into the buildings next
week.
Here's how
I did it
Let me give
you an example. The basic idea of our Amazon virtual fieldtrip is "Location."
Granted, location is from the geography standards, but I think it screams
math. How could I write a rubric strand to measure location using math?
I knew I wasn't the first to come up with this connection. So I took a stroll
through the Principals and Standards for School Mathematics site.
These are well written and organize math into bite-size pieces. The descriptions
leave you feeling math confident, even if you didn't arrive that way.
So when I read
through the Measurement strand, I realized it articulated what I was trying
to express. Now I was able to write a strand that met our district's math
indicators for measurement AND social studies indicators for relative/absolute
location AND keeping a journal using graphic organizers AND..AND..AND. Well,
I think you get the idea.
All this got
me to thinking about what other universal tools we had that integrate the
curriculum. Many of the questions that we're asking students to consider
and explore involve the idea of "Place" (see Theme 2 at
this National Geographic page). Those unique human and physical characteristics
that differentiate location into places. And that means -- Art!
I'm not talking
about the cutesy artsy posters where students cut and paste a few pictures
of animals in exotic rainforest scenes. I'm talking about using art to express
the feel of "place" and tapping into the talents of the art departments
to explore online galleries and to create our own district Amazon gallery.
So I can hardly wait for next week to come so I can meet with the district-coordinating
teacher for art and see what she thinks.
The minutiae
are always with us
My week was
pretty victorious. I still addressed purchase orders, trying to figure out
how to sort the entire student population's log-ons by school --- alphabetically.
Or pricing out software orders that teachers didn't but sent in anyway.
Or answering unanswerable questions about why a student folder appears and
disappears off the network. Or sitting through hours of meetings on topics
that don't apply to me, and so on. And my heart still longs for the rhythm
of the classroom and the kids coming and going. I caught myself crying at
my desk this week wishing for someone to ask me to unjam their locker or
find another copy of a worksheet. You know what I mean. But all in all,
I think this week scores in the positive column.
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