Miss Younger's Math Musings
“WE ARE SURROUNDED by numbers. Etched on credit cards or engraved on coins, printed on pay checks or aligned on computerized spread sheets, numbers rule our lives. Indeed, they lie at the heart of our technology. Without numbers, we could not send rockets roaming the solar system, nor could we build bridges, exchange goods, or…
My Position Large scale assessment should not be used for the ranking of schools. Contrary Position Large scale assessments are a good tool for ranking schools. “Parents use the rankings as one source of objective evidence of school performance when choosing a school for their children,” (Cowley, 2016) families need the full picture of the school…
My grade group partner and I collaborate on classroom assessments, using common rubrics for writing, reading responses, and math problem solving in our grade 4classes. This helps us pinpoint student strengths and weaknesses and instructional areas needing improvement. Developing these rubrics aligned with provincial performance standards took us five years, ensuring they are student and…
What are the explicit purposes for classroom assessment in your context? Looking at my own classroom practice my assessment has two explicit purposes, the first being formative to be used as a guide for learning and the second being summative. I primarily use a project-based learning approach with my students working from highly structured inquiries…
“The test of truth in life is not whether we can remember what we learned in school, but whether we are prepared for change,” (Schleicher, 2012) education systems need to change constantly to keep up with the evolution of our global society. In his 2012 TED Talk Schleicher advocates the use of data on local, national and international…
My students complete a total of five to six reading assessments per year, these are administered by myself as their classroom teacher. In September we use the DART test in conjunction with the previous year’s reading levels to determine which students need running record using the Fontas and Pinnell assessment kit within the first few…
Read More “Reading Assessments Blurring Assessment Purposes” »
Tests and assessments are part of our day-to-day instructional practices and we need the information gained from them to support student learning. I made the connection between the historical views of assessment and learning through scaffolding tasks and breaking them up and assessing progress on the smaller steps as described in the Shepard article to…
When reading the Volante and Jaafar article I noticed similarities in provincial assessment across the province based on the available data in 2008, at that time I was a high school student in BC and participated in the provincial subject based exams in grade 10,11 and 12. All I remember of the exams is the…
Hello all, My name is Amanda Younger, I’m a grade 4 teacher in Langley, British Columbia. I’m currently on maternity leave with my first child, a wonderful little boy. I completed my bachelor’s degree in geography and geographic information systems at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in 2014 and my Bachelor of Education with a focus on…
“However, the theory didn’t become widespread among public school educators as a theory of assessment, it became popularized as a theory of teaching- prescribing when and how outcomes should be addressed.” (Case, The Unfortunate Consequences of Bloom’s Taxonomy, 2013) Wow, was this statement impactful! I began my teacher education in the fall of 2014 and…