Recent Changes

Look to the left column and click on the page titled "Non-Fiction Reading."
If you don't immediately see "Non-Fiction Reading" look for "All Pages" and click on that. You should then be able to see "Non-Fiction Reading."
<iframe src="https://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=fairfieldschools.net_s0mk5ki0th2og0p77a8kfm1868%40group.calendar.google.com&ctz=America/New_York" style="border: 0" width="800" height="600" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe>

Look to the left column and click on the page titled "Non-Fiction Reading."
If you don't immediately see "Non-Fiction Reading" look for "All Pages" and click on that. You should then be able to see "Non-Fiction Reading."
<iframe src="https://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=fairfieldschools.net_s0mk5ki0th2og0p77a8kfm1868%40group.calendar.google.com&ctz=America/New_York" style="border: 0" width="800" height="600" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe>

Here we've provided some more information for your teaching pleasure:
Formative AssessmentFormative Assessment
{http://www.wikispaces.com/i/mime/32/application/pdf.png} Ratzel-2011-Best Practice Formative Assessment Done Right-TLN.pdf
ConstructivismConstructivism
Social TechnologySocial Technology
Other Wiki websites:

Here are some of your applications for wikispaces, constructivist classrooms, and formative assessments that were generated during the PD. Some of these strategies have been used before. Some are newly generated. Feel free to have a look and add more. We've organized the page by department for ease of viewing. If you'd like to add something, just click on the edit buttons in the upper right hand corner. You can also start a discussion about some of these applications if you like.
Counseling Department
Formative Assessment
How could or do you offer quick and specific feedback on specific skills?
“Do What You Are” assessments
Small Group Positive Reinforcement
Career Interest Inventories
One-on-one conversations
How does student self-assessment offer you, the teacher, feedback for future instructional planning?
Helps in scheduling student academic plan, giving a better picture of student strengths and interests.
Constructivism
What opportunities could students have to self-assess their work with regard to specific skills?
Follow up on career interest inventory; reflect on successes or failures in educational experience at Warde.
Social Technologies
How does a public sharing of student work benefit your discipline or an activity?
Utilize the technology to present students with discussion questions prior to meeting in a group.
Present a “College of the Week” with information from staff and students.
How does a Wiki offer opportunities for quick feedback to students in your classroom?
Comment on and support students in many different areas.
Science Department
Formative Assessment
How could or do you offer quick and specific feedback on specific skills?
Clickers.
Exit Cards.
General classroom activities.
How does student self-assessment offer you, the teacher, feedback for future instructional planning?
Adjust pacing.
Re-teach certain skills/concepts.
Constructivism
What opportunities exist in my classroom for students to define and create the criteria to be assessed upon (i.e. how do they create their own rubrics)?
Does not occur in many classes.
AP does sometimes allow for collaborative creation of rubrics with ongoing assignments.
What opportunities could students have to self-assess their work with regard to specific skills?
Rubric given ahead of time to use as a check list to ensure all components of assignment are achieved.
Social Technologies
How does a public sharing of student work benefit your discipline or an activity?
Students can see what other students’ work looks like.
Students can differentiate between exemplar and poor work.
Through the use of an anonymous screen-name, students who may shy away from participation would feel more comfortable.
Provides opportunity to communicate in the written form, which can be preferred.
Increases enthusiasm for the subject/discipline.
Increases the academic competition among students.
Increases the rigor within the activity.
Allows some students to see the starting point to a solution/answer.
Peer modeling and display of solutions can spur new ideas/methods/strategies.
How does a Wiki offer opportunities for quick feedback to students in your classroom?
If students post, then students can see what others think about work or how to help them improve it before it is handed in.
The ability to monitor responses to conceptual questions from anywhere connected to the internet.
The ability to identify with other students who share similar struggles.
Health and Physical Education Department
Formative Assessment
How could or do you offer quick and specific feedback on specific skills?
Verbal.
Q & A activities.
Demonstrate (PE).
Video analysis using flip camera.
Decision making.
Modeling.
How does student self-assessment offer you, the teacher, feedback for future instructional planning?
Depending on the results of the assessment we may adjust the instruction, re-teach the lesson, present the information in a different way. Extra help is offered if a student is not grasping the concept or skill. More opportunity to practice the skill.
Constructivism
What opportunities exist in my classroom for students to define and create the criteria to be assessed upon (i.e. how do they create their own rubrics)?
Teacher developed rubrics are in place. At this time, we have not had students define and create criteria for the assessments.
What opportunities could students have to self-assess their work with regard to specific skills?
Skill specific feedback (success or failure of completion of task) allows the students to make adjustments when performing the skills (PE)
When asked to answer a question during review games, smart board activities etc. Students determine if their peer is correct.
Social Technologies
How does a public sharing of student work benefit your discipline or an activity?
Students can view, more frequently, as opposed to watching techniques in class (PE).
Raising a question related to a topic that will be discussed in class the following day (health).
How does a Wiki offer opportunities for quick feedback to students in your classroom?
Upload a video of a student modeling the appropriate technique of a skill and post on WIKI.
English Language Arts Department
Formative Assessment
How could or do you offer quick and specific feedback on specific skills?
Feedback (comments on papers, comments in class).
Intro slips/Exit slips.
Class discussion (listening and responding to what students say).
Quizzes.
Free writes, journals.
Writing conferences.
How does student self-assessment offer you, the teacher, feedback for future instructional planning?
