An important part of Assessment For Learning is helping students know "what they know" and "what they don't." For younger students (K-1), this is certainly a challenge. What follows is a nugget worth sharing from The Daily Five by Joan Moser and Gail Boushey...
As teachers are modeling a particular procedure or strategy, or after students have practiced a technique, teachers ask the students to gauge their understanding or performance in the following way: "Hold your fist close to your he… Continue

Rubrics are a great way to help students learn from their mistakes and to assess their own knowledge (#5 and #6 of the 6 Key AFL Ideas).

In the typical high school setting, rubrics are most commonly used by English teachers to show students how they will be grading essays/papers. Other teachers will sometimes use them to s… Continue

My school system - City of Salem Schools, VA - has undergone a lengthy process to determine what types of social networking should be available on our system's network. Until recently, all social networks were blocked by our filter.

After much discussion and exploration, it was decided that social networking would be open for all faculty members. Faculty members would be treated as professionals who are able to use social networking appropria… Continue

As a teacher, have you ever experienced anything similar to the following scenario:

You teach your course content over a period of time. The day before your big test you have a review activity of some sort. The review activity is a good one. It goes well, but during the activity you realize that your students don’t know the material all that well. Considering the number of days you spent covering it, you would have thought they would have known it better by now. The next day on the test the stu… Continue

As I have come to comprehend better what Assessment FOR Learning truly means and how its principles can be applied, I find myself regularly thinking about how I would do things differently if I were still in the classroom. After recently observing Paola Brinkley, one of our school’s Spanish teachers, I realized yet another former practice of mine that I wou… Continue

This doesn't directly relate to Assessment FOR Learning, but it will be helpful to teachers trying to bring different resources into the classroom.

YouTube is full of wonderful video clips to use in a classroom. There are 2 problems with YouTube, though.

1. Some schools block it
2. Sometimes a slow network will make it difficult or impossible to watch a video

The solution is to download the videos to your computer (this can be done at home if your school blocks YouTube) and then either show t… Continue

A criticism of Assessment FOR Learning is that along with it comes pressure to make sure that students’ grades increase. In other words, some have been concernerd that AFL might lead to grade inflation.

I would hope that no school would ever encourage grade inflation while it encourages its teachers to try AFL techniques. I think that that the concern over grade inflation is probably first and foremost a misunderstanding about the purpose of AFL.

The primary goal of AFL is not grade inflation.… Continue

I would imagine that many Physical Education teachers must feel as though much of the professional development activities and workshops in schools do not apply to them. Typically, discussions of state standards and NCLB expectations dominate these discussions. While these apply to PE, they apply in a different manner than they do in a core area classroom. And let’s face it, PE is a very different world from the typical classroom. PE teachers are dealing with a completely different environment th… Continue