Formative Assessment and Visible Thinking

I got to spend the first day of my summer of professional development helping out in a workshop led by Greg Garner. He was ably assisted by Lisa Johnson and Janet Couvillion. It was a day filled with lots of learning and wonderful conversations. Below are some of my reflections on the day. 

We were lucky enough to be able to use Julie Cimino's room at BPE today. You can see in the first picture that the participants came in and sat down in the chairs which had been placed neatly in rows. As the day went on and the conversations became more interactive, the chairs began to take on a life of their own and the room morphed into an active learning space. 

Greg started with his objectives. Within the first few minutes the presenters had shared two different formative assessment tools with us: Nearpod and Kahoot. Greg's goal for the participants was that they find a tool they liked during the day and run with it. 

Lisa modeled the use of Infuse Learning. She read part of a children's book stopping occasionally to let us reflect on the book in Infuse Learning. 

The last hour or so of the day was spent helping the teachers select one of the new tools they had learned about and use that tool to develop an assessment of their own. When they completed this task, Greg had them write a description of their assessment in Google Moderator. 

What a great way to kick off our summer learning season in EISD!