Monday, February 15, 2010
Interesting meeting...
Student assessment was the focus of our vertical team meeting today...not everyone is on board. Why do we have to assess? Who is making us do this? Frustrating as a facilitator, when intrinsic motivation is not present and so much energy is put forth in opposition to something that has to be done. Arghhhhh!
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Assessment Examples for Elem PE
A teacher in Oregon shared assessment ideas with a colleague of mine. No need to reinvent the wheel - just modify the treads and make it better!
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Assessment Conversations
Fellow professionals I need your help. Lately our PE program has been under attack. Our district is become assessment based and our elementary PE department is struggling. Please read some of the following statements I have received and let me know how you would respond.
1. I heard someone ask this question and I couldn’t defend it very well…If PE teachers don’t have to correct papers, don’t have to analyze data and make adjustments to their curriculum, don’t do formal assessments in every unit, or give comprehensive tests…which all seem to be expectations of the “core” teachers; Why should they get paid the same?
2. Physical Education Teachers, unlike classroom teachers, generally have not felt obliged to demonstrate student achievement of goals in a formal and systematic way. Instead, we often simply require students to attend classes and demonstrate good behavior. Thus, in order to earn physical education credit for graduation, students are graded on attendance rather than achievement, on participation rather than learning.
Don't get me started Steveh. Glad to see you join the "discussion area". It's addicting.
I have asked questions about assessing elem age students on this site and for the most part we ALL assess about the same. Not sure why there is a push for paper work. It takes too much time out of the already limited time we see them.
Does anyone have any good worthwhile "formal" assessment ideas (that won't take up too much time) that we can take a look at? First through fifth grade PE.
There has to be some teacher out there that is passionate about their formal assessment... please share.
In our district they are stacking our PE classes with 60-80 kids, saying that is the only way to keep core classes small enough for core teachers to work with students. This seems unsafe--to have so many students in a gym, also under the watch of only one teacher. Is this what is going on around the country? But with so little money to schools nowadays, what other options are there for administrators?
I agree. I have a class of about 70 kids in a small gym as well. I know at the daycare I worked at, it was a state law that the ratio was 12 kids to 1 teacher so I'm sure there's some argument out there or article that states how many kids should be to a teacher in the school.
As for assessing students and holding us accountable for that, it's pretty much impossible because we can't control what the kids are or aren't doing at home. A kid can get a good work out at school and go home and eat 5 twinkies. How are we supposed to be responsible for that?
So are teachers getting a salary because they check papers and give tests or are we given a salary for the content we teach and deliver to students , keeping them engaged in class, making a difference, supervision, etc. If it's the second reason (I hope), we should all get paid the same. I think if P.E. was created for schools x many years ago, there was a reason for it and a purpose and we should be treated the same as any other subject they felt was necessary to be in a school as well.
Giving tests, grading papers, doesn't make you a better teacher! I have been both a PE teacher and a classroom teacher so I know! Every day is an assessment in my class, every day I adjust for curriculum (weather, numbers, etc. how many classroom teachers have to change what that are teaching due to weather?) Our teachers are a given a scope and sequence and told what tests to give...I have to develop a curriculum based on state standards, facilities, number of students, etc. which causes my curriculum to be ever changing. How many teachers do you know that can' give a math test because they don't have a classroom? I can't give a test on the mile run because I don't have a track! I know this probably doesn't help but statements like that make me angry. My opinion is stop paying any teacher that doesn't do their job....and that would help with the budget!
hate to say it, but that unfortunate individual has a valid point about assessment. it's just too bad that he or she took a noble topic about maximizing educational services and turned it into a lousy "what about me" whine-fest.
not that i don't think a national PE reform is in order, not am I against formal assessment of students, but i'll bet they didn't think about how we would have to multiply their time with paperwork to assess every student we see. I see about 300 students per day on average. they hang out with the same 20 or so. If I taught just one group of students all day, not only would they be awesome (haha), but they would no doubt be assessed regularly. furthermore, could we get paid more if we assessed they way they did becasue we would have more students than they have?
