I wanted to send out a note about how to read your child's second trimester math evaluation which you will be getting in the mail (along with your child's other reports) in the coming days.
You may have heard through the grapevine (in fact, you might have even heard through me!) that the Middle School Staff has been engaged in an Action Research Project on assessment and evaluation this year. (For more information on what exactly Action Research is, see this Wikipedia article.)
We've been asking ourselves many, many questions over the past few months. Among those are questions like:
* Who are evaluations for? Students? Parents? Future teachers (of the students)?
* What is the best way to convey how a child is "doing" in a class?
* How can we improve our process to meet the needs of all parties involved in the assessment/evaluation experience?
(Note: These are a summary of the questions that my brain has latched on to and mulls over before I fall asleep each night--not necessarily representative of the entire Middle School Staff's questions.)
And, as you can imagine, many of us have taken on the task of actively experimenting with how our evaluations look, what they say, and how they say it. Some of us have added rubrics. Some of us have focused more on project assessment.
For my second trimester evaluation, I decided to focus on truly involving the students in the assessment/evaluation process.
There are many overarching goals that teachers have. These are the goals, dreams, and visions for what students will take from their time spent with us beyond how to add fractions and diagram a sentence.
As you probably guessed, I have a whole slew of these. :) But the one that got tapped these past few weeks was this: Students (and successful human beings) should be able to accurately evaluate themselves on how they are doing according to a specific standard--whether internal or external. Put plainly, people should know whether they're good at something or bad at something and how to process that.
When you open up your child's second trimester evaluation packet and turn to their math evaluation, you're going to see what I'm talking about.
The week before evaluations were due in advisor's boxes, each one of my math classes took an online form/survey of their performance and experience in my class. On that day, we rolled out the Mobile Mac lab and I made a BIG deal about all that I've written to you so far. I explained myself, and walked them step-by-step through the survey, answering questions along the way.
Basically, the kids had to answer the following sentences with the choices of Never... Sometimes... Most of the time... Always. And they could only choose one of the four.
Take a look at the actual evaluation the kids filled out. (This is just a PDF copy, you can't make any more submissions--don't forget to scroll down!)
I explained to the kids that they were to fill out the evaluation and that they were essentially writing their own evaluations. I, of course, reserved the right to adjust and tweak where I saw fit, and I would make my own comments on their reports as always. But you would be surprised how little I actually had to go back and change.
As the kids filled out the evaluations, many questions arose that sounded like, "Matthew... What if I'm more towards Sometimes... or maybe Most of the time?... I don't know... Can I say in between?"
I encouraged them to think these things through, for it's in that conversation that I think the magic of this evaluation and assessment experiment lie. And this is what I want to encourage you to do as you sit down and process your child's evaluation.
For example, "My child put down 'Most of the time' for 'helps to create a productive learning environment.' That sounds pretty good to me. Good job!"
Or... "My child put down 'Most of the time' for 'helps to create a productive learning environment.' That sounds interesting. What was it that kept you from putting down 'Always' on that one?"
To add another layer to the process, I decided at the last minute to let the kids see their final evaluations before they were delivered to advisors. In this way, I hoped kids would be able to continue to be part of the conversation about how they were evaluated and assessed in math. This created the space for kids to ask me, "Matthew? Why did you move me from 'Most of the time' to 'Sometimes' on this one?" And what a great conversation we had then!
Take a look at what the second trimester evaluations look like.
So, Matthew. Why this long blog post/email?
There are a couple of reasons. One is to keep you in the loop. Another is to try and prepare you and go ahead and answer some of your questions about how to read your child's evaluation.
And finally, I want your feedback. :) Be on the lookout for a post or an email asking for your feedback soon!
Thanks for all that you do--I hope all of this makes sense and that it was an easy and straight-forward read. I appreciate your patience and kindness as well in this wonderful dance we're doing called education your children. :) Have a great day!
