Tyler Rablin

So much professional learning feels like a shotgun approach that changes year-to-year with no real purpose behind it.

Make the purpose tangible, achievable, and student-focused, and that can be the game-changer for your professional learning.

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personalized learning pathways, etc.)?

3) What type of professional learning do teachers need to support this type of work in the classroom?

This provides purpose, clarity, consistency, and buy-in (only when teachers are involved in this process) for professional learning.

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Professional development is only meaningful if you plan backwards.

1) What lifelong skills do we want our graduates to possess (collaboration, independent learning skills, etc.)?

2) What needs to happen in our classrooms in order for students to develop those skills (group work...

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Using a 50% minimum policy in a school without any additional grading reform to examine the ineffectiveness, inaccuracy, and inequity of averaging points over time to calculate a grade is the equivalent of using a bandaid to treat cancer.

You can't quick fix a systemic issue for long.

Been a minute since I wrote a lengthy thread, but this was weighing on my mind.

Overall, we can no longer assume that the creation of something represents and understanding of the underlying concepts. That is an inference that was never really safe to make anyways.

Instead, look for direct evidence of understanding with additional explanations from the student.

Oral Assessment Rubric - Research Research Unit - Oral Assessment Student: Standard: I can identify a reliable source of information. Notes: Beginning Developing Applying Extending I can analyze who’s behind the information...

I often have a half-sheet ready to roll like the example below. This helps me listen for specific elements of learning while capturing notes for validity purposes.

docs.google.com/document/d/1...

This is useful for group discussion scenarios (socratic seminar or philosophical chairs, for example). As I listen, I mark where students demonstrate a level of understanding (typically adding the date, too).

This gives me additional evidence of learning.

For individual oral assessments ⬇️

Oral Assessment - Class Discussion - Research Oral Assessment - Whole Class Research Unit Any time you hear a student make a comment that demonstrates understanding of one of the levels in the rubric, add a mark or comment in the corresponding b...

Oral assessment, especially now, is wildly underutilized. Having students talk about their learning not only helps their learning, but it also adds a layer of accountability to accurately represent their learning.

Here's example of something I use with my class...

docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Learning Memo Examples Learning Memo Examples Note: Feel free to make copies of any of these and use them with your students. Link Explanation Identification-focused Memo: This is a learning memo where students pull speci...

All of these are examples of learning memos in which the student completes an additional step where they explain how they demonstrated their learning in their task.

The next reply shares oral assessment resources.

docs.google.com/document/d/1...

It is no longer (and maybe never was) effective to expect a task to be an accurate representation of student learning.

With generative AI able to create most tasks, it requires a decoupling in which students explain their learning separately from the task itself.

Resources in the comment below ⬇️

I love that. It’s exactly as it should be. It’s like we forgot that the whole point of assessment is to uncover what a student really knows, and we have so much evidence to do that.

Yeah, they were all covered in collars and tags. There were about 10 up there, and they all had quite a bit of jewelry.

A great horned owl closeup. The owl is looking over its shoulder at the camera.

A group of bighorn sheep in tall grasses. They have medium-sized horns.

A great blue heron in flight. There are tall yellow grasses behind it.

An eagle soars against the clouds. The photo is black and white with a gradient from light up top to black at the bottom.

A little timeline cleanse.

Spent a couple nights out in the Yakima River Canyon this week looking for the wildlife that sticks around for the winter (if you can call it that this year).

Here are a couple favorites.

11 Classroom Management Tweaks You Don’t Learn in Teacher Prep Over time, every teacher makes small changes that have a big impact on how their classes run. A veteran teacher shares the hacks that work for him.

Here's a collection of some of the more unique classroom management techniques I've gathered over the years.

www.edutopia.org/article/clas...

We need to be looking for a better way, not looking to minimize the harm of the current way.

This is why I hate the conversation about grading formatives.

It misses the mark. It thinks small. It is a limiting discussion in a world of possibilities.

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We don't need to weight formatives less.

We need to be asking why we are using points and averages over time to determine a grade.

We need to recognize that the most commonly-used grading system in US schools is full of holes, doesn't support learning, and disadvantages specific groups.

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This is why I fault the "don't grade formative work" statement.

It's not because that statement is inherently bad or that minimizing the scoring impact of early formative assessments is a bad thing, but rather that it halts the work of grading reform that needs to happen.

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Instead, what if all four of those assignments were scored, and at the end of the unit a true evaluation happens where the teacher (possibly with the student) looks at the evidence of learning, prioritizes recent and consistent evidence and then uses that to determine the grade.

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The first puts too much weight on the final test. Student having an off day despite crushing it on the formatives? Bad grade.

On the other end, grading everything ends up penalizing students who showed the most growth.

There's another option.

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In a traditional system, I either don't grade the first three assignments and only count the test (summative) in the grade, or grade everything and students who struggle earlier have those mistakes held against them (and yes, I get that weighting exists).

I have a problem with both options.

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Now, I can tell students, "Everything you do can help you demonstrate your understanding at the end of the term, but mistakes won't be held against you as long as you're growing."

Let's make this concrete.

For one skill, say we have a quiz, an exit ticket, a piece of writing, and a test.

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I know that sounds like splitting hairs, but that distinction made a HUGE difference for my own approach to assessment.

Before, when I would say, "Formative assessment isn't graded," my goal was to help students relax and use it as practice. This often downplayed the value of the formative.

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Formative often means "small assessment" and summative means "large assessment" in most classrooms.

My definitions are different.

Formative means any data I gather relevant to a learning outcome, and summative then means an evaluation of that data to determine current understanding.

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So, I don't believe formative assessment should be included in the grade, but I do think it is valuable for formative assessment to be included in a final determination of the overall understanding of a skill.

This is where I have to clarify how I view "summative" in my class.

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I fully agree that formative assessment should not be included in an average of scores to determine an overall grade at the end.

That communicates that where you start will dictate how far you can go or that your early struggles will impact where you end up.

2/

Can I push back on the whole "don't grade formative assessments thing"?

Hear me out...

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Aw, thank you! I really like your comment on the article. I do feel like kids hear no more often than they really need to.

11 Classroom Management Tweaks You Don’t Learn in Teacher Prep Over time, every teacher makes small changes that have a big impact on how their classes run. A veteran teacher shares the hacks that work for him.

I loooove a good @mrrablin.bsky.social Edutopia post!!! @edutopia.org

www.edutopia.org/article/clas...

11 Classroom Management Tweaks You Don’t Learn in Teacher Prep Over time, every teacher makes small changes that have a big impact on how their classes run. A veteran teacher shares the hacks that work for him.

Something @mrrablin.bsky.social wishes he thought of when he was teaching: With a difficult class, write down 3 good things every day, to train yourself to notice the positives. ☀️

Find 10 more classroom management tips:

#EduSky #ClassroomManagement