now to address the issue of paperwork. I'm so sick and tired of these one dimensional perceptions on assessment. MOVEMENT is our main focus. it doens't make any sense to create all this paperwork because when a child is working on a worksheet, test or other paper assignment...they are sedentary. education in the PHYSICAL is what we are about. how they are physically growing and their physical improvement is what we need to assess. i don't believe that can be achieved through "their" type of assessment. the problem lies in the fact that we do not have a standard practice that i could refer to as "our" way, or "our" type of assessment.
for middle and high school, more formal and objective assessment can be easier. heart rate monitors, pedometers, and other technology can give us numbers to work with. elementary level PE, I believe, is centered around exposure to and repetition of the broadest range of physical skills and activities. second to that would be what i think is the hardest task of all: creating a positive experience and instilling a love for physical activity in them. how do you even begin to put a salary on that?
I won’t say I’m passionate about formal assessment Gus, but I’ve always tried to teach by the motto, “if your not testing, your not teaching.” Don’t get me wrong, I don’t really enjoy testing, but I feel it is important for this reason that many people don’t see as equals. You can almost feel the vibe from fellow teachers and parents. For my district we created an assessment schedule sheet for every elementary student to have. It covers 31 skills/areas and is broken down by grade. For example, 1st grade we assess on hop, start, and stop, 5th grade we assess on strike, throw, catch, and volley with a partner, also offensive and defensive roles, health related physical fitness concepts and explain demonstrate rules and safety in PE. This sheet travels with the student as they move onto middle school PE teachers. Now what it is done with there is another story. Parents can request to see this chart at any time. They were on paper form, but I’ve moved to electronic form. To take it a step further, we also have a spreadsheet for each of those items broken down with critical elements. Easy to use, but yes time consuming and we all know how much time we have with our kiddos. I’m more then happy to send a copy your way if you’d like!
We have 3 grading periods a year and I try and assess each of my students 3 times during that grading period. This gives me some ammo if a parent, principal, or whoever come to me and ask me why did this student get such grades. I also give keep track of my students “citizenship/behavior grade” once a week. I add these up and get an average and this is their “E, S, or N” grade. As far as the second comment you mentioned Steve, I feel that the move has been made and still needs to keep heading in the direction of grading on more then just showing up and being a good boy/girl in PE.
At our middle school we use a form of assessment we created called the Wellness Index. It's all of the kids fitness scores. The categories are Cardio (mile and pacer) Strength (push up, pull up, sit up) and Nutrition (written test). There's a formula we use that calculates the national standard for their age against their improvement. They get a percent for the cardio, strength, and nutrtion categories and those are added up and divided by 3 to give them their Wellness Index score. It's pretty clear that some kids are never going to run a mile under 9 minutes so this formula takes into consideration that if a 200 pound kid runs a mile in 16 minutes and then the next year 13 minutes, that's a huge improvement even though it does not meet the national standard and instead of the formula spitting out a bad score such as a 30% for a 13 minute mile, it'll weigh out the improvement and standard and the kid might get an 80% instead for that particular category! Just an idea!
Wow, I am feeling lucky. I have 22 kids in the gym at most. Small VT school.
Would I get paid more if I taught high school science or english? By their logic science would get paid more, right? English is reading and writing, papers, etc. Science is reading, writing, conversions, weights, uhhh... other things I did not do well in high school.
What we do is different than in the classroom. But I would argue that PE is the most important subject. What is more important than your health (physical, emotional, etc)? Where is the only place in the school that you are ACTIVELY teaching this? I think that if I was posed with those questions I would relate back to some of the biggest challenges facing our kids - health.
Yes, I am LITERALLY saying that PE is more important than math, reading, writing...
I know this is not the best argument, but it is a start.
I would agree with the 'servicing' of students. How many does a classroom teacher service a day? How many do you service a day?
i'm with you mike! i, too, feel PE is the single most important part of a students day at school. when you boil it all down to the most fundamental level, what do you need more to survive? Physical ability.