Identifies student needs, concerns, and gaps in learning so that the teacher might effectively plan future instruction; students can get a second look at their work—they can quickly catch mistakes and self-evaluate; students reflect meta-cognitively and teachers are able to observe this thought process; students can set their own goals moving forward.
Constructivism
What opportunities could students have to self-assess their work with regard to specific skills?
Distill criteria from model essays, set class expectations, students define expectations for assignments and class discussions, brainstorm elements of thematic unit, peer editing. (The English curriculum is a constructivist document.)
Social Technologies
How does a public sharing of student work benefit your discipline or an activity?
Students feel more accountable to the community and thus put their “best foot forward” or “rise to the occasion” or “raise the bar” when writing (edit and proofread more carefully), develop respect for classmates, could help struggling students to generate ideas by giving them something to respond to, by providing opportunities to assess the work of others, students become more adept at assessing their own work, revise ideas/opinion in a quick manner by posting additional comments, get feedback from multiple peers with varied strengths, fun activity that makes learning pleasurable, promotes divergent thinking, allows kids who don’t participate verbally to participate in a discussion which allows kids to hear normally quiet kids articulate their thoughts, creates community in a different medium, extends the classroom.
How does a Wiki offer opportunities for quick feedback to students in your classroom?
Peers respond immediately! Teacher can respond quickly, too. Teacher can be a part of the discussion alongside students.
History Department
Formative Assessment
How could or do you offer quick and specific feedback on specific skills?
Verbal.
Written.
Peer feedback.
How does student self-assessment offer you, the teacher, feedback for future instructional planning?
Clarify instructions (reveals difference between teacher expectation and students’ understanding of teacher directions/expectations).
Reveals difference between what was learned and what teacher may have thought was learned.
May change scope and sequence; may change teacher approach.
May inform on interest level of student.
Identifying trends through comments and then adjusting instructions accordingly, finding out that there are different types of learners and adjusting, re-teaching concepts because you realize that something did not (or did) “click” with your students.
Constructivism
What opportunities exist in my classroom for students to define and create the criteria to be assessed upon (i.e. how do they create their own rubrics)?
Student /teacher collaboration on assessment expectations/generation of rubrics.
Comparing student self grade with teacher evaluation.
Creating test questions.
What opportunities could students have to self-assess their work with regard to specific skills?
Self assess with teacher created rubric.
Grade each other on group project.
Social Technologies
How does a public sharing of student work benefit your discipline or an activity?
There are some concerns with this practice; students may have various valid reasons why some work shouldn’t be exhibited.
When it is positive sharing it may benefit.
In Special Education it can help create a positive environment.
Ex: typically shy person can participate who may not in traditional class setting.
How does a Wiki offer opportunities for quick feedback to students in your classroom?
Instant feedback from not only teachers but also peers.
Question: Is there a way to edit/censor postings to ensure appropriate/safe commentary?
Math Department
Formative Assessment
How could or do you offer quick and specific feedback on specific skills?
Walking around and checking progress.
Do now’s, brain boosters, exit slips, HW problems on board.
TI-Navigator.
Clickers.
Thumbs up, thumbs down.
White boards.
How does student self-assessment offer you, the teacher, feedback for future instructional planning?
The students’ feedback allows us to decide if we should stay on the topic or move onto the next one.
Collaborate with our colleagues on other students’ performances as well.
Constructivism
What opportunities could students have to self-assess their work with regard to specific skills?
Giving review sheets with answers so they can immediately check if they are correct.
Working in small groups.
Think, pair, share.
Presenting a problem.
Going over homework.
Social Technologies
How does a public sharing of student work benefit your discipline or an activity?
The current available technologies do not support our discipline. They have improved but it is hard because there is no math type or ways to right equations
Once one person posts the answer, others may just take that without looking at how they arrived at that solution.
How does a Wiki offer opportunities for quick feedback to students in your classroom?
It does allow quick feedback; however, it would be hard for us to use it in the classroom. We would have to have them take a picture and email it for their equations to show up where it would be much easier for us to look at their calculator or a worksheet and give feedback there instead.
It would be good for use outside like if there was a question on a HW problem allowing us to help if they get stuck on a problem at home.
Music Department
Formative Assessment
How could or do you offer quick and specific feedback on specific skills?
Listening to students perform as large groups, small groups or individuals and offer specific and immediate verbal feedback.
Use rehearsal rubric for individual written feedback on rehearsal skills. (see attachment)
How does student self-assessment offer you, the teacher, feedback for future instructional planning?
Students’ perceptions of learned and demonstrated skills are able to be shared with the teacher.
Student self-assessment offers dialogue between student and teacher concerning their learning.
Student self-assessment offers additional information to adjust instruction, if necessary.
Constructivism
What opportunities exist in my classroom for students to define and create the criteria to be assessed upon (i.e. how do they create their own rubrics)?
This is an area we would like to explore in the future. The large size of many of our ensemble classes often prevents or discourages this type of activity.
What opportunities could students have to self-assess their work with regard to specific skills?
Individual and/or group analysis of a rehearsal or performance
Social Technologies
How does a public sharing of student work benefit your discipline or an activity?
It could provide an opportunity for all students to think critically and actively participate in class discussion (even the quiet students).
How does a Wiki offer opportunities for quick feedback to students in your classroom?
It has potential for some class discussion, but we are already doing individual feedback for student performance.

