Assessment: How Are You Communicating Student Learning/Reporting? Reporting? Standards

Assessment Notes:

Assessment: How are you communicating student learning/Reporting? Reporting? Standards based grading? MyEd or other? How is this going?

Good discussion on core competencies; however not very far along on the discussion; schools only requiring reflection on one competency; still very much a paper based curriculum (Mission)
Portfolios are still highly valued at some schools. Still a gap on what is reported out and what parents want/need to hear. (Dist 78)
Dist held a forum for parents to go over the core competencies; audio-visual information shared from school and districts to parents. Teachers send photos to the dist and these photos are shared~ they show off how the core competencies are being demonstrated in class. All of the material is organized by the Dist (Maple Ridge)
Use of MyBlueprint; goal for all students to have a portfolio for graduation; choice of artifacts for worth; then the student reflects upon one piece they are most proud of; still concerns on how to get the students involved and appreciative of the effort. Another effort is reporting on core competencies on the report cards. Grading is still the basis of the competencies (Abby)
In schools which are 6-12 many of the teachers are reporting out at the senior grades like they would at the grade 6 level; regular use of Myblueprint to report out~ all students have access in all classes to Myblueprint; every student has an advisor and a homeroom teacher for support (Chilliwack)
Use of Myedbc as the main use of reporting for Langley. Improvement on reporting out information on report cards but it's a work in progress (at grade 8 and 9). Real push for changing how assessment works. Poppy is piloting a standards based gradebook via Myedbc with the goal to be fully standards based in September. The concern is asking teachers to change practise but not having the assessment tools that go with the change in practise. Holistic assessment is preferred rather than numbers (Langley)

Assessments: What will Literacy and Numeracy assessments look like? Logistics? Who will own them?

Questions around the numeracy exam and the role of the adult dogwood (Mission)
Work needed with staff in determining who should write the pilot this year (Langley)
Suggestion to ask the staff to write the numeracy assessment for them to understand it (structure and process)
Some schools have a coordinator (school $ decision) in the building to develop pedagogy around literacy and numeracy assessments. Dealt with via the lens of instruction. Real concern around who (teachers) will take ownership of the assessments. Also real questions around low incidence (Maple Ridge)
Very important not to link the numeracy assessment to the Math dept (Langley)

Assessment: How are you communicating student learning? Reporting? Standards basedgrading? MyEd or other? How is this going?

·Summary from Sam: myblueprint, seasaw, etc is being prototyped in many pockets.

·Langley: WGSS has worked hard on the core competencies visuals and getting the language into the classrooms, using it to guide instruction, learning and assessment. Growth plan is to focus on taking the redesign as the way to move from a culture of marks and judgement to a culture of learning and feedback. Port At Vanguard, focus has been about educating the students and the parent community to use the myed portal in order to access the students’ gradebook and other information.. The focus is on relationships.Gord says The parent communication piece is crucial. There are currently lots of tensions. How do you change the system away from three informal reporting sessions throughout the year, but instead communicating learning throughout the year. We also need to make sure our staff in in a place to do it well. How do we capture the formative piece well? Some schools are using the parent portal in myED for interims. Do we need the official report card at the end of terms? The consumer (parents/students) doing want to piece of paper (even in digital form) – because it needs to be cranked out at the office, it’s old news by the time you get it. We need to look at the social-emotional piece.

·Mission: some teachers will very rule focused on grades, focusing on final exams, not letting Grade 9 students start an exam late, etc. The collective agreement around reporting language restricts you. Looking at the standards based gradebook within MyED. Let’s just get going with the portal! Great supports from Judy Smith helping teachers get going on the gradebook.

·Chilliwack: Alt world also focusing on relationships first. Looking outside the classic bins of different tasks, instead using three bins: “Arifacts”, “Conversations”, “Observations.” 365 being used as a tool for this. They are starting with OneNote.

·Jan: Is there a way to learn from the alt world in terms of structuring? If we start with relationships first, we shouldn’t be structuring our schools the traditional way.

·Abby: Talking about IB program that is grades based (with standards). Moving to “check my progress” as reporting software. Interesting dichotomy.

·Maple Ridge: At every staff meeting, 15 minutes are put aside to talk about this. This makes a huge difference in terms of progress. Trying to do an E report card – at the same time this report card is still ‘old’ by three weeks. Great conversations happening around core and curricular competencies embedded in assessment.