JJlhampton... I would love a copy. Thanks.
jgustafs@shakopee.k12.mn.us
pagakm... if you could email me a sample of what you use that would also be awesome too!! The more sample i have the better. That goes to the rest of you too. :)
:0) Ask a classroom teacher to take your classes in the gym for one week and see if they sing the same tune. LOL.. Honestly, yea we do not grade papers, etc, etc, however we do ALOT of physical activities, afterschool organizations like running clubs, etc, and plain and simple for as great as a job as it is, it is tough to be in the gym everyday with kids running around, yelling, etc..
I don’t think the debate is whether PE is important or not. I believe the debate is if PE should assess and what should it assess. How do you prove that a student in your class is getting anything out of it? You may be teaching but are the students learning? How do you prove to parents and administrators that PE has educational value? Could you answer these questions if a parent asked you? “Show me why my kid gets the grade that they do in PE”. “What should my kid be able to do, how well do they do it in comparison to their peers, and how do you measure improvement or success?” I’m just like most of you and grade on effort, sportsmanship, and cooperation, but I’m questioning if that is OK. I feel like as a profession we are selling ourselves short. There has to be a way to meet in the middle. I don’t think anyone expects to assess like a classroom teachers does. They understand that we don’t see the kids as much, we have so many kids to assess, and we teach so many different grade levels ect….However doing nothing isn’t OK anymore. There as to be some middle ground. That is what I’m looking for.
I collect skills data for k-2nd graders. It's easy and you end up with solid documentation. All you need is a spreadsheet with each students name on it and a score system (I use numbers, 1-4). Let's say I am going to assess overhand throwing. I have a rubric that shows what constitutes a 1, 2, 3, and 4 score. Then the students work on the skill with a partner and I simply walk around the class watching each student and putting their score in the spreadsheet. This usually takes about half of the class time. I can then use my data to see what we need more work on and what things we are achieving at. I can also track student progress from year to year.
1. I heard someone ask this question and I couldn’t defend it very well…If PE teachers don’t have to correct papers, don’t have to analyze data and make adjustments to their curriculum, don’t do formal assessments in every unit, or give comprehensive tests…which all seem to be expectations of the “core” teachers; Why should they get paid the same?
2. Physical Education Teachers, unlike classroom teachers, generally have not felt obliged to demonstrate student achievement of goals in a formal and systematic way. Instead, we often simply require students to attend classes and demonstrate good behavior. Thus, in order to earn physical education credit for graduation, students are graded on attendance rather than achievement, on participation rather than learning.
Don't get me started Steveh. Glad to see you join the "discussion area". It's addicting.
I have asked questions about assessing elem age students on this site and for the most part we ALL assess about the same. Not sure why there is a push for paper work. It takes too much time out of the already limited time we see them.
Does anyone have any good worthwhile "formal" assessment ideas (that won't take up too much time) that we can take a look at? First through fifth grade PE.
There has to be some teacher out there that is passionate about their formal assessment... please share.
In our district they are stacking our PE classes with 60-80 kids, saying that is the only way to keep core classes small enough for core teachers to work with students. This seems unsafe--to have so many students in a gym, also under the watch of only one teacher. Is this what is going on around the country? But with so little money to schools nowadays, what other options are there for administrators?
I agree. I have a class of about 70 kids in a small gym as well. I know at the daycare I worked at, it was a state law that the ratio was 12 kids to 1 teacher so I'm sure there's some argument out there or article that states how many kids should be to a teacher in the school.
As for assessing students and holding us accountable for that, it's pretty much impossible because we can't control what the kids are or aren't doing at home. A kid can get a good work out at school and go home and eat 5 twinkies. How are we supposed to be responsible for that?
So are teachers getting a salary because they check papers and give tests or are we given a salary for the content we teach and deliver to students , keeping them engaged in class, making a difference, supervision, etc. If it's the second reason (I hope), we should all get paid the same. I think if P.E. was created for schools x many years ago, there was a reason for it and a purpose and we should be treated the same as any other subject they felt was necessary to be in a school as well.
