Chris Lehmann presented”a progressive view of education.” He mentioned 3 essential questions to form the basis of instruction at the Science Learning Academy.”How do we learn?What can we create? What does it mean to lead?”A thought comes to my mind, Do our teachers go into their classrooms with these questions? Would it benefit our students if they did? If students inquired , researched,collaborated, presented, and reflected would their results on Standardized Tests be higher?
Our school division is the realm of delivering and developing assessments.These assessments include The AFL for Reading, Writing and Math at various grade levels and the CAT III. We have also gone so far as to develop a Grade 7 reading assessment which has been given and will continue to be given to Grade 7’s in our school division(which I was a part of by the way).
Schools have been given the results of these tests, and then teachers are expected to, in their individual school PLT’S, create common assessments for those areas needing improvement in the Math, Reading,and Writing. By starting to do this, students scores should improve when given these assessments again, and our school divsions learning improvement plan goal should be reached by 2009.
Again, back to my question, if we followed the Science Leadership Academy’s Approach to Learning, would students do better on Standardized assessments?
4 responses so far ↓
1
Cindy Seibel
// Mar 26, 2008 at 4:48 pm
I’m pondering the fact that Chris’ discussion has spawned several reflections on standardized testing. But encouraged that we discussed the Saskatchewan approach to Assessment FOR Learning rather than OF Learning. Yet I wonder how we can implement an assessment for learning approach without taking the SLA approach. Does an AFL approach not assume that assessment is both continuous and embedded?
2
technological utopia in a school « Connie Cossar’s Tech”no” Blog
// Mar 27, 2008 at 10:19 pm
[...] my fellow classmates posts about Chris’ great presentation: Rosanne, Dave, Corey, Ken, Leah, Marlene, Shaun, Walter Posted by ccossar Filed in EC&I Reflections Tagged: Chris Lehmann, Science [...]
3
Shaun Loeppky
// Mar 31, 2008 at 6:48 pm
Or maybe a better question would be, would they be more effective in the process of learning rather than containers of knowledge?
4
Kimberly Brown
// Apr 6, 2008 at 1:35 pm
The downfall of the provincial AFL is that the results come back the following year. I think the results can help to support the improvement of school programs but not for the students individually.
I think the three essential questions should be a part of every teachers teaching whether or not they improve test scores.
I also think it’s difficult for students to see any importance in the standarized tests we do or the AFL because it doesn’t have any impact on them at school. I’m not saying it should but why should the students care how well they do on the tests?
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