Blog #3
Last weekend, I attended the National TAP conference in
New Orleans. My district sent 11
administrators to this conference because of the adoption of the new statewide
observation rubric that is based on the TAP model.
I attended many sessions in two days that addressed
topics such as academic feedback, questioning, thinking, problem solving,
engaging students, visual learning, and others.
I think what struck me most was how well PBL aligns with this rubric. Many of components for a level 3 or 4 teacher
could be seen in a PBL lesson.
I also attended a session on assessment. I think this is one area that I have
struggled with during our time together learning about PBL. The session presenter addressed assessment
and many different ways students can be assessed. But he made a comment that has stuck with me –
what if we made the assessment as engaging as the learning? What if the assessment made students want to
learn more rather than be the end of learning about a topic? I have thought about that quite a bit since
my conference, and even ordered a suggested book to learn more about creating
engaging assessment. (Design in 5 by Nicole Vagle) I hope as my learning about PBL continues to
grow that this will enhance my learning in the area of assessment.
Hi Melissa,
ReplyDeleteI am glad that you had the opportunity to attend the TAP conference and it sounds like the sessions were helpful. Like you, meaningful assessments has been an area for many of us in this year's cohort that we want to improve upon. For me, the most effective assessments are "dual purpose" in that they are instructional and engaging for the students and they also provide the teacher with valuable, accurate data to inform and guide subsequent instruction. That is the ideal, the actuality of creating these and making time to use the feedback to guide instruction is where the difficult part comes for me. I'm more and more convinced that the simplest assessment tools that work with a meaningful instructional opportunity that allows students to "show/apply what they know" are the ones I actually use more than once. Thank you for sharing this book title with me. I want to read this one too.
Sincerely,
Dawn
I honestly thing assessment is the hardest aspect of PBL. So much of good PBL learning leads to things that are hard to quantify. I'm not implementing it this year, but next year I want to kind of "crowd-source" some of the assessments in my room. After lengthy study of what makes good images and how to give good critiques, I'm going to try some form of class-wide voting on photos. The idea is still really nebulous, and I know there are some potential hang-ups there, but I think I'll be able to devise something by then.
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