Today’s post was written by a 2015 Ed2Save Fellow, Jessie Mouw. Her Fellow’s Project is to promote and redefine the importance of failure as a natural and important part of the learning process. Her words follow: The Case for Failure-Friendly Schools… Read More ›
Testing and Assessments
What does differentiation look like in the classroom?
Differentiation is a word that is used often in education — but I worry there is a lack of consensus on what it means, it’s purpose and what it looks like in the classroom. Here is an attempt to distill the… Read More ›
Formative Assessments: It’s about growth and behavior change!
First, we must acknowledge three things about assessments: We are not experts on testing, especially about when and how to assign scores or grades The whole enterprise is fraught with questions of legitimacy and fairness It is such an enormous… Read More ›
The Power of Effective Feedback
Teacher feedback on student work can be a powerful tool to dramatically improve student learning BUT the quality must be good or it can actually have negative effects on student growth. Many researchers and authors give attention to this significant… Read More ›
What does differentiation really mean?
Lately, and rightly so, there seems to be a lot of buzz around differentiation, personalized learning, personalization, individualization… and many folks are trying to distinguish among them. The MAJOR distinction, it seems, is whether or not the goals of students remain… Read More ›
Assessing Conceptual Understanding
Assessing for deep understanding and higher order thinking is not easy. It’s oh-so-much easier to assess for factual recall. But it’s worth doing. Combining the work of Dr. Erickson and Dr. Lanning on concept-based curriculum and instruction with the work… Read More ›
Wellness Wednesday: Are we melting their brains?
Earlier this month, art students at Burlington High School in Massachusetts were asked to create pieces that responded to this question: “How do you FEEL about standardized tests?” Their teacher, Ms. Chang, published some of their pieces on her class… Read More ›
