Saturday, 4 August 2012

Ontario Curriculum Documents

I have a number of different problems in life; some are humorous, others frustrating, and for whatever reason some problems combine together to create incredibly fortunate circumstances (bare with me). The first problem is that I work on a ten inch notebook, and the stigmatisms in my eyes often do not cooperate to produce optimal vision. The second is that I my cousin and his wife have a habit of taking advantage of the fact that I am a single twenty-seven year-old male. I am constantly helping (doing) their yard-work, making errands for them, and am frequently used as a punching bag for their two young children. BUT...they are both elementary teachers. And with that being said I have the fortune of chatting with them on a nightly basis about all things life – and many things relating to education. It has also enabled me to obtain hard copies of The Ontario Curriculum Grades 1-8 guides. As my good friend’s father says, “there is more than one way to skin a cat” (and for the record I do not condone that behaviour...). These circumstances are how I have arrived on my living room floor with six different Ontario Curriculum guides flagging the grade six expectations. Immediately one can observe many similarities that encourage easy and frequent use of these documents, but also the frequent implementation of authentic assessment (we’ll get to that later). Let’s start with the easy-to-observe similarities. The newly revised documents are colour-coded, come with easy-to-identify headings, overall and specific expectations, and different strands that are to be focused on. The benefits of the “easy-to-observe” similarities are fairly obvious for two reasons. First, people work well with anything that is organized. And second (and more specific to education), it provides teachers with guides to break down learning objectives – and does so in a way that encourages organization from the teacher as well.
            A second group of similarities are those which I have yet to give a clever name to. The extraction of specific learning skills from a broader group of overall expectations dominates the documents. The numbered overall expectations break down how subjects are taught and learned, while coinciding specific expectations dive into the learning goals/concepts that pave the way for successful learning attainment (yikes that was a bit wordy). I wonder, since the expectations are laid out so clearly, would it be useful to put the curriculum expectations on the board during lessons for transparency and to highlight to students what they are intended to learn.
The documents also include “helpers” (poor word-choice), such as teacher prompts and guiding questions, that clarify any concerns educators may experience. In addition, subject-specific glossaries are included in the back few pages of the documents. This is helpful to teachers when providing clear and quick definitions to students. I think above all, the curriculum documents are intended to address the needs of students while providing an effective ready-to-implement guide for teachers. On page 23 of the Language curriculum guide it states, “Teachers should ensure that all students have ample opportunities to explore a subject from multiple perspectives by emphasizing cross-curricular learning and integrated learning.” Obviously there is added pressure to link different subjects together at the primary level, more so it seems than at the secondary level. Learning how to create this cross-curricular learning is something I look forward to partaking in and utilizing.
 In order to reach these expectations, teachers must provide authentic assessment that illustrates a students’ learning. There is an ample supply of educational jargon that teachers have added to their arsenals: assessment as, for, and of learning; diagnostic and formative assessments, and evaluations. But how do we know what works for students, versus what works for us? How do we get students to show their learning in ways that mimic real-world contexts: whether it be reading, writing, viewing, mathematics, or otherwise. The following is a list of assessment strategies, some of which I have used, others observed, and others that I have only read about (in no particular order).

Portfolios, conferences (many types), checklists, observations, anecdotal notes, reports, speeches, rubrics, running records, KWL, graphic organizers, standardized testing (EQAO comes to mind for obvious reasons), mind maps, peer editing, self-assessments, case studies, rating scales, oral reports.

Obviously (need to stop using that word), some of the above are the exercises that go along with the assessments, but I still find some value in adding them to the list. For some people all of these may stand out, and for others they could be foreign. The three that I want to examine more closely are ones I suspect to be quite common in Junior Education.

1.     Reports: I have enjoyed success using reports in the classroom because you can utilize a number of different types exercises and assignments that serve as assessments of learning all while exploring the nature of a particular topic. I have used this format predominantly for summative assessments – the clear goal being that the student has had multiple opportunities to show his or her learning previously, and in this final report. The final report was for students to invent a product or service, write a report, create a three minute oral presentation, and investigate marketing strategies for said invention. While I would obviously adapt this model for primary grades – I believe in giving students the opportunity to showcase their knowledge and learning in ways that best suit them. I can use checklists to identify presentation skills, speech patterns, inflection, etc. for the oral component. I can use a rubric (developed with class participation) to assess the report component, and can even use peer assessments throughout the process to show students where their peers think they may be off-track. I believe in exercises that allow students to participate in the entire writing/creative process: research, drafts, referencing, editing, and producing polished finished work. I believe these types of collaborative assessments could work effectively in the Junior Grades.
2.     Portfolios: Unfortunately my use of portfolios at the intermediate and senior level was lacking. It’s not that I didn’t not student improvement, or highlight how far a student had come over time, but I didn’t do this in the explicit way that would be necessary at the Junior level. The section in Tompkins text (pages 165-168) gave some great insight into the usefulness of this assessment strategy. It would be overly redundant to recite her ideas completely, so I will provide my thoughts on what I have seen. While volunteering earlier this year, I was allowed to peruse students’ portfolios. I was intrigued to see what had been selected by the students for entry, and found it quite refreshing to note that not every piece of work had been graded. I believe that a portfolio (while showing obvious signs of strength and areas of weakness unique to each student) should be a collaboration of students’ work that they can be proud of. I believe students may produce greater results when they “know” it could be entered into their portfolio. Finally, I was encouraged to see such a diverse eclectic array of pieces inside the portfolio. And even more encouraged to read figure 4-14 – and note that many of those artifacts were in the portfolios I viewed.
3.     Conferences: I know in writing you are supposed to save the “best for last”, and “leave on a high note”, and “leave the reader craving more”, but I believe in authenticity. And if I didn’t i wouldn’t have written this blurb and instead would have copied and pasted to make this entry fit the clichés. So with that being said, I want to touch again on conferences – something that has been addressed in previous reflections. I want to acknowledge how frequently I have come across this: Tompkins book, in my supplementary readings, and in teaching and observing all grades. It seems that this assessment strategy is applauded for its purity. A teacher interacting with a single student or group of students to find out what they know. I also think it has been found to be so effective for so many because there isn’t one tried and tested type of conference that works best. It is one strategy that a teacher can mold to a form that works best not just for him or herself, but most importantly for the student.

Thank you. 

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