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Let Flexibility Lead To Alignment

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  In my previous school district, I was the only teacher teaching a physics course with set, district-wide learning outcomes. These same outcomes were also taught in physics classrooms at the other high school in our district. But at our school, I was one of the 2 physics teachers. The other teacher taught the AP-level physics courses. So, in many ways, I had opportunities to incorporate strategies I believed were best for learners and that I found worked best for them without being seen as out of alignment with anyone in our building. My amazing friend and one of my teaching philosophy goddesses, Katie Novak, stated the following misconception about alignment: All teachers must deliver instruction in the exact same way. True alignment, she says, is about shared goals, rigor, and outcomes. Thank you, Katie! Katie has taught me to truly believe that learner variability is the rule, not the exception. I encourage you to take 10 minutes to listen to Katie Novak explain it in the ...
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Feedback Is Not About the Points

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I had the opportunity to read a wonderful and super rich book about grading practices by Cathy Vatterott called Rethinking Grading: Meaningful Assessment for Standards-Based Learning.


The book is not only for those thinking bout implementing standards based grading.  It has important, research based strategies that we should all be using in our classroom from crafting learning objectives, forms of assessment, and the power of feedback.

I put together some of my takeaways from the book in a single diagram.  This image can't do justice to the depth of the book. My highlights covered over 10 pages in a Google Doc.  So, search it out and dig in.

If you find errors in the doc, I'm always looking for help proofreading!
Thank you

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