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Which School Best Meets Your Needs?

Which School Best Meets Your Needs?

As children get ready to attend elementary, middle, or high school, parents have many concerns about the type of learning that occurs in various school settings. Parents often ask how they can determine if a school is successful. For example, most parents believe that a successful school has a high academic ranking. It should offer a variety of performing arts and creative experiences. It must provide extensive experiences in language arts, real world math applications, science experiments, and history activities. The school should also plan for sufficient nutritional and physical fitness activities. Students must feel safe, secure, and learn basic life skills and effective problem-solving strategies in nurturing classrooms. Parents want to feel welcome to support their children’s learning and participate in the school. Additionally, students and their families can partner in project-based and service-learning activities that support their community. [Read more…]

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Parent Support of Student Assessments

Parent Support of Student Assessments

This blog is a parallel commentary from the parent perspective on Mary Ann Burke’s January 11, 2022 post “How Students Own Their Learning Assessments” from her series Student Engagement Assessment: Strategies to Empower All Learners.

What Do Student Learning Assessments Look Like?

When a classroom teacher includes student choice for learning assessments, it can take on many different forms. Often times, they will tend to be project-based assessments where students have full control over demonstrating and evaluating their learning. Here are some examples of learning assessments that might be assigned by your child’s teacher:

  • A history research project using both primary and secondary sources to learn more about the immigration story in the family.
  • A science project that demonstrates the effective application of the scientific method.
  • A cross-curricular Language Arts and Physical Education project to develop scripts for a PSA (Public Service Announcement) campaign regarding physical health or mental health issues.
  • A smart-water garden design that employs the mathematical computations to find area of landscaping, find plants and other organic materials needed in cubic feet, and calculate the cost of materials to stay within a budget.

[Read more…]

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How Students Create Their Own Learning Assessments

How Students Create Their Own Learning Assessments

This post is last of a series based on excepts from my book on Student-Engaged Assessment: Strategies to Empower All Learners by Laura Greenstein and Mary Ann Burke (2020). You can purchase the book from Roman and Littlefield for charts, examples, and worksheets on how to engage students to become owners of their learning successes. [Read more…]

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Students Own Their Own Learning Assessments

Students Own Their Learning Assessments

This post is ninth of a series based on excepts from my book on Student-Engaged Assessment: Strategies to Empower All Learners by Laura Greenstein and Mary Ann Burke (2020). You can purchase the book from Roman and Littlefield for charts, examples, and worksheets on how to engage students to become owners of their learning successes.

Components of Student Owned Assessments

Components of students owning their learning assessments include:

  • Learning intentions and outcomes are clear from the start. Learners understand what and how they will be learning and why it is relevant and worthwhile.
  • Student owned assessments respect and respond to the student’s needs, interests, and abilities. For example, Bruno is excited when he learns he can pick which era and which president to research for his project. Bruno plans to present his research in a game format that he intends to align with the learning goals and rubric.
  • Social and emotional skills are the foundation for progressing successfully towards personal mastery. For Murray, as he develops self-regulation, he notices that his grades also get better.

[Read more…]

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Teaching Engaged Students

Teaching Engaged Students

This post is eighth of a series based on excepts from my book on Student-Engaged Assessment: Strategies to Empower All Learners by Laura Greenstein and Mary Ann Burke (2020). You can purchase the book from Roman and Littlefield for charts, examples, and worksheets on how to engage students to become owners of their learning successes.

Teacher Examples of Engaging Students in a Classroom

Mr. Kee likes to introduce a new lesson with a story that cultivates interest and attention, raises curiosity, or presents a mystery about the topic. Sometimes, as he uses an image or object to introduce a new concept, he also models a think aloud. One time, he showed a picture of an ending or outcome of an occurrence for students to ask questions about what it is and how it came to be. Another time he asked his middle schoolers about the Little Red Hen’s process of decision making.    [Read more…]

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