Communicating Student Learning ~ Freshgrade

2015/2016 school year I used Freshgrade to document and communicate student learning in my classroom. This year 2016/2017 I am using it but have made some adjustments to how I use, assess and post information. I thought I would share as I find it interesting how others use it in their classroom. This year some of the biggest changes have been creating more time to do more authentic student reflections on the activities and learning we are doing in the classroom. I have created a document collaborating with some of my colleagues on some sentence starters to create dialogue between students, teachers, and parents and for students to reflect on their learning and communicate their learning. Check out my page http://smilesandsel.blogspot.ca/p/student-reflection.html I hope it is helpful to spark discussion in your classroom. I also have really taught my students this year to be reflective about themselves as learners. It has been a process to gain insightful responses, and create dialogue between students, teachers and parents. I have really invested time this year into personally commenting on activities, asking questions and pushing my students further to reflect upon their work, and restate the learning outcomes and process of how this learning came to be. I post questions on activities and documented learning on Freshgrade asking my students what they are proud of, could they share with me how they might solve a problem from our math unit, give them some links to resources online or math tutorials that might be beneficial, or give praise and motivation. I have found this quick dialogue really gives me a chance to connect, check in, focus on their progress, challenge them to think with a growth mindset and motivate students in their learning.

Next I have made a few changes to how I post things to my freshgrade. One piece of feedback that I heard was a parent enjoyed getting to see what we were doing in class and the students final project and assessment, but wanted to understand the process about how we got to the finished piece of work. Upon reflection I decided to begin a process of really focusing on improving my descriptions on what the learning intentions are, why/how and the process we have gone through for the activity, to guide parents through the process of what we have been doing, why we have been doing it, and what the documentation they will be seeing means. The change to how I post learning and assessment to freshgrade I'm hoping will help prompt some parent and student learning conversations at home. This has been great feedback which has guided me to be more comprehensive on my descriptions.For example: 

A science activity might look like this

This assignment will focus on becoming an expert on one of the human body systems,

• digestive system • respiratory system • circulatory system • musculoskeletal system These systems all work together to keep our bodies running smoothly Task: You will be assigned a human body system to research. Your job is to create a presentation on your body system that you will share at our health fair. Process: 1. Find out what human body system you have been assigned. 2. Use the links below, QR codes books, and student friendly search engines to do research and learn information about your human body system. 3. Take notes and answer the questions listed below using the worksheets and graphic organizers Ms. James provides. 4. Use your notes and facts gathered to write paragraphs for each section. 5. Put the information together to create a presentation for your class that demonstrates your learning for our health fair (build your body system, design a diorama, poster, power point, explain everything, play, book, interesting way you find to share your learning) 6. Include pictures and labeled diagrams. 7. Present your finished project to the class Assessment: Students will be able to: Describe basic structures and functions of body systems such as the digestive system, musculo-skeletal, respiratory system, and circulatory system. And be able to provide more detail for the body system they chose to independently research and present on. Student will be able to answer how organ systems interact with one another/ are interconnected.

Introducing ADST & Robotics learning to my parents

"Students have been introduced and are using robots as part of Applied Design Skills and Technology this year.

Coding and robotics teach us the Big Ideas for ADST - that Designs can be improved with prototyping and testing, Skills are developed through practice, effort, and action and that the choice of technology and tools depends on the task.

Students are learning......
Ideating- How to generate potential ideas and add to others’ ideas
Prototyping- they are outline a general plan, identifying tools and materials as well as constructing a first version of the product, making changes to tools, materials, and procedures as needed
Testing- They are test the product, gathering peer feedback and inspiration as well as making changes and test again, repeating until satisfied with the product
Making- Construct the final product, incorporating planned changes
Sharing- they are 
Deciding on how and with whom to share their product
Demonstrating their product and describe their process
Determining whether their product meets the objective and contributes to the individual, family, community, and/or environment
Reflecting on their design thinking and processes, and their ability to work effectively both as individuals and collaboratively in a group, including their ability to share and maintain a co-operative work space and identifying new design issues
Students are also Use materials, tools, and technologies in a safe manner, and with an awareness of the safety of others, in both physical and digital environments

Students in division 6 have been using the robots to show and extend their learning in other subject areas. For example sharing and connecting their learning in science for instance grade 5 students were able to create a model on paper and have the ozobots demonstrate how each system is interconnected. Grade 4 students were able to show the process of the food chain related to the Biomes they are studying."

Or our Story writing unit the description may look like:

During our story writing unit students are focusing on the following:

Students will be able to: -Generate writing that flows smoothly, makes sense, and engages the reader -Organizes and groups ideas in logical sequence and paragraphs - Include more interesting sentences and languages -Beginning to edit for spelling, punctuation and minor sentence revision To achieve these learning intentions, it has been a story writing atmosphere and focus in Division 6. Students have spent days creating characters to use in their creative story, describing their character traits, and what makes them unique. They have been developing settings. Students also have been working on developing a clear beginning, middle, and end to their story, as well as action, detail, and working on painting the setting/creating a visual by describing the story setting and plot. Students are working on creating a story that shows not tells the reader. We are aiming for stories that are detailed, have flow, and don't write in a list like style. In conclusion, students have been creating, editing, and then self-publishing their own stories, front cover, completed pages of students writing with accompanying original students illustrations and own artwork and binding them. They will then share their final stories with their peers, and little buddies and take home to share and celebrate their accomplishments with family.

