Assessment Moderation

Today I attended a cluster for moderation.
The session was at St Jo's and I got to sit in one of my previous students desks (it was quite lovely for me!).
The gathering was for my colleagues teaching the same level as me so we could, as a group, try to gain some consistency between our various schools in assessing writing.

It was fun! We all provided samples for the group to score based on the current asTTle marking guide.

Interestingly for our first meeting we were mostly all very close in our marking with the non-majority scoring the mark below or above the majority.

A great result!

I must say I do like the new marking rubric - I think it is practical, has diverse application and provides a more accurate rating of students work.
it is also not to hard to adapt for student consumption.

On a side note - it is stressful for us to attend these things during school time as it means we are all out of our class because we are such a small staff!

The Treaty

Underlying our work this term on developing our learning environment and expectations is the concept of a classroom treaty.
I have attempted to educate about our NZ Treaty in subtle ways as well as direct teaching.

We have the treaty up on the wall (a facsimile) and our classroom treaty relates to this and will be compared to it.

On the list of activities are a few readings and a station activity.

EDIT: We had an excellent impromptu discussion about Wairau that led into discussion about The Treaty and language interpretation and unfairness.

Education's Death Valley....

I especially like the point about the contradiction involving diversity...
Conformity vs diversity - our system is still geared towards - intact this still deeply ingrained ideal - conforming - as much as we hold high an ideal of celebrating diversity. How many more generations of public school children in New Zealand will be eaten by the conformity machine before we actually actively take our own steps towards ensuring we are nurturing, rewarding and realising individual diversity. I wan tot be a teacher that helps students seek out success through happiness - not through conforming and surviving in a dull job they felt forced into through a lack of options and the insipidness of conforming to the norm.