Progress Monitoring Archives

Every Kid Is Worth a Conversation

Dear Upper School Families, On Wednesday, October 25, all students in Grades 9-12 are invited to lead a 25-minute conference with their advisor and parent(s). Students will share their goals, present demonstrations of learning, identify curiosities and strengths, and seek feedback to support and challenge their progress. Through this experience, we desire students to: Take ownership of their learning Develop deeper relationships between advisor and parent(s) Demonstrate skills of communication, reflection, and feedback Discover the value of: setting a goal sharing specific demonstrations of learning deep learning beyond alpha-numeric grades student choice and the pursuit of curiosities through iProject measuring […]

Student Led Conferences – Year Two

Observing Faculty Reflection VTR Wins – 94% of families participated – SLCs are scaling to Lower and Upper School – I participated in 21 conferences, seeing all but 2 advisors. – I observed teachers giving feedback on goals, badges, and student behavior. – I learned a lot more about specific students. – Teachers contributed to the experience in new and helpful ways. – I saw evidence of group work, but grading on individual mastery of outcomes. Areas for Growth – Despite exhaustive communication, I still observed several students who had not shared “permission to view” in their google doc demonstrations. […]

eportfolio / student led conferences / Technology Posted on: March 29, 2016March 28, 2016

Students Take the Lead – Spring 2016

Students Take the Lead – Spring 2016 On Wednesday, February 17, students took the lead for the second time this year with student led conferences. In the fall, students shared their goals with parents and teachers. This time, students ran the show from start to finish. Introducing parents and teachers to one another, the students showcased 5 demonstrations chosen from their e-portfolios.

Badging / eportfolio / student led conferences Posted on: November 13, 2015November 13, 2015

Piloting Student Badges in Study Skills

Piloting Student Badges in Study Skills Since launching ‘central station’ and the designs of our XLR8 summer grant in August (thank you Amy and Chrissy), Middle School faculty have earned over 100 badges. To ensure a successful roll out to students in the future, we are intentionally focusing on the faculty experiencing and understanding the power of badging. While a full scale badging launch for students is still beyond the trees, today we piloted a small scale experiment with students in study skills. Designed by the Academic Resource team including Samantha Flowers, Ann Plumer, and Kelli Bynum, it is exciting […]

eportfolio / Learning / student led conferences Posted on: November 11, 2015

Learning Transcends School

Learning Transcends School Do you believe learning happens only at school? Probably not. Yet somehow, we act like it’s true. It’s like the matrix – a kind of false sense of reality. It’s similar to “God is experienced only at church.” Hogwash. God is everywhere. And learning happens everywhere, too. For years, we have conditioned them that learning occurs in specific subjects, in specific rooms, at specific times, in specific desks. If there isn’t a grade attached to it, they may not be interested. Such conditioning limits the possibilities of learning and metacognition. This week, we challenged students to discuss […]

Digital Citizenship / eportfolio / Formative Assessment / Innovation / Learning Measures / Progress Monitoring / Reflective Practice / Space Configurations / Technology / Visible Thinking Routines Posted on: October 23, 2015October 23, 2015

10 Ways e-Portfolios Increase Learning

10 Ways e-Portfolios Increase Learning In schools, the use of e-portfolios is increasing as a way to enable learning, as well as a means to measure it. See Admissions Revolution (80 colleges and universities move towards use of online portfolios). There are a variety of types and purposes of e-portfolios including workspace, showcase, academic, employment, etc. This post focuses primarily on the blog as student workspace – designed as a tool to accelerate learning at any age, as well as to build capacity for being globally competitive beyond schooling. How might e-portfolios increase learning? 1) Writing – Does the importance of […]

Chromebooks / Progress Monitoring / XLR8 Summer Grants Posted on: October 21, 2015

Prepare to Launch

Prepare to Launch I count myself fortunate to be part of an organization that encourages the launching and shipping of ideas, that embraces a ‘fail up’ culture of learning and achievement. This has empowered my colleagues and I to boldly try new ideas. Reflecting on the last few years, I can recall numerous wins and successes as well as a few that I’d love to ‘redo.’ Why do some initiatives go so well while others struggle or fail? What makes the difference? Fail Ups In my first year as a division head, I recall our team was eager to help […]

Learning Dashboards / Progress Monitoring Posted on: October 21, 2015October 21, 2015

Learning Dashboards

Driving is fun. Flying is scary. Both vehicles (automobiles and airplanes) are complex machines that require training and multiple gauges on their dashboards to assist in effective operation. Would you feel more or less confident traveling on an airplane with one single gauge? (How could the engineers and pilots even contemplate narrowing it down to a single gauge? – That’s crazy!) The human brain and the process of learning are much more complex than these machines, yet in schools we mostly measure learning with a single gauge dashboard. For most, but not all, that measure is a numerical grade. (That’s […]

student led conferences Posted on: October 18, 2015October 24, 2015

Feedback from Student Led Conferences

Feedback from Student Led Conferences On Wednesday, September 23, the Middle School team launched the first student led conferences at Mount Vernon. Following the event, we surveyed students, parents, and teachers for feedback. Below, you can review the results of those 3 surveys. The names of students, teachers, and parents have been scrubbed, but all other comments remain as shared. All comments praising a specific teacher were shared directly with that teacher through Folio prior to replacing teacher names with “the teacher” and student names with “the student.” The feedback includes a data chart of scale questions, followed by qualitative […]

Assessments / Badging / Entry / eportfolio / Exit Tickets / Faculty Meetings / Formative Assessment / Learning Measures / Progress Monitoring / student led conferences / Transfer Posted on: October 8, 2015October 24, 2015

Formative Assessment Tickets

Formative Assessment via Entry, Transfer, and Exit Tickets Formative Assessment = a range of formal and informal assessment procedures conducted by teachers during the learning process in order to modify teaching and learning activities to improve student attainment. This morning’s faculty meeting was a lesson in formative assessment. We started the meeting with an entry ticket – a Poll Everywhere survey (thank you Alex Bragg!) about our team’s wildly important goal of ‘expanding the learning measures.’ The original agenda for the meeting was sent to faculty in advance indicating the bulk of the time would be spent on teachers earning badges. After assessing […]