We began this class with our last Learning Circle discussion based on our class textbook, where we spent a lot of time talking about communicating with parents and connecting with colleagues about assessment. The link to our full discussion is here. Afterwards we did our usual poll.guru reflection.

Next we discussed graphic organizers, which can be used for any class and grade. There were a myriad of graphic organizers mentioned in the video, but the ones I was most familiar with were T-Charts and Venn Diagrams. Another graphic organizer that we talked about was the mind map, which I have been reintroduced to this year in ESCI 310 and I found that I really like them. Also mentioned were chain of events, cause and effect, and fishbone organizers. As a student, I think graphic organizers are really helpful to organize the main ideas and are a great study tool. As a future teacher, I was inspired by the classroom video we watched where the students had to fill in the graphic organizer with the main ideas of the text for their final evaluation. This really showcased how you can do group work to ensure student understanding and practice, then repetition of hearing the presentations, before doing it on their own in more of a “test” format. It was very intriguing.

Then we discussed having conversations with students and student-led conferences. When we talk to students we want to keep BLOOMS taxonomy in mind and try to give the student a sense of accomplishment in what they have done, while at the same time giving them the tools to do more, to create something more. In terms of student-led conferences, it should be just that, student led. My school got into this when I was about twelve. We would pick pieces of work and write a reflection on why we included it, when we were done, the teacher and parent would comment on how they felt. What I liked about the conferences on the video was that the student explained how to do the work they were learning and also included goals that they wanted to work on. I really like this approach, but I still think there should be time allotted for the student, parent, and teacher to discuss.

We then examined a worksheet that had various aspects of assessment and stated our favourite/easy and least favourite/difficult to implement. Then we went into breakout rooms to finish and discuss our dialogue paper but my partner wasn’t there.

My symbol for this week is a narrative structure graphic organizer because it should remind me that that was the part of the class I found most intriguing.