I was reading this post by Carolyn Durley on formative feedback, and a sinking feeling came over me. I’ve read a lot about Assessment For Learning and Formative Assessment, I’ve tried to incorporate AFL in my classes, I pride myself on my SBG, and yet I’m starting to doubt whether I’m giving good feedback to my students.
What I do know is that I give my students multiple ways for them to reflect on what they are doing and how things are going.
Through the VSB I’m invovled in a series of workshops on Assessment For Learning, hosted by Linda and Judy. We’ve had two sessions so far, and both times the importance of having a Growth Mindset has been highlighted. The ideas and thoughts behind a growth mindset are compelling, and have motivated me to sharing this concept with my students. Joined with the concept of mindset is the idea that we need to foster grit and perseverance within our students.
During our last staff meeting at David Thompson we had some discussion on teacher collaboration time, what we liked about it, what we gained for it, and what some of the outputs of the collaboration are. Part of the discussion was at least partly instigated by curiosities from parents. In the Vancouver school district there is some head-stratching by parents around all of the days that their kids are missing. These days are a result of budget cuts (non-instructional days), professional development days, holidays and some time allocated for teacher allocation.
