Blog
Intervention: The Critical Safety Net
I've got to be honest, when I see people engage in recreational hobbies like free-climbing, I get extremely nervous. Perhaps the biggest reason is due to my severe fear of heights. I tend to . . . Read more
Staying the Course with a Smart Assessment Plan
It’s a cool Saturday morning in October. Everybody is gathered at the Tim Nixon Invitational Cross Country meet in Liberty, Missouri. Parents gather on the sideline straining in . . . Read more
PLC Collaboration: District and School Leaders
Our district went through an organizational reorg during the 2018-2019 school year. As we morphed into the school year, we wanted to work on improving PLCs. Each level in Jefferson County Schools has a team of district resource teachers to provide support for schools. We have been working with the schools on becoming highly effective PLCs. Our ELA resource teacher created a learning walk tool, PLC Check In, we could use when visiting collaborative teams. My administrative assistant and I looked at the weekly reports to monitor what was taking place during the week. Read more
On What Kind of PLC Journey Are You: Learning...or Doing?
Becoming a PLC is a journey of transformation. It requires that we nurture and cultivate a collaborative culture anchored around a shared commitment of one thing: learning. However, it is amazing how many times I see folks engaged in what they believe to be the work of a collaborative team in a professional learning community. Yet, through their conversations about their work, they demonstrate the only thing that has really changed is what they call their meeting time. Read more
Thriving Inside the Creative Tension
Today, a tension exists in professional learning communities that are striving to do what’s best for students and learning: teachers feel caught between the desire to do more with formative . . . Read more
New Twists on the Old Exam Week
Over the past few years, our district and our school staff have been working to improve our assessment practices. Most of this has been centered around AFL: Assessment for Learning. In our high . . . Read more
Q&A: Rick DuFour’s Response to a Question on Formative Assessment
Last week, educate4life posted the following comment on Grading Formative and Summative Assessments by Rick DuFour: I am new to this forum but stumbled upon this thread. I am a high school mathematics teacher... Read more
Are Your Assessments Good, Not So Good, or . . . Great?
“What does a good formative assessment look like?” “Can you please show us some examples?” These are the types of questions that often surface as collaborative teams in PLC schools delve into the work of... Read more
Driven by DIVAS (Data, Instruction, Varied Assessments, and Supports)
How do educators focus on improving student achievement when demographics and performance challenges seem insurmountable? The teachers at Licking Heights High School recently addressed this . . . Read more
Prerequisites for Standards-Based Reporting
As we work with schools and teams that are doing the work associated with implementing professional learning community concepts and practices, we are often asked, “Don’t we need to . . . Read more
Grading Formative and Summative Assessments
We received a question about grading, specifically how to balance grading between formative and summative assessments. The author was concerned because the grading practices of the teachers in the . . . Read more
How PLCs Use Assessments
We received a series of questions from a school grappling with developing common assessments. I summarized the questions and attempted to provide a brief response for each… Read more
Should Homework Be Graded?
I received an interesting question from a teacher regarding recommendations for whether or not homework should be graded. He described a scenario in which a student demonstrates proficiency on every quiz, test, and exam but refuses to do homework each day. If, on a daily basis, the student… Read more