MMP Mini Grant Report
Eighty-First Street School- Tracy Carus & Jennifer Wolf
Grant – Math CABS: Improving teaching and student Learning
Eighty-first Street School teachers met three times to discuss how to make our assessments formative and to assess if our feedback was descriptive (using the Everyday Rubric) or evaluative.
At the first meeting teachers read an article on what formative assessment really is. This was done after taking a pre-survey of what they thought formative assessment meant. After reading and discussing the article, we broke into grade level groups. We discussed the data compiled from the most recently completed CABS to drive instruction. Do we go on? Do we reteach? Many teachers realized that too many times we just put the grade down and go on. After really analyzing the data, they knew that there needed to be some reteaching.
The second meeting consisted of introduced the Everyday Rubric form to ensure more descriptive feedback. Teachers then used this form with the most recent unscored CABS. We realized that the teachers found this form very valuable and wanted to continue the process with all of their CABS. We decided to change the agenda for the next meeting to accommodate this wonderful discovery!
The last meeting was a continuation of the previous one. The second part of the meeting was spent on the Feedback Levels form. There was a post-survey given. The teachers who participated in all meetings had a better understanding of formative assessment being a way to drive your instruction. They also knew that feedback was an important element for student learning. One teacher even commented on how she always gave feedback when looking at writing; she never thought to do the same in math but was going to from now on.