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Welcome to my blog! This is a place for me to organize and display my thoughts on education and get feedback. My current plan is to open a private high school called Murray Academy. Above are pages with my most recent thoughts. Enjoy!

Thursday, August 9, 2012

Evaluation to Personalize

I would like to have some sort of evaluation system so teachers can personalize assignments for students. The student would be evaluated after presentations and assignments. I think it would be something like a table:

NamesCitationsAnalyzingVocabularyShort AnswerEssay on Literature
AliStrongPoor comparisons 
NikkiStrongPoor structure
NicoleGood formPoor structure
KelseyPoor citationsImaginative 
BenStrongLiterary terms
PatrickSymbolsStrong


 As we can see, Ali is not very good at writing on literature, and Nikki isn't very good at answering short response questions. So on the next writing assignment, the teacher would give Ali a text-based prompt and Nikki several short answer questions. Same with homework. Nicole isn't good at structuring her essays, and Kelsey isn't good at citing in a paper, so for homework, Nicole would have to read an article on structuring essays, and Kelsey would have to watch a video explaining citations. Teachers would have to be very careful about grading, though, because the assignments are unqual.

But maybe that would just mean fewer grades. Students could be evaluated in this way more often. It is based on mastery and skill, not on cranking out good grades. This is also a great way to organize information so a teacher can speak with the student and parents about the student's strengths and weaknesses.

I think for some subjects, there would have to be variations of this evaluation system. For instance, in history, a teacher would probably need one of these for each topic. Certain skills during a WWI unit, Cold War unit, terrorism unit. Same with math. Then the graphs could be analyzed over several topics to figure out what is slowing down the student.

This does not have to be a grading system. I'm worried that this graph will get more and more concrete until it is what many teachers have now with grades, and I do not want that. I want it to be primarily for analyzing student data and personalizing the learning experience.

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