Assessments: What will Literacy and Numeracy assessments look like? Logistics? Who will own them?

·Abby: the numeracy exam that is being piloted – most students will need to write in June. How do we get enough technology to support students to be able to write it?

·Langley: looking at the gatekeeping course? Who owns it? Do we use English as a gatekeeper course? One of our schools was piloting using ipads for the numeracy exam. Let’s write the exam exemplar questions as a staff! As a district! Let’s use the proficiency scale language for our standard based assessments across the board. We need to get based the idea that Numeracy exam replaced the Math Provincial exam. If you asked 1000 people what numeracy means, what will they say?

·Mission: What kind of feedback are the students getting to help them progress and improve for the next write if they choose to?

·Jan: Perhaps we need to offer the exams more often to help ease the technology logistics. Offer it in an ongoing readiness capacity

Assessment: How are you communicating student learning? Reporting? Standards based grading? MyEd or other? How is this going?

Working on comments. What we should be saying vs using the canned comments
For the informal reports, staff using Freshgrade, MYED, Scholantis
Some examples of learning being live streamed through Facebook
Seeing close to about half the report cards not being picked up…in many cases this could be due to teachers doing a better job at communicating regularly
Still learning the power of MYED…we just aren’t there yet to use it at the level we need to
Sardis is going away from the paper copies, going to the parent portal
Abbotsford using Check my Progress (locally developed) provides continuous access for parents
Only do end of semester and end of year paper reports
Can push out marks for parents at different times through Synrevoice in connection with Check My Progress
Effort of meaningful comments can sometimes be wasted by the percentages and letter grades attached to the reports
What does your end of semester/end of year assessments look like? Where are we at with phasing out the traditional final assessments? How does that change the structure of the end of the year?
Can we get grade 11 & 12 course codes sooner than planned?
Do we have to produce a report card in February (for the end of Semester)? Creates timeline struggles

Assessments: What will Literacy and Numeracy assessments look like? Logistics? Who will own them?

Logistical challenge with switching to PBL final assessments from paper and pencil exams but still finding time to properly assess and get all marks done
Sardis – present grade 11 math classes write numeracy assessment (splits by semester)
Still have final week, but assessment must look different…every teacher must do some sort of assessment
Thomas Haney – all grade 11s will write in January (linear school)…will be allowed to rewrite in June of their grade 12 year. Math & Science teachers want to look after the prep, but English & SS are on board to help
Initial intentions were for students to write whenever they felt ready, but it seems like schools and districts are choosing when.
For those going in to trades, use the BCIT Literacy & Numeracy entrance exams as supports for those students. They need to be able to be successful on those and that should help them on the provincial assessments
Some concerns if we don’t attach it to a course, kids could slip through the cracks and then not graduate because of not completing the exam.
Really need our Math/Science teachers to collaborate with the English teachers to provide help with the numeracy assessment…very heavy language content

Group 1.

How are you communicating student learning?

Maple Ridge / PM: - Just started on MYED standards based assessments – looking at the Ministry 6 pt proficiency scales – just starting to introduce the concepts to admin/clerical support – Myron Dueck has been in contact with the district –

Chilliwack: HS: Traditional composite grade and percentages -

Abbotsford: Check my Progress – students learning is communicated with this platform – 98% of teachers using check my progress as opposed to MYED gradebook. Training is ongoing and tech support is in house for Abby with CMP creator.

Challenge is MYED gradebook is coming back as a top of the conversation and Abbotsford is wondering if the switch is worth it?

For IB – Most seem to be using CMP and changing the 7 pt scale and modifying grades as such.

Exploring the MYED gradebook

Mission: How do we move people from Evaluation to Assessment?

Reporting? Standards based grading? MyEd or other? How is this going?

Challenges with Post Secondary Process

-We still want our students to be able to compete Internationally

-Tension between Post Sec and Workplace?

Role of the School System

-Is it a Post Sec sorting or amazing educational experience

-Tension between Prepared for Life vs. prepared for work

-It needs to be high school PLUS –

-Why is there even a grade 10-12? It doesn’t exist outside of the school system

Marriage analogy – no one gets married at the same time, no one gets their masters at the same time, and yet when students don’t graduate at the same time they are some how “less than”(no one feels that the younger you get married the smarter you are?)

Balancing Formative and Summative Assessment vs. Traditional Grading system

-Educating the Community around this new change in assessment is a struggle.

What do we want our students to leave school with?

