evolution

So it's summer and we are gearing up for the next school year. During the summer I have become addicting to reading twitter as a professional development tool. It's worked very well for me to keep up on the latest events. I have followed reporters in the state hearing for dissolving school districts and passing new education laws. I have attend conferences via the live link. And learned about many conferences to attend.

As I read others blogs I realize that most of my tweets are not OC but RT. Which is fine. I am not blogging out of a desire for fame or income. But I would like to make them more valuable to the world. I look forward to doing this as we roll out the chromebooks. I want to blog about the issues and solutions. 

Writing standard based rubrics

Writing standard based rubrics

We are backwards engineering our curriculum based rubrics to the Common Core Standards.

Know your standards!!

Yes there are writing standards but there are convention standards in the language strand. There are reading: Literature standards that apply when completing some writing tasks as such a fictional book review or book jacket. There are reading: informational standards that apply when citing sources, summarizing a book, or doing a research report.

Find the standards that apply. Find a good base rubric. Last time we used the 6+1 rubric because it was so widely used in the county. This time I hope we adopt a version of the Smarter Balanced rubric with standards wove in there. So better yet group your standards into areas.

No one size rubric fits all. There should be a generic rubric for each type of writing such as informational, opinion, and narrative.  But then that needs to be tailored to that specific assignment.

Step 1 Go through your standards

Step 2 Develop your base rubric ( Smarter Balanced).

Step3 Develop the generic types.

Step4 Dig into the specific assignments. What is the textbooks asking the students to do and on what page? Cite that in the rubric. If you can put them up into the categories you created good. Otherwise make them a separate line.

                A spreadsheet can help you map this. Look for gaps.

Step 5 have another teacher proof read.

Step 6 publish publish publish!! Make sure parents and students have access to the rubrics before they start the assignment! 

two ways this program is more backwards then traditional school

testing! The PDFs are just silly! Scantron would be a huge leap forward. 

Test Slam The lack of ability to impose grading policies around late work slams the teachers at the end of the year. 

after year end

This is was the most work I ever did to close up a class room. I have moved out and packed up for painting but nothing was this much grading. Many students rushed to finish and uploaded four test of writing - six months worth of work- in one day. There's no way they did all that work. There's no integrity to what they turned in. The students would say , I was working I just uploaded it at once. But if you look at the quality of the work. It does not match their earlier work and looks rushed. PF science grades went from A's and B's to D's and E's. LFK turned in four tests in one day. His persuasive essay was about how there are too many tests and too little time. The essay had large font, one sentence paragraphs, without logic. In May, I contacted him concerned about his pacing. His reply was that he was doing fine. He said everything was great. He was working three days a week and getting everything done. Another student, LC, also turned in four tests of writing. The first time she turned them in she did not include any composition just spelling and grammar. I followed up and she webmailed me the writing for all but one test. Then I received a message from her mother saying that LC assured her everything was in. LC said what was not in "would not be too detrimental to her grade". The end of the year was like students jumping off a sinking ship. Just tossing their bagage - tests at me without concern for grades.

In the traditional schools, things fall off too. Assignments and grades do dive. I have always said there was in inverse relationship between grades and temperature. When I taught high school, I had a policy that assignments could only be turn in two weeks late. And all late assignments were due the Monday of the last week of class. This allowed for makeups and did not over load me. A student could not walk in the last day of class with a semesters worth of work. 

But that's not what happens in virtual learning...

So what can we do? 

The programmer's answers " code the drop box is there is only a window that you can submit tests during."

The admin's answer "Deal with it. It's part of the nature of the beast"

The positive teacher's answer "Inspire your students to stay on pace"

The real solution ...........Mmmmmm

Any pace - Not!!

7/6/13

Any where, any place, any pace 

Well not any pace --- 

There is a time where student will hit some really hard deadline. These are created not by teachers or administration....... but by accounting and laws. 

Reporting pass/fail to districts. In june and early august districts must report to the MDE whether a student pass the grade or not. 

Programs are defined by the way they are setup. They apply for a seat time waiver. Our program is a K-8. So there's an age limit you will hit. If every grade takes you three months longer that is a compound factor. At the end of your education, you could age out before you had a diploma. 

There's also the economic side. On the fast side: If the student completes a grade in six months, we purchase the next grade for them. We did not get additional FTE's for that student. We lose money.  On the slower side: We pay for a license for each grade. You have 13 months to complete the grade on that license. If the student does not complete the grade, we pay again. Odds are they so close they will finish before another 13 months are up and we will purchase the next grade in that FTE year too. 

So pacing is a flexible but not wide open area.

If you complete the whole grade  before May 31, we will purchase the next grade. 

You have, if you used summer school, 11 months to get the grade done. There's the 48 weeksof traditional   school year and 6 weeks of teacher supported summer school. There are another 2 weeks of open time also. 

Pacing is more of a window. But this is better than the traditional school model. 

online virtual admin mentorship

You have to love twitter. Lately it's been such a wealth of PD info for me. Today I found a virtual admin mentorship program. http://georgecouros.ca/blog/archives/3955 It should be interesting to see what this brings.