I’m going to be hosting a short presentation on Standards Based Grading (SBG) at my school today. I’m not sure how many people will show up, but hopefully it kicks off some good discussion for future collaboration meetings. Standards Based Grading

While going through some of my favorite education blogs I came across this post on pseudoteaching. It seems that pseudoteaching was spawned from pseudocontext, which talks about how contrived and non-realistic scenarios are presented to students as being real-life examples. For example, a math question where some convoluted set of circumstances between Joey, Joey’s cash and Joey’s shopping list means that the student has to solve a word problem. I think the idea of pseudoteaching takes this concept a bit further.

Our class time at school has been pretty messed up in the past week or two. Job action restricted class hours and then last week we missed three days due to the strike. This was followed by two days of classes, but they were compromised because of the upcoming 2 week spring break (which we’re in right now). Many students were absent and it’s difficult to start a new topic at this time, which is exactly what I’ve wanted to do for the past 2 weeks.

I just came across a funny article from the CBC. It is a short piece about how high school students feel unprepared for university. Granted, it’s not supposed to be funny but the irony in it really hits home to me. Some of the startling revelations made the students in the article include: the amount of work done in high school is less than that in university the quality of work done in high school is less than that in university self-motivation is a big issue in university I’m surprised they didn’t also point out that the students at university are usually older and more mature than high school students.

Last week in Physics 12 we finished mechanics. From here on in it will be electricity, electricity, electricity. Shocking, I know…. To finish off mechanics, I gave my students a mechanics baseline test for the second time. The first time was during the 2nd week of school, back in September. The results are in, and I suppose that in some ways these results are a measure of: time spent on the topics teacher effectiveness student engagement tutor effectiveness (many of my students have tutors) student aptitude in the time frame and conditions given For 51 students, the overall average in September was 40%.

I was checking out some math, physics and standards based grading educational blogs when I came across a screencast of a teacher who used DimDim. Check out the screencast here and see how it went. More info from the lesson is found here. I found the DimDim to be a bit slow paced, but maybe that’s just the nature of the beast when trying to broadcast live video. Dan, the teacher, also lamented that he found formative assessment very difficult.

An issue I’m struggling with is whether a science classroom should allow cell phones to be used a calculator. It’s a pretty complex issue with lots of different aspects coming into play. A brief list of pros/cons is: Pros smartphones are powerful computers and can be utilized sometimes people forget to bring calculators to class (human error) one less device to carry, charge, pay for Cons difficult if not impossible to discern between a student that is using a smartphone as a calculator as opposed to using their smartphone for messaging removes the teachable moment of a student having a consequence for not coming to class prepared possibility of cheating on a test or quiz complex rules that will lead to abuse: smartphone ok for class but not test; ok to use if you forget your calculator but don’t make it a habit I’d really like to hear your thoughts on this issue.

In my science 9 classes, we’re about to finish off a unit on Space. As will all good unit planning, I had decided on an overall unit assessment months ago. The general plan was to do another Concept Map test, sort of like I mentioned in another post: http://physicsoflearning.com/blog/assessment/107-assessment-checkpoint I’ve been working with the kids on concept mapping, and trying to follow a pattern of gradual release of responsibility. For example, the first few concept maps we did together.

Term 1 just ended here in British Columbia and as I’ve learned this year, it is a big deal for students in grade 12. It turns out that many (all?) US universities look for term1 marks for their applications. Some of the schools in eastern Canada do the same, such as U of T. What this means is that I had students running around like chickens with their heads cut off, trying to get as many marks as possible.

It had been about ten weeks since I started teaching fulltime and I thought I should reflect on how my classroom assessment is going. I am constantly thinking about assessment but sometimes I think it helps to write things down in order to get better clarity of whatever it is I’m thinking about. My overall assessment plan is different for my senior physics classes and my grade 9 science classes. For physics I have implemented a standards based grading scheme, whereas for the grade 9 I am using a more standard model.