-Is it great marks? Or Great People?

-Middle school students are pushing our HS teachers in their understanding of assessment – competencies

Group 2

Pitt Meadows

All secondary schools are linear –

Confusing for parents – some teachers give percentage and letter grades (LG) and others have LG – do not have consistency within schools - Question – if we are trying to get over this notion of getting over percentages why allow this.

Abbotsford

Reporting as usual

Langley –

Whole concept that up to grade 8 students are pushed through and the at grade 9 they can fail over and over.

IB in order graduate students must convert 7 point scale to grades.

Taking time to emphasize the importance of Social aspects – Adam Moore – interim used Characteristics/ traits of students

Mike P – small school - mixed classes grades 9 to 12 –in electives as a small school must mix grades to build classes – we could do more of this in other curricular area however, contractual issues

Abbotsford – collective agreement – remedy etc, it is difficult to be flexible.

Group 3

Assessment: How are you communicating student learning? Reporting? Standards based grading? MyEd or other? How is this going?

-check my progress is really a public grade book. Doesn’t communicate much about student learning, what the teacher has assessed in terms of competencies and learning progress

-MyEd BC - infrastructure needs to be there

-Everyone needs to be on MyEd

-Standards Based Assessments in MyEd BC is being released. Maple Ridge has been using it. Structure will align with assessment practice

-how do you make standards based assessment / communicating student learning manageable for a teacher and understandable by parents?

-we are in a time where we are dabbling in how to do this. How do we make sure that students are not being negatively impacted by this? How do you translate standards based assessments to letter grades and percentages on transcripts?

-what happens with students who want to go to PSIs outside of BC?

-how are non-traditional universities responding? Entrance Requirements? Etc...

Group 4

Assessment at Dark Green Table

Assessment: How are you communicating student learning? Reporting? Standards based grading? MyEd or other? How is this going?

Maple Ridge – Myron Dueck spoke to teachers about assessment, and using Proficeincy Scales
Getting rid of % for grade 8s and 9s, but some push pack for staff… silent group of resistors on staff (more specifically Math and Science tend to be the resistors)
Abbotsford using Checkmymark
Standard-based gradebook in MyEDBC … now finally functioning. In Chilliwack, teachers who were eager have stopped waiting for MyEd because of tech issueswithMyEd
Concerns that universities will have their own exams for their own sorting purposes…
Do we give more time to teachers for meaningful reporting/comments/communication with parents and students?

9. Assessments: What will Literacy and Numeracy assessments look like? Logistics? Who will own them?

What will Literacy and Numeracy assessments look like?

Maple Ridge:

Chilliwack: All grade 11 students will be writing January or June Numeracy Assessment (Student choice around WHEN to write?)

Are these results on transcript implications – if they become public are parents going to make decisions around where they should send their kids.

How do have all other teachers own this?

Mission: Numeracy Assessment won’t focus on Math Curriculum. Mission uses ITA essential skills – the literacy affects all subjects, so can numeracy.

Fraser Cascades: Collaboration with other subject areas will be the key – whether culinary arts or mechanics transferability of numeracy skills will be key. Collaboration will be key.

Table 2

Numeracy Assessment

Abbotsford - Challenging for ELL students as the assessment is very literacy based. Having discussion about how to support students who normally can do well with computation but now require reading skills to understand the questions and the ability to communicate their thinking.
Ideas shared – from Metro – department heads get together and write numeracy questions together. One suggestion – to have secondary teachers take the numeracy assessment.
See a real need for this assessment to move away from the math department
Lots of discussion around understanding of basic foundational skills - is still important and relevant.

Group 3

Assessments: What will Literacy and Numeracy assessments look like? Logistics? Who will own them?

-Mission and Langley is doing trial numeracy assessment

-fears around the data being used with Fraser Institute etc...

-data needs be used in a formative way - how do we improve students numeracy skills.

-logistics around administering the exam. Mission and Chilliwack administering to all grade 11s. Semester, and then linear.

Group 4

Assessments: What will Literacy and Numeracy assessments look like? Logistics? Who will own them?

Abbotsford – tough time with numeracy assessment – very language-based. Everybody in grade 11 is taking the numeracy assessment at this point.
Having dep’t heads work through the numeracy assessment… then they present to their departments, with the final question: How do we support numeracy in our department? The penny will drop!
Ministry leaving the assessment piece so long may have been a mistake. No consistency now in how it is being managed.