Below are some pie charts that reflect some of the feedback from our January 13 morning PD workshop. We've posted some comments that seemed representational of the teacher feedback. Feel free to add more comments by editing this page. You can do this by clicking the edit button in the upper right hand corner.You can also start a conversation by clicking on the discussion button next to the editing button. BE BRAVE! Don't worry about messing up this wiki. It may be a valuable learning experience for you. We can always fix it.
{I_liked_workshop.png}
“Well organized/effective”
“To actually do an activity about the very subject we are helping to bring to our students was obviously time well spent”
“I liked to discussion about the constructivist approach to instruction”
“In actuality, we spent only a small portion of the day (30 minutes) playing around on wikispaces. The activity of posting a “main idea” seemed beneath the audience”
“It was nice to have the day broken up into segments”
“There was a lot of moving between groups. Would have liked less of that
{image001.png}
“I learned something new that will help my students”
“I already had a good understanding of formative assessment and use them regularly”
“I did learn new things however, what we saw and how it was shown would be hard to do in a math classroom”
“Didn’t seem too focused on formative assessment. Focused seemed to be on the article and wikispaces. Article was a problem with most in our group."
{I_can_help_my_students.png}
Suggestions for additional PD on Assessment
“How to communicate to parents”
“More content specific work”
“We still need helpful, specific and on-going PD on formative summative assessments”
“interdisciplinary content would help”
Suggestions for additional PD related to Technology
“Setting up a wiki”
Comments, Suggestions, Questions
“Teacher presenters were excellent and a good idea. I think teachers were receptive.”
“I was worried I was being graded on the “3650 Days.”
“When giving an “assignment” to read and respond, it would be appreciated if it is relevant to all teachers. The article given was difficult to read and had no application to my classroom.”