Student agency: voice, choice and making

In anticipation of the new Common Core Smarter Balanced Assessments, which students will take online, teachers are being asked to help students prepare by giving them more time on computers. After all, if the testing environment is all online, students need to be familiar with and comfortable using basic computer commands and options, as well as keyboarding and computation. But as with any significant shift in classroom … Continue reading Student agency: voice, choice and making

Assessing your WriMos

If your students are feverishly writing novels as fast their little fingers can fly across the keyboards, anxious to meet their NaNoWriMo word goals by the end of November, you may be wondering how best to assess their work during this glorious month of literary abandon.  Since it may be unrealistic for you to read the complete texts of their novels (I have 98 students … Continue reading Assessing your WriMos