Giving tests, grading papers, doesn't make you a better teacher! I have been both a PE teacher and a classroom teacher so I know! Every day is an assessment in my class, every day I adjust for curriculum (weather, numbers, etc. how many classroom teachers have to change what that are teaching due to weather?) Our teachers are a given a scope and sequence and told what tests to give...I have to develop a curriculum based on state standards, facilities, number of students, etc. which causes my curriculum to be ever changing. How many teachers do you know that can' give a math test because they don't have a classroom? I can't give a test on the mile run because I don't have a track! I know this probably doesn't help but statements like that make me angry. My opinion is stop paying any teacher that doesn't do their job....and that would help with the budget!
hate to say it, but that unfortunate individual has a valid point about assessment. it's just too bad that he or she took a noble topic about maximizing educational services and turned it into a lousy "what about me" whine-fest.
not that i don't think a national PE reform is in order, not am I against formal assessment of students, but i'll bet they didn't think about how we would have to multiply their time with paperwork to assess every student we see. I see about 300 students per day on average. they hang out with the same 20 or so. If I taught just one group of students all day, not only would they be awesome (haha), but they would no doubt be assessed regularly. furthermore, could we get paid more if we assessed they way they did becasue we would have more students than they have?
now to address the issue of paperwork. I'm so sick and tired of these one dimensional perceptions on assessment. MOVEMENT is our main focus. it doens't make any sense to create all this paperwork because when a child is working on a worksheet, test or other paper assignment...they are sedentary. education in the PHYSICAL is what we are about. how they are physically growing and their physical improvement is what we need to assess. i don't believe that can be achieved through "their" type of assessment. the problem lies in the fact that we do not have a standard practice that i could refer to as "our" way, or "our" type of assessment.
for middle and high school, more formal and objective assessment can be easier. heart rate monitors, pedometers, and other technology can give us numbers to work with. elementary level PE, I believe, is centered around exposure to and repetition of the broadest range of physical skills and activities. second to that would be what i think is the hardest task of all: creating a positive experience and instilling a love for physical activity in them. how do you even begin to put a salary on that?
I won’t say I’m passionate about formal assessment Gus, but I’ve always tried to teach by the motto, “if your not testing, your not teaching.” Don’t get me wrong, I don’t really enjoy testing, but I feel it is important for this reason that many people don’t see as equals. You can almost feel the vibe from fellow teachers and parents. For my district we created an assessment schedule sheet for every elementary student to have. It covers 31 skills/areas and is broken down by grade. For example, 1st grade we assess on hop, start, and stop, 5th grade we assess on strike, throw, catch, and volley with a partner, also offensive and defensive roles, health related physical fitness concepts and explain demonstrate rules and safety in PE. This sheet travels with the student as they move onto middle school PE teachers. Now what it is done with there is another story. Parents can request to see this chart at any time. They were on paper form, but I’ve moved to electronic form. To take it a step further, we also have a spreadsheet for each of those items broken down with critical elements. Easy to use, but yes time consuming and we all know how much time we have with our kiddos. I’m more then happy to send a copy your way if you’d like!
We have 3 grading periods a year and I try and assess each of my students 3 times during that grading period. This gives me some ammo if a parent, principal, or whoever come to me and ask me why did this student get such grades. I also give keep track of my students “citizenship/behavior grade” once a week. I add these up and get an average and this is their “E, S, or N” grade. As far as the second comment you mentioned Steve, I feel that the move has been made and still needs to keep heading in the direction of grading on more then just showing up and being a good boy/girl in PE.
At our middle school we use a form of assessment we created called the Wellness Index. It's all of the kids fitness scores. The categories are Cardio (mile and pacer) Strength (push up, pull up, sit up) and Nutrition (written test). There's a formula we use that calculates the national standard for their age against their improvement. They get a percent for the cardio, strength, and nutrtion categories and those are added up and divided by 3 to give them their Wellness Index score. It's pretty clear that some kids are never going to run a mile under 9 minutes so this formula takes into consideration that if a 200 pound kid runs a mile in 16 minutes and then the next year 13 minutes, that's a huge improvement even though it does not meet the national standard and instead of the formula spitting out a bad score such as a 30% for a 13 minute mile, it'll weigh out the improvement and standard and the kid might get an 80% instead for that particular category! Just an idea!
