Thing #12 Assessment

1.) Until this Thing I thought of Google forms as an information gathering tool. (See my use in the classroom below.) I never thought of using it as an assessment or survey of students. Last week I printed kids a "fill in" work progress handout so I could check up on their progress on the marking period assessment. And now I think, "I could do this easier in Google forms!" I never thought of using a Google form for a quick check, survey, or quiz. I've included the form template here--it will go out tomorrow. Since I want to get this posted, I've included further down a screen shot of the Google form I have results for from an earlier use, so you know I can use it!
NEW: work progress survey

I wrote about Google forms in another post and I am including here the form I sent out to students this year, so I could record student contact info--we started the year without our new student management system being fully functional and I needed to make some parent contacts. In the past, I've had kids record personal info on an index card which I now snub as being so old school!

  

2.) I actually checked out Rubistar a couple weeks ago and tried to create my own rubric descriptors--I ended up thinking it was not helpful and just created a table in Word and wrote my own. For this assignment, I used the rubric parameters that were provided on Rubistar and I have to say I think I will use this again. If anything, it can give teachers some great categories and project/assignment descriptors. I wonder  if these rubrics are specific enough--some of the category descriptions seem rather subjective.

3.)  We are at a bit of a disadvantage this year without student management system because it wasn't functional for grades or student information until about 3 weeks into the school year. From what I hear Powerschool will be much more data friendly than Skyward--I've heard that we can record which standards students have reached proficiency. Unfortunately, I don't see where this info can be recorded. In our old system we had access to student test scores, etc. and schedules. This isn't available yet in Powerschool, but it was very helpful. For some students whose class grade seemed off from what I intuited was their potential I would look up MEAP or PLAN scores--that info could give insight into whether or not the kids were truly struggling with difficult content, or maybe just underachieving. I do think it's not always a good idea to look at test scores as it can influence how a teacher views a student.  In my own department, we kept track of students' baseline writing score, their post-instruction writing score, and then compared it in 11th grade with their ACT writing scores. We did this by just collecting data and I put it in a spreadsheet--it would actually be great information to include in Powerschool if there was the possibility to do this. Overall student management systems are an invaluable tool for teachers.