Why am I writing this personal entry? Well, it is not an attempt to gain any sympathy. It attempts to show what is possible if a clear intention and goal serve the learner's needs. In May of 2022 just near the end of another fantastic school year, I do not remember what happened. But, I was unable to finish the school year and was unable to teach the following year. Why? On May 21st, 2022, I fell down a flight of 16 stairs (luckily carpeted) from the 2nd to 1st story of our home. I was found at the bottom of the stairs. I was found foaming at the mouth. This would lead to a 2-month hospital stay which included an induced coma because my seizures would not stop, several rounds of lumbar punctures, and relearning basic physical movements like something as simple as being able to roll in the hospital bed. Simply put, when I was admitted to the hospital, I was diagnosed as being “critically ill.” Please take a moment and read those words: critically ill. They are not terms that are
One of the summative assessment options I love is something I've termed Evidence of Mastery or Mastery Defense Presentation. In this, students will present evidence from the unit to show that they have mastered all unit outcomes and present it to me face to face. When we do this face to face, I can then asks them questions or have them elaborate on points that they may not have covered. It takes time, but it gives me a clear idea of a students understanding of a concept. Due to social distancing in the classroom, I didn't have a good workflow for this in our 1st unit this year. I've brought this summative assessment option back and using Flipgrid to leverage it.
Traditionally, I had students construct their own slideshow presentations from scratch. This time around, I decided to make them a template of what I wanted them to specifically present to me. I put in space for them to present work that they had done in the unit. Specifically in this unit, it was graphs from labs we had done in addition to some calculation examples. I set up specific guidelines for presenting graphs and calculations.
The ability for Flipgrid to allow screen recording will allow learners to present to me while showing their slide shows.
I went a little further and broke down the presentation into multiple segments each as its own Flipgrid Topic. I like this because that way students wouldn't have to record the entire presentation in one sitting or video. These presentations can sometimes run 10 minutes. So, it's nice to avert issues that may arise when a student is at minute 8 and need to start over or lose their data due to a tech issue. Now, they could focus specifically on the 2-4 slides in front of them. Also. it lets me watch shorter videos and be more focused in my feedback.
Here's a Grid View of the slides for part of the presentation
In the future I could see creating a topic for each outcome in the unit and having students designing their own short presentations from scratch based on guidelines I present.
I only have a handful of students who choose this option. Many of them are still going for the Flipgrid Bingo option. Both options work great to show me that students have mastered outcomes because they were designed with the outcomes in mind. It's gotten to the point where I created a Flipgrid Group just for this Assessment to house the responses for Bingo and Mastery Presentations in order to stay more organized.
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