Wow, I am feeling lucky. I have 22 kids in the gym at most. Small VT school.
Would I get paid more if I taught high school science or english? By their logic science would get paid more, right? English is reading and writing, papers, etc. Science is reading, writing, conversions, weights, uhhh... other things I did not do well in high school.
What we do is different than in the classroom. But I would argue that PE is the most important subject. What is more important than your health (physical, emotional, etc)? Where is the only place in the school that you are ACTIVELY teaching this? I think that if I was posed with those questions I would relate back to some of the biggest challenges facing our kids - health.
Yes, I am LITERALLY saying that PE is more important than math, reading, writing...
I know this is not the best argument, but it is a start.
I would agree with the 'servicing' of students. How many does a classroom teacher service a day? How many do you service a day?
i'm with you mike! i, too, feel PE is the single most important part of a students day at school. when you boil it all down to the most fundamental level, what do you need more to survive? Physical ability.
JJlhampton... I would love a copy. Thanks.
jgustafs@shakopee.k12.mn.us
pagakm... if you could email me a sample of what you use that would also be awesome too!! The more sample i have the better. That goes to the rest of you too. :)
:0) Ask a classroom teacher to take your classes in the gym for one week and see if they sing the same tune. LOL.. Honestly, yea we do not grade papers, etc, etc, however we do ALOT of physical activities, afterschool organizations like running clubs, etc, and plain and simple for as great as a job as it is, it is tough to be in the gym everyday with kids running around, yelling, etc..
I don’t think the debate is whether PE is important or not. I believe the debate is if PE should assess and what should it assess. How do you prove that a student in your class is getting anything out of it? You may be teaching but are the students learning? How do you prove to parents and administrators that PE has educational value? Could you answer these questions if a parent asked you? “Show me why my kid gets the grade that they do in PE”. “What should my kid be able to do, how well do they do it in comparison to their peers, and how do you measure improvement or success?” I’m just like most of you and grade on effort, sportsmanship, and cooperation, but I’m questioning if that is OK. I feel like as a profession we are selling ourselves short. There has to be a way to meet in the middle. I don’t think anyone expects to assess like a classroom teachers does. They understand that we don’t see the kids as much, we have so many kids to assess, and we teach so many different grade levels ect….However doing nothing isn’t OK anymore. There as to be some middle ground. That is what I’m looking for.
I collect skills data for k-2nd graders. It's easy and you end up with solid documentation. All you need is a spreadsheet with each students name on it and a score system (I use numbers, 1-4). Let's say I am going to assess overhand throwing. I have a rubric that shows what constitutes a 1, 2, 3, and 4 score. Then the students work on the skill with a partner and I simply walk around the class watching each student and putting their score in the spreadsheet. This usually takes about half of the class time. I can then use my data to see what we need more work on and what things we are achieving at. I can also track student progress from year to year.
Monday, February 1, 2010
Wondering...
Some Questions...thinking out loud.
Are there many PE people actively exploring assessment ideas for elementary age kids?
Is this going to be worth the time and effort?
How much of a paradigm shift can be expected? What is the time frame for change?
Somewhat Random Thoughts
Vertical Teams - interesting group dynamics - help or hinder change
Team members all have different comfort levels when change is proposed
Each level has a leader...leadership style differences my enhance or hinder the process
Are there many PE people actively exploring assessment ideas for elementary age kids?
Is this going to be worth the time and effort?
How much of a paradigm shift can be expected? What is the time frame for change?
Somewhat Random Thoughts
Vertical Teams - interesting group dynamics - help or hinder change
Team members all have different comfort levels when change is proposed
Each level has a leader...leadership style differences my enhance or hinder the process
Rigor and Relevance
I chose the assessment topic because it is immediately relevant to my professional life and I don't expect information to be easily accessed.
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