A Literacy/Social Studies Unit & Co-Created Learning Story looks like this:
DeSCRIPTION

For Social Studies we have been exploring and using our literacy strategies to understand the big idea "Immigration and multiculturalism continue to shape Canadian society and identity". Through the process we have been reading articles, using our research strategies and as a summary to our Unit and to share the process of how our learning has taken place as a team we wrote a learning story together. Please click resources for the PDF that explains our learning journey. In doing so we have been focusing on and learning about the topics and questions.

We now know about: -Changing government policies about the origin of immigrants and the number allowed to come to Canada -the contributions of immigrants to Canada’s development (e.g., Chinese railway workers, Sikh loggers, Eastern European farmers, British investors) -push and pull factors -growth of cities, provinces, and territories as a result of immigration -How has Canada’s identity been shaped by the immigration of individuals from a wide range of ethnic and cultural backgrounds?" Students will be assessed on for Social Studies, what they can do: -Use Social Studies inquiry processes and skills to — ask questions; gather, interpret, and analyze ideas; and communicate findings and decisions -Ask questions, corroborate inferences, and draw conclusions about the content and origins of a variety of sources, including mass media (evidence) -Take stakeholders’ perspectives on issues, developments, or events by making inferences about their beliefs, values, and motivations (perspectives) Literacy -Access information and ideas from a variety of sources and from prior knowledge to build understanding -Use a variety of comprehension strategies before, during, and after reading, listening, or viewing to guide inquiry and deepen understanding of text Synthesize ideas from a variety of sources to build understanding Reflection Questions: What are you proud of learning? How did using literacy strategies (thinking outloud, using inferences, reading a picture, reading for a purpose, building and using background knowledge) help you? What do you feel that you have improved on throughout this unit? What is something you would like to set as a goal for future learning in Social Studies? What are you proud of learning? How has Canada’s identity been shaped by the immigration of individuals from a wide range of ethnic and cultural backgrounds? By doing your family history project, and learning about your own culture and background can you make some connections to this questions.

Our Literacy/ Social Studies Learning Story Posted with the Activity to Freshgrade

Learning Stories

What is a learning story you might ask? Well my definition of a learning story is, it's a snapshot of an activity, what is going on, pictures, reflections, observations, telling the process of learning that is taken place in the activity or event. A learning story takes you along on the process step by step. Well taking time to reflect on some parent feedback, and getting to see a really great learning story from another teacher in my district, I decided to give it a try. This was totally new for me. I quickly found that Learning Stories gave me a way to post, and communicate student learning in a whole new way. I find it perfect for activities that need a more thorough explanation and pictures to explain what we are doing, why and add student voice and reflection throughout.  This was a brand new way to post things for me, and I quickly found it successful and found it opened the doors to lots more opportunities and ways to post.

Trick: I found using powerpoint, setting the slides to the size of a regular piece of paper gave me freedom to insert photos, move them around, and format the page how I wanted it relatively quick and with much less frustrations than doing this in MS Word. Putting my first learning story together took me about 1.5 hours, including searching through the book, taking story photos, and going through the 200+ cookie photos my lovely student freshgrade photographer took, and inserting student reflection quotes. I figure to post assessment and comments all my students profiles would have taken me about the same amount of time. My next learning story, not as comprehensive took less than 30 minutes to create. I was able to put it on the projector and students collaboratively helped me add quotes, voice, and reflection. Overall I feel using this documentation method for some of my classroom activities has given me a great opportunity to communicate learning to the parents and take them on our classroom journey. The photos and student quotes speak for themselves and really show engagement and deeper meaning of our assignments.

Here are some of the pages from our Personal Awareness One Smart Cookie Lessons & Learning Story (covering many of the core competencies)

Freshgrade Station

Next a huge transformation has been my new Freshgrade station. I re-purposed a desk and bought a big sheet of whiteboard material and got it cut down to size from Home Depot (thank you!). The extras made for some smaller boards to be used for group table work. It cost  $37 for a giant sheet from Home Depot Canada. They cut it in the store for me for free. I ended up with 2 table tops, 5 larger group work boards, and 5 smaller student boards out of one sheet.

 http://www.homedepot.com/p/EUCATILE-32-sq-ft-96-in-x-48-in-Hardboard-Thrifty-White-Tile-Board-DDPTW48/205995949 A pretty good deal I would say. They also erase quite well, the more you use Expo Markers the more conditioned the material gets.

My freshgrade station is an area where students have the tools they need to work, can grab a electronic device, share and communicate their learning. They can film themselves explaining how they solved a math equation, add work to their portfolios, log in and respond to teacher comments, write reflections, or use it for some quiet workspace. We have had this Freshgrade station in our room for a few weeks now and it has been quite the popular place to work. Math tasks have been completed, student collaboration has taken place, and jotting ideas down while doing research and reading has been some of our highlights. They decided that when they want to save their whiteboard writing to reference later they snap a picture on an ipad and can easily put it in their dropbox if needed. I can't wait to get my students to create some small puppets or clay figurines to use as characters when they would like to act out and communicate their learning. The opportunities are endless with this area and I am looking forward to seeing it evolve, transform, and my students take ownership over the area.

Update!   

(update: I found a better plastic paper sorter to hold the devices, and threaded the power cords from a powerbar into the sorter so the devices can be charged when they are returned. Also put them on the filing cabinet so they don't take up space on the whiteboard surface)