PZ: Assessing Understanding in Planning and Student Learning

Need to get away from assessing the mind/understanding and not work.

Topics: Levels, Dimensions.

Skill is not enough! In addition, you need the inclination to use your skills, and the altertness to learn when your skills will be valuable. We want to be teaching dispositions.

Levels:
Naive/Pre-Engagement
In this performance, I don't see evidence of a sophisticated mind

Low levels of skill inclination and alertness. Love levels of skill and alertness. Trouble-shoot - work with inclination! Engage them individually.

Novice/Rote+Ritual (absolutes): This is where most students are at - completion-based, A grades.

Both skill and inclination can be high/medium - but this skill and inclination are extrinsic (A, do you like me). You are only alert to responses of others. You are giving up your own interest and desire to inquire. Trouble-shoot: Lower the stakes of the final performance, and increase the stakes of the steps leading to the final performance (Relevant). "I think grades are like street drugs." Talk to kids explicitly about grades and giving their power away.

Apprentice/Thinking with Support (wondering questions)

Variety of skill levels - high intrinsic motivation. Whatever level of altertness they have, your goal is to increase this.

Master/Autonomous,Critical and Creative Thinking

Assessing Understanding in planning and student work

The reflective toss

The teacher's first instructional goal is to "catch" the meaning of what a student is saying.

The teacher then "tosses" or "throws" responsibility for thinking back to the student.

The student "catches" by responding with an evaluative statement.

This is just like Gabriel Byrne in In Treatment
who is genuinely interested in his client's learning and listens intently.

Moves: Question, probe, give feedback, affirm, redirect,contextualize,connect... But also the mental moves required:Who is doing the intellectual work?

Motives: To test, to monitor, to evaluate, to control... Or to understand,to make thinking visible,to promote agency& efficacy

Messages: What is school really about? What does it mean to learn? Where does knowledge come from? How is disciplinary knowledge created, tested, affirmed?

From PZC: Thinking Discourse

Great idea: Start a class off with a painting or piece from an art student. Have Art Student visit the class at the end of the class and discuss the ideas generated by students. OR: take a picture of the piece of art and students can communicate about it on the Wonder/Map ning.

Lamar Should Have Won!

The Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Slam was amazing!

This young poet made me cry. Twice. He should have won. This isn't the best footage of him and certainly doesn't capture his live performance of this poem, titled "Generation X"; he ended the poem last night by connected "us daily" to Mayor Daley, and he addressed Chicago's Mayor, stating that facing the problems of the African-American communities who keep being displaced/quarantined and generally moved to the margins of the city to be made invisible and to ignore, is more important than vying for the opportunity to host the 2016 Olympics in Chicago.

I love the section in the middle of the poem where Lamar "The Truth" claims that "this is not a poem" and then he begins to unpack what a poem is, and what he is doing.

He is very young, but I loved watching his adjustment in the final round of the slam.

Link to video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yu9C46swSA8&feature=related

Ed Again

Ed!?

So... Is THIS Ed on Michegan Ave?

Ed!?

This is Ed

Dear Reader(s),

So... today was a bizaar day, beginning with being tired again after not sleeping enough... again. Then, we had the "Ravens" and the "Bluebirds" separated in seminar. This was fun - instead of analyzing two poems for their rhyme and meter for three hours, we, The Bluebirds, enjoyed blithely yet assiduously romping through about six forms of poetry.

And then Jen gave me two ID badges to infiltrate the ALA (American Library Association) conference, so I grabbed Stefanie and we headed out, as "Jennifer" (me) and "Kristin" (Stefanie). It was a bust, we learned the exhibit had ended at 1. Alas!, our greed for free shwag was met with bitter disappointment and a solemn bus ride back to the UC with a bunch of nerdy librarians. One woman behind us learned about "blogs" with her companion. Ah, the cutting edge of media science.

We then headed to the free day the Contemporary Art Museum (which was OK, but we were glad it was free - very small and blase).

And THEN... on the bus ride back... I swear I saw Ed from The Bachelorette - a reality TV show I have been watching only because I adore Leah and find her love of crappy television to be endearing.

Please check out these photos and let me know if YOU think this is indeed THE ED from Chicago who made it to the semi-final round of The Bachelorette last night.

And we are off to spaghetti dinner and a Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry slam where the audience gets to vote and the winner gets cash. Fun.

It's Flicker Time - What the Hammer!?

Notice the symmetry and allusion to Blake's "Tyger, Tyger" AND M.C. Hammer.
Check out my ever-growing Flicker Page! http://www.flickr.com/photos/39973772@N03/

More photos will be streamed tonight or tomorrow!