This is Part 4 of a mini-series on a rubric masterclass. Be sure to check out the Intro post and subsequent posts. Before we get to it today, I want to offer a bit of a warning: this piece of rubric-land gets very sticky, very fast. It represents the tension between our aspirations as growth-minded educators and … Continue reading Part 4: Scores, scoring, grades, and grading
Part 3: Defining Proficiency & Moving Outward
This is Part 3 of a mini-series on a rubric masterclass. Be sure to check out the Intro post and subsequent posts. Once we’ve identified our specific and common outcomes, we need to identify specific markers that will indicate where students are on the spectrum of proficiency. In fact, that’s where we get our next little bit … Continue reading Part 3: Defining Proficiency & Moving Outward
A Rubric Masterclass Part 1: Selecting Rubric Worthy Tasks
This is Part 1 of a mini-series on rubrics. Be sure to check out the Intro post and subsequent posts. It took me a while to figure out the whole rubric game. I'll admit, I was relatively anti-rubric in the middle of my career. Maybe that's because I wasn't shown how to construct one. Maybe … Continue reading A Rubric Masterclass Part 1: Selecting Rubric Worthy Tasks
A Rubric Masterclass
This blog post introduces a new mini-series from Emergent Math: A Rubric Masterclass. Be sure to check out Geoff's previous mini-series: Routines, Lessons, Problems, and Projects and Your Math Syllabus Boot Camp. The past two summers I’ve created Emergent Math “miniseries”. They’re an opportunity to do a deep dive into crucial aspects of the math … Continue reading A Rubric Masterclass
Preparing for a Post-SAT World
Over the past year many universities made the SAT or ACT optional for college applications. Students could opt to submit their test scores or bypass taking the test entirely. This was spurred in part by the fact that COVID screwed up any kind of reliability (such as it was) of standardized test. At some higher … Continue reading Preparing for a Post-SAT World
Interest in a Virtual Math Portfolio Assessment Cohort for 2021-2022
(Update 5/25/21: The window for the interest form is closed. However, be sure to follow this blog for updates on the cohort as well as other assessment commentary.) The tl;dr version: I'm seeking secondary teachers interested in designing and implementing a portfolio system of assessment in their class. Interest form link below. I’m currently wrapping … Continue reading Interest in a Virtual Math Portfolio Assessment Cohort for 2021-2022
Pastoral Care for Pre-Service Teachers
Schools and teachers have no incentives to foster a nurturing atmosphere for student teachers. Unless the school expects to hire the student teacher, there’s no inherent reason for a school to particularly care whether or not the student teacher makes education a lifelong passion or if they burn out and never even enter the profession. … Continue reading Pastoral Care for Pre-Service Teachers
“Nathan For You” is here to fix businesses, rate of work problems
"Nathan For You" is a docu-series on Comedy Central (episodes available on Hulu) in which comedian and Canadian good-grades-getter Nathan Fielder "fixes" business by suggesting out of the box ideas to bring in new customers. These ideas includes amping up the scariness of a haunted house by telling the attendees they've contracted a fatal airborne … Continue reading “Nathan For You” is here to fix businesses, rate of work problems
Spring, Broken
On March 11, 2020, the National Basketball Association halted the season due to the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The cessation in play occurred soon after the cancellation of a game between the Utah Jazz and Oklahoma City due to a positive test from one of the Jazz players. Only five days prior the entire state of … Continue reading Spring, Broken
The next steps in classroom conversation orchestration
I’m currently rereading Five Practices for Orchestrating Productive Mathematics Discussions by Smith and Stein (2011) as part of a book study with a school. I’ve always appreciated this book as a great stepping stone from a classroom where the teacher is the ultimate knower of math to a classroom where students construct their own understanding. … Continue reading The next steps in classroom conversation orchestration
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