This week we had our final exams, and I have all of my Physics 11 and 12 marks in. Overall the exam marks were extremely disappointing. The Physics 11 exam was 50 questions and my class average was 61%. For Physics 12, the multiple choice section was even worse with 51% average, while the written portion was much higher at around 85%.
It is difficult for me to understand exactly what happened with the exams.
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
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.
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.
In the past couple of weeks I’ve come across some blogs/articles that talk about open ended questions on physics tests. A great example of this can be found here at Physics! Blog! I think the idea behind this is to allow the student to showcase everything that they’ve learned and demonstrate a deeper understanding of the topic by applying their knowledge. I think this would correspond about 1/2 way up the cognitive domain in Blooms Taxonomy.
I think one of the best ways to incorporate mobile technology in the classroom right now is through Polleverywhere. This service offers online polling where the students can participate in several different ways, including:
sms text messaging - via the web using their web widget mobile device by visiting poll4.com twitter a smartphone interface Polleverywhere is clearly growing, as the 3rd option that I mentioned above is a new development. I just tried it for the first time using an iPhone and it worked very well.
