Okay. So we are looking through all these articles about authentic assessment and I’m thinking all the time that the opposite of authentic is not traditional, but false. Could that be right? Are the assessments I give my students in the classroom false assessments? Early on, as my small group read an article entitled “What is Authentic Assessment,” I noticed an absence of the types of assessments I tend to use. As an English teacher, I avoid what they dubbed forced response tests, things like multiple choice, true false, and fill in the blank. True, I do use them from time to time for vocabulary assessments, but then that’s all I want to know from the kids. Do you know what this word means? Can you figure it out? However, for every two or three vocabulary multiple choice, fill in the blank tests, there is at least one journal assignment requiring my students to use the words, to show creativity as they combine words that would not occur naturally in nature. I mean, ophthalmologist and subterranean? An eye doctor for blind moles? Not bad. Not bad.
The problem with me and authentic assessments is that I feel so stupid. If I worked in a school system that had authentic in its name—Florence School of Authentic Education. We’d be the Florence Fleas. No reason, just like the sound of it. If the push of the entire school or even of the school system were toward authentic assessments, I would be totally on board. Obviously, since I applied to work there. But here . . . I’d be the only teacher doing a mock-courtroom trial alongside To Kill a Mockingbird. It’d be cool, sure. But somehow in my attempt to be authentic, I feel I would go too far into artificial. Doing something that’s authentic just because it’s authentic is no reason to be authentic.
I forgot to support one of the points I made in the first paragraph. What was missing from the definition of Authentic Assessment, at least from my article, was English work. Essays did not fall into the Traditional Assessments no-no list. So are we safe giving out essays? Long answer questions? I mean, that’s authentic enough. At many points in the future lives of our children, they will be required to write responses, explain what happened, give details about how and why they are the best fit for this job or that. That’s authentic, right?
You still have to think in a well-made multiple choice test. What if you made the kids justify their responses on a multiple choice test? Correct and incorrect? Does that then become authentic? I say yes.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
December Capstone Festival
So, I’m sitting here looking at these kids and thinking about achievement. Well, to be honest I’m sitting at my computer a few weeks after the December Capstone Festival trying to remember what went on. Don’t worry. I took notes, being the achiever that I am.
There were two groups of kids, though for the life of me I could not tell the difference in quality or content. A few were part of the MINDS program. Mentoring Intellectual N-something Development of Students. One, Scout (and all I can think of is Atticus and Jem) wanted to create a new playground for her elementary school. I got to thinking, what’s so special about this? It’s just a playground. But, then, someone has to design it. Why not a seven-year-old kid. Is that achievement? Being that young and taking on the task of an adult? Maybe so. Her biggest problem was the limitations of the program. Google Sketch. Maybe so. The biggest thing holding me back from being able to paint masterpieces is my inability to figure out how to make the paint brushes work like I want them to.
What makes the video-game designer an achiever? What about the kid who wants to make a movie about Greek Mythology? She seemed like she just wanted to make a video with her friends in it. I liked the kid with the idea about an educational recycling video. That seems like a measurement of a high achiever. Recycling? What kid cares about that? Design a video game, a playground, a cool video with your friends, learn about strange monsters . . . that’s all kid stuff, to be sure. But recycling? That’s forward thinking on the part of a littl’un. Adults are supposed to think about the environment, not kids. A+ in my book.
Here are, however, my reservations from my original notes:
• Difficulty in determining giftedness in one so young.
• Some topics seem like a natural fascination bordering on obsession.
• Why are these kids considered gifted? They seem like regular kids (except the first one wanting to work in robotics) who’ve gotten a lot of time and resources and encouragement to explore “stuff they like.”
• Crypto-kid. Seems like he’s on a wild goose chase.
All this makes me glad I’m not the one responsible for determining whether or not these kids are gifted or not. My problem would be in turning them down. How could I say one of them is not gifted?
