Week 6 Recap

A Personal Note

What a busy couple of weeks! Between interim reports last week and our upcoming parents' night, students and teachers alike have probably been busy juggling a number of responsibilities and assignments all at once. This Thanksgiving weekend, I was grateful for some much-needed time with family, but also to have a job that keeps me engaged, even if it does mean I have trouble keeping up with everything at some points. These past two weeks have been exceptionally busy, not just with the marking and planning that go into regular assessment and teaching, but also an influx of department-, school-, and board-level responsibilities that came down the pipes these past couple weeks--everything from planning for upcoming school events and performances with our Drama Council to collaborating with colleagues about upcoming leadership meetings and arts programming across the board! As I write this at 5pm on Thanksgiving Day after six hours of working, I am grateful to be busy doing something I am so passionate about but also aware of the need to carve out personal time and space for our own and others' wellbeing. Hopefully students have had an opportunity to rest over this long weekend, whether you celebrate Thanksgiving or not!

Things to celebrate: 

This past week, seniors continued to work on their scene study performances, now with an increased focus on collaboration as students began to put their individual preparations to work in rehearsal periods. Meanwhile, the juniors continued to develop their actor's tools, exploring mime and movement techniques, practicing audience etiquette and constructive feedback, and starting some open script work.

Things to look forward to:

The juniors will begin their next assessment of learning task, also known as a "summative" task. Over the next couple of weeks, students will prepare a performance and complete a unit reflection for evaluation, and this evaluation will become part of their midterm and final mark calculation. The Vocal Collage assignment will be provided to students on Wednesday or Thursday in class and online via Google Classroom, and special effort has been made to make this final unit task available to parents here. See below for some more information about the different types of assessments students complete in Ontario classrooms and why it is important for students to fully participate in each type of assessment for success.

The seniors will perform their scene studies (also an assessment of learning task) at the end of this week, and have been provided with stage rehearsal and performance schedules both in class and Google Classroom. All seniors are expected to be in attendance for all of the performances this Thursday and Friday unless they have already spoken to me or there is an emergency, in which case parents or guardians are asked to contact me directly (in addition to the school) to let me know ASAP so that arrangements can be made with the student's group members.

A note about assessment:

As mentioned in the course outlines shared with students and parents at the beginning of the semester (see my early posts and/or your child's Google Classroom), students in all classes will participate in a number of assessment tasks throughout the semester: assessment OF learning, assessment AS learning, and assessment FOR learning. All three types of assessments may inform such things as the interim report levels, and updates on student progress at parents' night and beyond.

Simply put, assessment OF learning tasks (previously known as "summative assessments") are the ones that are evaluated as evidence in determining a student's final grade in a course. These typically include projects, tests, essays, presentations, performances, etc. They might be the types of evaluations we as adults are most familiar with having completed ourselves in school.

Assessment AS learning tasks usually involve some form of practice and/or feedback (including peer- and self-assessment) to prepare students for success in the skills and/or content that will be evaluated in future assessment of learning tasks. Without completing these activities to the best of their abilities, students miss out on opportunities to practice and improve upon the the things they will be evaluated on in future assessment of learning tasks. These tasks are not evaluated individually but might be considered as evidence of students' progress with course material or process, when process is being evaluated at the end of a project or unit of study. These tasks could include a wide variety of activities students complete in class and at home, from participating in classroom games and lessons to completing practice presentations, quizzes, and short writing tasks.

Assessment FOR learning tasks are usually designed by teachers to determine students' prior knowledge and readiness for learning new concepts or skills. Though they can be used any time, they typically occur towards the beginning of a course or unit, and may include review activities or any of the other activities listed above. They are used by teachers to gather important data about students that will help inform future planning and assessment. That being said, teachers will often still use data gathered from assessment as and of learning tasks to inform future planning, as well.

If you would like any further clarification on these, please let me know. I believe they are also covered in your Maple High School Handbook and YRDSB Guide to the School Year.