Comment on this chapter using the following format:
1.a salient sentence or passage, and why it stood out for you
2. a question you would like to ask the author
3. one or two key ideas you got from this reading, and why you believe it/they are important
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QUOTE: “When they don’t do well at an exhibition, they know it—immediately. They don’t have to wait for a test score to come back to tell them they need to work harder.” Page 168
ReplyDeleteThis stuck out to me because as I was reading the chapter, it’s the only thing I could think about. It even applies to narratives. Exhibitions and narratives are tangible, concrete measures of progress and they are pretty instantaneous.
QUESTION: What kinds of coaching or support is in place for advisors/teachers who are not as comfortable writing narratives for all of their students, either because they are weak (uncomfortable writers) or because they are just new to the system?
KEY IDEA: I think the title pretty much sums it up. “Measuring What Matters in a Way That Matters” is really important. We’ve been talking about measuring progress and I can’t think of any other way that can do that well. Why does it feel like as long as Dennis says it, it makes total sense, but I can think about it for days, months, years prior to reading Dennis’ words and I can’t figure it out!
Quote: pg 166- Exhibitions promote rather than inhibit growth.
ReplyDeleteI really like this because, I definitely remember falling in a downward spiral in my Math 201 class. That is, after seeing my first test (75?! That's terrible! I've never received that bad a grade!)I would keep getting worse, because I was so concerned about catching up, I didn't really look at how to improve.
Question: How do students with disabilities work in this situation? Do "disabilities" even matter anymore?
Key points: Grading is bad. Grading is bad. Grading is bad. But we can't stop it. The worst part about it is that grading doesn't even deal with education. It answers "did you jump through this hoop? How well?" aannddd that's about it. Like the girl who never read but had A's and B's, one can cheat a system. One can't cheat people for long. Most importantly, grades show a moment in time for students- how is that moment supposed to evaluate weeks, or even months, of progression, especially if there happened to be a situation in where the student couldn't demonstrate his best work or thinking level (such as by being sick)- the student would be SOL, and it seems as if the current regime is okay with this, because THEY have already succeeded.
Quote:
ReplyDelete"There is all the difference in the world between having something to say, and having to say something." (p. 162)
I'm not sure I can do any more justice to this statement. I really like this because I was and probably still am to some extent, the kid in class who didn't like to speak up or ask for help for fear of being wrong. I never liked to give my input especially if the topic wasn't even relevant to me. As a speech teacher, I realize how important it is to let the students choose what they was to give a speech about. It's the difference between exceptional work and work to make a passing grade. When a student has something to say, that is when you see their true passion, rather than making them say something that they don't care about.
Question:
Are there other ways that you assess students learning beside quarterly narratives? I would imagine that students who do poorly on their exhibitions would want regular feedback from their teacher on how they are improving.
Key Ideas:
The key idea for this chapter is that grades do not tell us anything. To truly assess the learning of a student, you must first know that student. You must know his abilities, his strengths, his weaknesses and then you must give feedback that is real, that will help him in the real world. The key is too help students continue to find ways to improve their exhibitions and their learning, but too also praise their strengths and skills.
Key Idea: The key idea is that a letter grade does not tell you anything about who the student is or what they have done. "I am not a letter in the alphabet. I'm more than that." I think that quote sums up this section. You are putting the focus on the letter instead of what they are learning.
ReplyDeleteQuote: "In the real world, when we evaluate things, we talk about the specifics of what is right and what is wrong. A baseball coach doesn't say to his player, "Your earned a B today." He says, "You took your eye off the ball today. You need to concentrate more. You need to change your stance. The real world is about giving feedback and showing people what they need to do to improve" (154).
How do you know the difference between a B and a B+. I would like to ask the people of Austin College this question. Instead of limiting this person to a letter or a number, give them feedback that will actually help them improve. All a letter does is compare them to other students.
Q: Aren't these students being compared and judge enough throughout the day to have to have it continued by a letter from their teacher? Isn't the teacher supposed to be there for support and to lift the student up instead of participate in bringing the student down?
Quote(s):
ReplyDelete“It’s evaluation with a purpose, and one of the challenges is making sure that it leads to something real.” (p. 159)
Last semester, in research, we studied assessments. One assessment we looked at an example of was a narrative assessment. This example was a good description of the student, and her work she completed during the semester, but it did not provide a clear understanding of where the student currently was in her learning. It was confusing, and needed more clarification. This quote reminded me of the example we looked at, because it points out the importance of making the assessment real, something a student can understand and use to further his or her learning. In order to accomplish this, there need to be guidelines in working with narratives, like they use at the MET. The example we examined did not show evidence of a guide to follow.
Question(s):
What is your view on assessment for learning throughout the year? When a teacher utilizes this method, do you think it is possible to achieve a similar narrative outcome for each student?
Key Idea(s):
One key idea I found important was from the impact of the exhibitions. Students were not being judged, or formally assessed. They performed their presentations solely on the goal to learn and demonstrate what and how they learned. Those who did not have a successful exhibition knew where they had to improve, and were excited about performing again. Exhibitions are real life examples. They are what we do everyday out in the real world, and we always have the opportunity to present ourselves again, whether it be in the same place, with the same people or a different one, we’re always presenting.
Allowing students to study their passions makes this even better for them, because we all enjoy speaking of what we are passionate about, so this makes an exhibition applicable and the students understand why they are doing it. Their learning is an open, ongoing conversation with themselves and those around them. It’s not just knowledge they learn, but real life skills that are not found in traditional schools. The exhibition is a key element in these tasks.
