It’s clear that B.C.’s new curriculum is triangulated around Big Ideas, Competencies, and Content, but it is less obvious what assessment will look like. The 2016-17 school year saw the elimination of provincial exams in high school Language Arts, Math, and Sciences; at the middle school levels, some schools have been supplanting letter grades with qualitative assessments.
Regardless of specific assessment frameworks that emerge, teachers will continue to assess student growth across subject areas, and chapters 5 and 6 of The Collaboration Handbook provide practical and flexible starting points frameworks for teachers co-planning assessment, recording, and assessing student work with the teacher-librarian.
The six pre-planning questions afford one helpful starting point. What do we want the students to know, do, and understand? In the short term and long-term? How will we know that they have achieve this? What will the knowledge look like? How does this new work fit in with what they already know, and how can we make the links explicit for students? What new experiences do they need to have to work towards new knowledge, skill sets, understandings, and attitudes? What strategies and activities will provide these experiences?
These questions help to create a firm foundation for meaningful assessment that supports the Big Ideas, Competencies, and Content. They address the role of content, but extend the discussion to the interconnectedness of this framework.
The subsequent section of The Collaboration Handbook outlines a list of familiar, tried-and-tested assessment tools including checklists, rubrics, rating scales, conferences, and learning logs among others. Like the previous section of the book, it reinforces the importance of keeping assessment front and center, but also the importance of cultivating the connections among Big Ideas, Competencies, and Content when planning for assessment.
How do and how can teacher-librarians support planning for assessment? We discussed the value of a collaborative planning template, and many teacher-librarians already apply one in their schools. However, even if one already has a template, there are some useful examples to consider from pages 60-63; they cover elementary and high school and address 21st century learning standards.
Our book club discussed the importance of keeping the template comprehensive but simplified from the examples provided (too many checklists can be overwhelming and perhaps discourage collaborative planning initiatives with colleagues) – and the importance of keeping the template aligned with the language of our new B.C. curriculum.
We can seek templates beyond The Collaboration Handbook. The B.C. Teacher-Librarians’ Association (BCTLA) developed a Points of Inquiry Collaborative Planning Guide for Secondary Schools inclusive of inquiry outcomes and a Points of Inquiry Collaborative Planning Guide for Intermediate. Both guides address content outcomes, learning activities, learning resources, and assessment. Another useful source identified during our meeting is a site from the Surrey (B.C.) School district titled Library Supported Inquiry.
We can share our templates with each other – and perhaps most importantly, with our teaching colleagues. A planning template with assessment questions at the forefront illustrates how teacher-librarians provide instructional support from the planning and assessment stages of inquiry learning.
Bigger picture, we can also work with our teaching colleagues to develop a grade-level standard of assessment for a competencies related to research and information skills. Page 71 of The Collaboration Handbook provides a comprehensive rubric that covers the development of research questions, the use of sources, paraphrasing, the accuracy and completeness of notes and in-text citations. Although this template may be best suited to high school research assessment, it could certainly be adapted to middle and elementary levels. The book does not promotes a one-size-fits-all planning template; in fact, it invites readers to develop their own.
The long-term offshoots of collaborative planning around research and information skills? At the school level, it may be the creation of an assessment continuum by grade level, perhaps one focused upon a particular competency such as note-taking, or more broadly, upon several competencies related to information skills, perhaps within a targeted grade. At the district level, an assessment continuum might develop among families of schools.
These ideas beget questions without definitive answers: How do we support this growth as individual teacher-librarians in our school settings and culture? As a community of practice? In a more structured, formalized framework within our district? Regardless of how each of us might answer these questions differently, our book club agreed that it is essential to keep assessment front and center in planning with our teaching colleagues.
Contributors: Colleen Pommelet, Geoff Orme, Rebecca Steele, Metthea Maddern, Wendy Burleson
Written by Wendy Burleson
