Tag: Growth Oriented

Cedar Rapids: Student Reflection and Goal-Setting Pilot

Cedar Rapids Community School District (CRCSD) wanted to solve a problem in their district: “How might we provide relevant, standards-aligned feedback to students so that every student reaches mastery?” After seeking stakeholder input and brainstorming a range of options, the design team decided to pilot a reflection and goal-setting process with students.

This pilot had several assumed benefits. It could help students understand the “why” behind learning and make authentic connections between courses and the world around them. It could also help teachers give more personalized feedback in alignment with the district’s goal of adopting standards-based grading; this process helped teachers and students reflect on their learning progress and chart a course toward mastery together.

To keep the pilot simple, the team followed these steps:

  1. The design team started with a single learning task in one middle school classroom.

  2. Students completed a goal-setting template after an assessment to reinforce the learning task and its purpose, reflect on what they did well, and set goals to reach the next level of mastery.

  3. The teacher tracked simple measures for engagement and performance for each student and the class as a whole.

  4. Finally, the design team worked with the teacher to document the process and lessons learned in hopes of expanding the pilot to other classrooms later.

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February 23, 2021

Cedar Rapids: Building Space and Structures for Student Reflection

Cedar Rapids Community School District (CRCSD) sought to address a key problem in their district: “How might we provide relevant, standards-aligned feedback to students so that every student reaches mastery?”

The team decided on a solution that would give students space and structures to reflect on their own learning.

The team intended for this solution to empower students to set their own goals (in academics and beyond) and to prompt conversations between teachers and students about the purpose of the learning and the students’ progress toward goals.

This solution supports equity because it respects each students’ individual goals for and pace of learning, and it provides each student with the feedback and support needed to help them advance. It supports resiliency because it enables teachers to adapt their support of students based on valuable information gathered via the goal-setting and feedback process.

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February 4, 2021

Cedar Rapids: Problem of Practice on Standards-Aligned Feedback

Cedar Rapids Community School District (CRCSD) interviewed a range of teachers and students to identify opportunities to improve teaching and learning. The team heard a clear and consistent theme that stakeholders felt many students are not engaged in their learning and don’t see the purpose or how it connects to their dreams for life beyond school. After reviewing themes from the interviews, the team summarized a key problem of practice: “How might we provide relevant, standards-aligned feedback to students so that every student reaches mastery?”

This problem statement challenged the team to find solutions that help each and every student deepen their learning through opportunities for ownership and personalized feedback (including feedback relevant to the student’s goals and aspirations). This problem statement also required the team to think about more individualized and flexible systems than traditional grading structures that apply a “one-size-fits-all” approach to assessing student learning at a single point in time; such traditional systems do not always include personalized feedback or give students additional opportunity to improve their mastery.

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February 4, 2021

Battling the Boss Explanation

This website covers information about Battling the Boss, the teacher who designed the strategy, and artifacts to help with implementation both in-person and remotely!

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December 3, 2020

Explanation of Wait Questions

This video gives additional information and framing around Wait Questions, along with two other types of questions you can use with remote synchronous instruction: Speed Questions and Verbal Questions. These same techniques can be used in person as well as when implementing hybrid learning.

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December 2, 2020

GoGuardian Weekly Checkpoint Document

This screenshot of a teacher’s view of GoGuardian shows how helpful color-coding different sections and tasks in a virtual notebook or checkpoint document can be to ensure all students are on task and at the right spot in one glance. (NOTE: This color-coding is for the teacher and not the students.)

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December 2, 2020

Digital Notebook

This is an example of a digital notebook that a high school science teacher builds for their students every unit. Their students participate in a hybrid model in which they are both in-person and remote throughout the week. By having everything in one place, students are able to engage more easily when switching between learning experiences, catch up if they miss class, review content, and show their understanding in various ways. By creating a Google Doc, students are also able to quickly tag their teacher when they need additional support or help.

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December 2, 2020

Weekly Checkpoint Document

This document is given to students weekly to ensure they know their expectations for the week, where to go for content support, and what content they will be covering throughout the week. Included throughout the document are definitions, graphics, checks for understanding, and color-coded stop-points to enable the teacher to check that everyone is at the same spot and on-task quickly via GoGuardian.

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December 2, 2020
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