Saturday, May 28, 2011

Prologue to conferencing

My last post explained how I use conferencing to make personalized learning happen. It's been a few weeks since those first few conferences were set up as goals in google docs. The children have suggested the inclusion of an additional comments column to leave questions and feedback about their work. More students are telling me that their parents have asked for direct access to the document which I am able to provide as there is one document for each child.
A year 4 example of the goals doc - priorities are in pink
A Year 6 example (their wondering: Is make up worth the $$$$?)

I am now wondering about the impact this will have on my reporting - what I have realized is that I am creating a real time anecdotal record book for each child, which their parents and the child themselves can access at anytime. This means that the children are getting feedback about how they are performing and parents can see what their child is working on, my focus for their child and join in with the assessment process. Perhaps in the future the commenting on my reports will be shorter as I can "refer to google doc"????

Imagine the time that would be saved....

And imagine, reporting less more often instead of being expected to produce a detailed report each semester - imagine reporting as the actual learning process is taking place.


Ahhhh.....the possibilities........

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Conferencing and Assessment

It's been a busy start to the term and I am just getting into the swing of getting the children on track with working towards their learning goals. My visit to Discovery 1 really helped me get some inspiration for this.

Firstly, this round of conferences is all about goal setting. The students have been asked to set three goals (Numeracy, Literacy and Project/Personal Learning). They have continued to use the PLD (Personal Learning Diary) format I distributed last year to help them audit their learning and help set goals.

Now that they have identified their goals, I have asked them to think about strategies, which has been difficult for some students to get their heads around so they have needed prompting from me to help them figure it out. Their strategies become a 'list' of activities they can undertake at home and at school to enhance their learning. (Sort of like an ILP)

How have I been documenting this? I have created a table in google docs and shared it with the students and if they request, their families. On this document the goals are listed beside strategies for each goal. There is a code next to each strategy in brackets to indicate if it's Home Learning (HL) or Student Directed Learning (SDL).

The last column is titled "Evidence" and this is where the idea of shared responsibility comes in. LA's,  the student and their parents can comment in this box when they see/do a strategy listed on the document. They can access the document on their ipad or a computer wherever they are and make changes or add information. Eventually it would be great to see hyperlinks to work on their digital portfolios.

It's been great to see the students become more focused on planning ahead and using their SDL time in a valuable manner. This has enabled more focused teaching in workshops and focus groups to happen because we are not having to police behaviour and the children are coming up with more authentic ideas for projects such as creating basketball uniforms, going to local chess tournaments and finding experts to help set up a school radio station. One group of children are even looking into setting up their own business creating products to sell online.

Hopefully this will make the assessment process more streamlined as children select goals directly related to the curriculum (which we expose them to through criteria sheets) and obviously this is a way of documenting personal learning and when you include the process leading up to it, Thinking (particularly Reflection, Evaluation & Metacognition).

It has taken time to set up the overarching culture, processes and structures in our village but it's been worth it because we can really get into the nitty gritty business of using assessment efficiently to guide everything that we do.