Connected Educator Month kicked off October 1! As shared in an earlier post, NCTE is a theme leader on the topic of “Innovations in Assessment“. This week for CEM, October 15th-22nd, NCTE is focusing on “Valuing What We Notice“.
In TV dramas when someone says “I’m going to assess the situation,” they never hand out a standardized test in order to problem solve. Instead they observe, scope-out, and evaluate, using their eyes and ears to gather data. Observation is the unsung hero of assessment and instruction, and when paired with collaborative reflection, observations can form the foundation of powerful professional learning as well. This week we’ll consider the role that observations play in formative and summative assessments for student learning, professional learning, and system-wide learning.
Please also join us as we participate in these activities all month long:
- Innovations in Assessment: Read and React discussions will be occurring throughout the month of October. Join this discussion group on the National Center for Literacy Education’s network, the Literacy in Learning Exchange, to read and discuss research articles and studies from a variety of organizations on the topic of assessment. Join Community Facilitator and Professional Learning Specialist Lara Hebert in facilitated conversations around two articles each week. Topics include formative and summative assessment, standardized assessment, portfolios, standards-based grading, and more. Go to the Literacy in Learning Exchange to learn more.
- Using Social Networks to Build and Share Collective Wisdom: #WhatWeHonor. When we begin to think about meaningful and equitable assessments, we inevitably think about those measures of learning that deserve as much and even more honor than standardized assessments because these measures can tell us more about student learning, growth, context, and ongoing needs. And different situations call for different tools and strategies. During the month of October, follow and contribute to the #WhatWeHonor conversations and sharing of assessment tools and artifacts on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest. Tag resources and blogs related to formative assessment; share your most tried-and-true rubrics, observation protocols, conferencing strategies, and more; post a video of your collaborative team discussing the power of looking at student work together; and make any other contributions you can think of that can change the conversation about assessment to focus on more than annual standardized testing.