Week 3 Recall

Week 3 has come and gone, but I can recall that most of my formative assessment thoughts were based on how to use assessment as learning - especially the assessments we are required to collect as part of our pre/post year data that we submit to the principal at the end of the year.  Usually I have collected writing samples or administered pretests and then piled them up and tried to find extra moments to "grade" them within a relatively reasonable time frame.  As the beginning of school is a especially busy time of year, this is usually weeks, if not a month or more.

As I was collecting my student work for the Sept. 19th class, (sticky note exit tickets w/claim evidence examples) I started realizing how much I am not putting these assessments to work.  I was reading the sticky notes with the mindset "Oh good, they are doing fine on this" rather than "Hmm, where do we put effort next?"

I started realizing that I was four weeks into the school year and I hadn't even looked at the pre-assessment writing samples, much less looked at them as a means of informing my teaching.  I'll admit that I administered the task robotically for the primary purpose of meeting a requirement for which the assumed parameters are fairly superficial - merely presenting data at the end of the year.

Whether or not it's been explicitly addressed, I know the true importance of this student work that is gathered pre-instruction is to inform ongoing instruction.  Suddenly, these writing samples were promoted to the forefront of my priorities.  I asked my teaching partner to bring her samples to our weekly Monday afternoon collaboration session.  Consequently, we did not get to any review or sorting, but at least they're now on the radar as being urgent!