"Grades are totally subjective too. If the assignment was to build a ladder to the moon and a kid got halfway there, would you give an F for lack of follow-through, or an A for perseverance and building a 120,000 mile ladder?" P 155
ReplyDeleteLittkey makes a good point here. Even our seemingly objective grading system is subjective. I learned this semester how hard it is to put a grade on an essay or a project. I could see how much work some students put into their project and how little others had but by the rubric they got the same grades and it really didn’t prove that they learned anything. So how can we as public school teachers continue to give our students traditional letter grades required by our districts while giving them actual feedback?
What happens if a student has a particularly bad narrative? Is there any follow up with the parents?
Key Idea: Traditional grading only hurts students in the end; instead of working to learn students work towards a grade in a letter grade system. Students are more motivated about their learning when they are in control of their learning and not simply doing it for a grade. They like to know that all of their hard work gets more than five minutes attention from the teacher.
“I remember one day, during the first year at the Met, when Lori stood up at her exhibition and told the audience she had read one book that quarter. One book? Feeling a little embarrassed, I put my head down, and while it was down, I heard Lori say it was the first book she had ever finished in her life. She was 15 years old.” p. 156
ReplyDeleteCan you imagine a moment like this? To have had such a moment as this with a student! It is also such a reminder to us to never make judgments before we have the whole story. As much as a kid can give us, if it takes all of their effort, than it is the most we can ever ask of them, and we can never, EVER be disappointed in a kid for doing their best, even it’s not as good as someone else’s best.
What does the process of converting the narratives into college acceptable grades look like?
The whole idea of exhibitions is remarkable to me. I am thinking science fair, but a LOT more comprehensive and reflective. It would be so interesting to see one of these. I really like what Dennis said about how even “unsuccessful” exhibitions are a great learning tool. When a student is unsuccessful on a test, on the other hand, all he or she has is some number that doesn’t really mean anything or tell them what they need to improve on.
A personally significant sentence or passage, and why it stood out for you:
ReplyDelete“At The Met, we use narratives not to rank students or compare them to each other, but to help each student understand what he or she must do to meet his or her own learning goals and needs” (157). I like this statement because it states very clearly why narratives are better. A narrative is an evaluation of that particular student and no other. This makes sense at the Met since each student is using an individual curriculum. There is no way that the students can be compared since their learning objectives vary greatly. The argument is harder to carry over into the traditional school setting where students are all being taught the same subject matter at the same time. Logically, it would appear that ranking is a valid way of evaluating what learning has taken place. In reality though, this excludes so many other contributing factors and forces the assumption that the students are all identical, which they aren't. Because of this, even in a traditional school grades are not an ideal form of evaluation. The author admits that narratives would be next to impossible in a large school, but this is part of his argument for small schools.
A question you would like to ask the author: Some students, especially those adjusting to a new setting, do not handle criticism well at all. It would seem that these students would be better prepared to handle a simple letter grade rather than the criticism a narrative might contain. Are teachers trained to handle situations where the student breaks down over even mild criticism?
One or two key ideas you got from this reading, and why you believe it/they are important:
Grades are useless (or very nearly) forms of evaluation! Exhibitions both allow and force the student to be accountable for their own learning. Even bad exhibitions are a positive contribution to the student's learning experience. Standardized testing is also a very poor measure of learning. These areas will have to be addressed if any reform is to be successful.
QUOTE:
ReplyDelete“The real world is built around giving feedback and showing people what they need to do to improve. And yet in schools, we hand out single-letter grades and think nothing of it.” (pg. 154)
This is the major problem with giving out letter grades. It doesn’t give students feedback in order to improve their work. If teachers and schools are supposed to be preparing students for “the real world” than why do they use a system of assessment that does not help students improve. It is also nothing like the real world. Like Littky says you don’t get a grade from your boss or whomever you get feedback.
QUESTION:
For larger high schools, what do you suggest instead of letter grades because a single teacher could have to write some 210 narratives for his’s or her’s students?
KEY IDEA:
A key idea that I found in this chapter is that narratives are good and better for the students than grades. Littky quotes a statistic that says that grades are students’ lives and that is the only reason they are going to school. Also that “grades have been scientifically proven to reduce students’ interest in the learning itself” (153). Narratives instead give students an accurate report on how they are doing and where they need to improve on. I think narratives are great but in larger high schools it doesn’t really seem that they would be very effective for the students or the teachers.
Quote: "A student once came to me at the end of the summon with a report from his middle school to prove that he had passed the 8th grade summer school program. What he handed me was unbelievable. On a slip of paper a quarter-inch high and 11-inches wide was his name, the name of the school, whether he took summer school for math or English, and a check in the box marked "Pass"."
ReplyDeleteI have no idea how that is supposed to show how the student performed in the class. A check mark doesn't do justice to the work the student put in to pass the class. I think that the amount of work put into the class should be explained/evaluated with the same amount of effort. That way the student can get valuable feedback about what he/she did well on and what are some areas where improvements can be made.
Question: Since most of the schools we go to are so grade oriented, what are some ways to give kids valuable feedback other than through a narrative.
Key idea: I think a key idea out of this section is the importance of valuable feedback for the students. Parents are show grade oriented that if you were to give them a long narrative about how their child progressed through the year that they would ask, "Well, what did he make in the class." We need to find a way to change the mindset of our schools and parents, because a letter grade of a piece of paper won't do justice to the student's effort in the class. It is too hard to judge a student's performance into a letter grade too.