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Analysis of Assessment Practices

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Investing time in understanding outcomes and designing assessments accordingly can set both my planning and my students on a clear path to learning. Alberta teachers are tasked with knowing how to meet the needs of their learners through planning, instruction, and assessment practices (Alberta Education, 2020). As an elementary teacher at heart, I mastered the art of formative assessment and used summative assessment as an indicator of student achievement. An area I was not strong in was giving timely and descriptive feedback to move learning forward in addition to using data to inform my own instruction. I would use data to group students in reading or group work but not necessarily to change my teaching practice.  Formative assessments are used as strategies and calibration tools for me to check in on my students, assess where they are at in their learning, and reflect on how I can adjust my teaching. My students’ learning is benefited by timely check-ins, formative rubrics, and ...
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Analysis of Instructional Practices

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       The upside of our curriculum is that it gives educators a lot of autonomy over instructional practices. Instruction needs to be defined from the student’s point of view-those strategies the learner will use to master the content and skills determined in the curriculum (Crowe & Kennedy, 2020, p. 43). Whereas curriculum can be static, instructional strategies are ever-evolving. Even after class last weekend, I learned so many new strategies to add to my toolbox! The TQS (2020) states that teachers should demonstrate acting as a professional body of knowledge by “incorporating a range of instructional strategies” (p. 3). A strategy must be accessible to all learners and engage them in deep thinking. Thus, we know that they are working when students are actively engaged in deep thinking about a learning task as opposed to passively listening and taking notes.       In my previous district, we did a lot of professional learning on various in...
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Curriculum and Planning Process

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Reflecting on my teaching experience, the curriculum has always been my compass when planning for instruction. The curriculum is our map of where we need to go and what students need to learn. It acts as the starting point before diving into instruction and assessment. Working with English Language Learners (ELLs), I support teachers in differentiating their instruction so that the curriculum can be linguistically accessible for multilingual learners. When planning I often ask myself, what is the key concept we are trying to drive home? How do we differentiate in order to get to the essential understanding of the lesson/unit? Students are still meeting the curricular outcomes that are prescribed for them, however, when working with ELLs it's integral that teachers scaffold the instruction so that students can find success and teachers can accurately assess our ELLs. Currently, we are embracing the initial steps of curriculum redesign in Alberta. When thinking about curriculum re...
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