Minutes+of+November+30+meeting

Elementary School Meeting Minutes Date: 30/11/09 Attendees: Bill, Ila, Jeff, David, Karen Wood, Jim Topic: Assessment · The affordances construction may be premature without a firm establishment of the actual policies of assessment. · Affordances can be a good starting point for a backwards by design process as the recording and reporting aspects are quite important. · Both affordances and practices could be developed simultaneously. · We need to be concerned that methods of recording and reporting help us rather than hinder us by adding extra work. · Various formats can be used together for reporting, including hard copy and e-formats. · E-tools will allow for quick and easy archiving, that is both easy to record and to access, · The main question is this: How will we report to parents? · Portfolios will be a key component in assessment. · Portfolios will need to have a uniform format. · Conferences will be another key component in assessment. · Conferences will be challenging here because of the ESL situation with students and parents. · Conferences can be a complicated undertaking that actually requires scripting and a great deal of practice. · Conferences can take various formats: student-led, three way, etc. · Conferences usually take place twice per year, but we will have to further consider the frequency we will want here. · Early conferences can be very meaningful for beginning the year the right way. · Sometimes conferences need to be held specially to address individual student needs. · The onus should be on the student for the conference. · The Estonia assessment matrix presents a good model of what we need to draw up for assessment. · Part of our mission with assessment is to get parents involved who live in a culture where parent involvement may not always be the case, especially with the fathers. · We will also have to foster the child-parent communication. · Student-led conferences will depend on age level for their particular activities and exact formats. · The Curio tool that Gary is developing will assist the child-parent communication process. · Student-led conferences should be started a.s.a.p. in the schooling process. · The question of whether or not we will use grades needs to be discussed in detail. · What is acceptable by the community will have to be considered when deciding about grading policy. · Koreans will react against a non-graded assessment policy. · Korean parents will want a means to compare their children to others · This comparison phenomenon is quite common to various cultures. · The concept using a method of plotting student progress along continua is a possible assessment format. · The construction of a well thought out and articulated assessment policy is key because we will not want to lose the clients, so there will have to be some balance between conventional and unconventional assessment methods. · We do not really have a direction here that has been presented to us, so we should offer the model we think would work if we want to deviate from the norm. · Some may not really be happy with the continuum idea as it can also appear to be like grading. · Long narratives can prove to be quite a burdensome method, on the other hand. · We need to incorporate actual evidence of learning and include that in the student-led format whereby the student and parent can decide where the student is on the continuum of development. · The above may work, but the teacher’s input/opinion/evaluation would still be considered the final word by parents quite possibly. · The Curio format would be a fine format for a transferring student, particularly because it would contain such things as audio/visual evidence. · Middle school teachers have begun similar assessment discussions and have considered going without number grades and using descriptors instead. · It is an important to determine if going without grades in 6-8 would be an acceptable format for IB. · Middle school decisions will drive our decisions to some extent. · A question about whether or not middle school will use narratives was raised. · It was noted that Rolly constructed the report card at his last school. · A couple of teachers noted that their previous experience proved that too much reporting could be both troublesome and ineffective. · Sage advice: “A pig doesn’t get heavier by weighing it more often.” · Parent involvement will be essential in helping the assessment process to move away from the “clerking” type of process. · As students build their skills over time at the assessment process, they will be more and more effective at communicating with their parents about their education. · We need to find more ways for the teacher to be less of a mediator, placing more of the onus on the child. · There is a concern about children being punished for less than perfect school performance in this culture. · Counseling and parent education will be very important aspects to success in this area. · Concern was again voiced about the ability of teachers being able to effectively use all the digital tools considering the many other demands of their work. · Students will be able to assist teachers in the use of digital tools, taking responsibility and thus easing the teacher’s load. · The on-line program Ed-line is a useful tool for reporting that has proven to be helpful for middle and upper school. · We can use similar things to keep parents up-to-date. · Sometimes reporting tends to be too heavily weighted toward the negative. · One teacher recalled the use of a “news” format on-line for parents that was good but required a great deal of time and effort, and they had to do a hard copy anyways for those parents who didn’t have computers. · Students will be able to do their reflections on-line. · We will be able to post responses and attachments and send to rss feed. · We will be able to scan student work in the classroom. · We can use moodle by grades 4 or 5. · Digital tools will help us save a great deal of time. · Written reporting could be summative versus formative. Note: Teachers decided to meet again on Thursday, 3/12/09. In the meantime, they would each search out one or two good models for assessment schemes. They would also review the PYP assessment information that they have already received.