Objectives+&+Feedback

How do you currently apply this strategy with(out) technology?
I am not in a classroom at this moment, but I am still tied very closely to classroom learning. My position Romulus Middle School is the technology and data coach for teachers and administrators. For the next three years, one of my responsibly is to train teachers ho to read and use assessment data to make better instructional decisions. So what I have found as my greatest challenge so far is how to get teachers interested in assessment data and focus on protocol steps to better understand what the data is revealing about student learning. Many of the characteristics of setting objectives and providing fed back to students for higher achievement are similar to teacher learning. In each group, essential practices need to be structured to give each group time to focus on the goal, make meaning out of the material that is presented, and reprocess the learning with the feedback from the instruction. In the several attempts I have made to present data to teachers to plan for classroom instruction, I have not achieved the results I hoped to attain from the information. I think my objectives have been too specifically focused on deficient skills rather than allowing teachers to make personal connections to the data. By me not allowing teachers to form their own understanding of the data, I think I have prevented them from making their own meaning from the information. In other words, they have not be able to personalize the data to see how it connects to their own instruction. A couple other issues I have noticed, after reading the NETC web site, that have been lacking in my approach to presenting assessment information are that not enough time is given to teachers to think about what the data means to them and opportunities to set their own goals with using the data. Most of the data dialogue sessions that been chunked into an hour time span. At this point, the time spent on data dialogue is unavoidable, but the objective can definitely be changed. In addition, some of the time devoted to discussions must also allow for personal goal setting to make the outcomes of the objective possible.

Apply and Reflect
Provide evidence of the tool you learned In my district, the commitment to use 6+1 Trait Writing is evident in all grade levels and subject contents. The rubric for 6+1 clearly provides the guidelines for students to follow to meet expectations as well as providing a tool for teachers to objectively assess students’ writing pieces. Sometimes grading writing essays can be more challenging for teachers than for students to actually write the essay. There are many pieces to the writing that can be assessed such as achieving the main point, addressing the audience, grammar and mechanics. However, a rubric such as 6+1 allows all participants to focus on clearly defined objectives without being overloaded with expectations. I have never used the 6+1 rubric in its entirety to assess student writing. There are just too many objectives to attach to one writing piece and hope students learn and practice all in one unit. The way I use the rubric is to concentrate on particular areas of the rubric that I want students to focus their attention and practice in their writing. Throughout the course, I introduce new expectations from the rubric to assess writing abilities, while still practicing other traits without assessing a grade to those traits. One part of this rubric I have never considered is allowing students to create their own goal and objective. I think a student created objective is important as it allows students to focus on personal writing weaknesses and gives them ownership of their own learning and attention to those weaknesses. This part of the rubric can be addressed by allowing students to come up with an objective as a class or give them the freedom to create an individual goal. The latter of these options would only happen when I know I have time to assess each individual goal.