Learning / student led conferences Posted on:

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 […]

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Learning / student led conferences Posted on:

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. […]

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eportfolio / student led conferences / Technology Posted on:

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.  

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Badging / eportfolio / student led conferences Posted on:

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 […]

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eportfolio / Learning / student led conferences Posted on:

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 […]

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student led conferences Posted on:

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 […]

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

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 […]

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Learning Measures / student led conferences / XLR8 Summer Grants Posted on:

Launching Student Led Conferences

Launching Student Led Conferences One of our major initiatives, Student Led Conferences, is about to debut. In order to prepare, conference mentors will meet with their mentees this week instead of Advisory. The purpose of the second meeting is two-fold… 1) Cultivate deeper relationships with your mentees (get to know them well) 2) Coach them in revising their 2 goals (1 academic, 1 personal). Try SMART goals OR challenge them to pose their goals as questions (How might I {action} in order to {significant impact}? To truly make this debut a success, mentors and students will meet a total of […]

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Assessments / Badging / eportfolio / Progress Monitoring / student led conferences Posted on:

Expanding the Learning Measures

How might we expand the ways we monitor student progress and the measures of learning beyond quantitative, numerical systems that are not always reliable? Since May, eight dedicated educators have engaged in four summer grant opportunities to accelerate the work of our entire team, all with the purpose of expanding our ability to measure and monitor student progress and learning. While our Middle School continues to use a quantitative, numerical grading scale (0-100), we have been working to add additional, qualitative gauges to our dashboard, with the purposes of greater student engagement and ownership, and making learning visible. The (XLR8) summer grants include: Assessment […]

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