There were two groups of kids, though for the life of me I could not tell the difference in quality or content. A few were part of the MINDS program. Mentoring Intellectual N-something Development of Students. One, Scout (and all I can think of is Atticus and Jem) wanted to create a new playground for her elementary school. I got to thinking, what’s so special about this? It’s just a playground. But, then, someone has to design it. Why not a seven-year-old kid. Is that achievement? Being that young and taking on the task of an adult? Maybe so. Her biggest problem was the limitations of the program. Google Sketch. Maybe so. The biggest thing holding me back from being able to paint masterpieces is my inability to figure out how to make the paint brushes work like I want them to.
What makes the video-game designer an achiever? What about the kid who wants to make a movie about Greek Mythology? She seemed like she just wanted to make a video with her friends in it. I liked the kid with the idea about an educational recycling video. That seems like a measurement of a high achiever. Recycling? What kid cares about that? Design a video game, a playground, a cool video with your friends, learn about strange monsters . . . that’s all kid stuff, to be sure. But recycling? That’s forward thinking on the part of a littl’un. Adults are supposed to think about the environment, not kids. A+ in my book.
Here are, however, my reservations from my original notes:
• Difficulty in determining giftedness in one so young.
• Some topics seem like a natural fascination bordering on obsession.
• Why are these kids considered gifted? They seem like regular kids (except the first one wanting to work in robotics) who’ve gotten a lot of time and resources and encouragement to explore “stuff they like.”
• Crypto-kid. Seems like he’s on a wild goose chase.
All this makes me glad I’m not the one responsible for determining whether or not these kids are gifted or not. My problem would be in turning them down. How could I say one of them is not gifted?
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Mental Ability Assessment Response
Mental Ability. I’m full of it. I love these kinds of tests. We took the [please insert name here] non-verbal assessment of mental ability. Loved it. I love puzzles like this. Which shape comes next, which number follows in this sequence, if you fold this piece of paper this way and that way, what will it look like when you are finished? But, poor me, I had to leave early and could not find out what my test score was. I think I got them all right, but that’s just my arrogance coming through. But it’s not about me, is it? Nope. It’s about the kids. This kind of test makes you think. Makes your brain hurt. I have the stamina for it and I enjoy it, so I won’t complain or give up. Do it all day long, doesn’t bother me. But a lot of the students who come my way are put off by tests like this. Well, they are put off by problems that do not have immediate, clear answers. Put off by questions that require extended, multi-layered thinking.
Why is that?
Are they stupid? Who could not enjoy a test like this?
Okay. The ones who reject this type of non-verbal mental ability test probably lack a certain degree of spatial thinking. That, to me, is what most of this is about. Can you imagine a three-dimensional object taken from a two-dimensional piece of paper and rotate it in your head? Are you willing to spend time looking back and forth and back and forth among three our four different objects to figure out what the pattern is? How many permutations can you hold within your brain at the same time? I can see this angering some personalities.
We also looked at a few verbal assessments. Questions with words. Still, here we had number sequences, odd-man-out questions (which of these objects does not belong, like in the Sesame Street song). I like this type of assessment less, but will still dedicate myself to it . . . but here I go talking about myself again. Okay. The inclusion of words and concepts introduces an unmistakable bias to the testing procedure. The ideas and concepts familiar to a farming community are, possibly, entirely foreign to someone raised in Orlando, Florida amid the glitz and glamour of Universal Studios and Disneyworld!
Let’s go wordless. No bias . . . or maybe they don’t have shapes like that in Omaha.
Why is that?
Are they stupid? Who could not enjoy a test like this?
Okay. The ones who reject this type of non-verbal mental ability test probably lack a certain degree of spatial thinking. That, to me, is what most of this is about. Can you imagine a three-dimensional object taken from a two-dimensional piece of paper and rotate it in your head? Are you willing to spend time looking back and forth and back and forth among three our four different objects to figure out what the pattern is? How many permutations can you hold within your brain at the same time? I can see this angering some personalities.
We also looked at a few verbal assessments. Questions with words. Still, here we had number sequences, odd-man-out questions (which of these objects does not belong, like in the Sesame Street song). I like this type of assessment less, but will still dedicate myself to it . . . but here I go talking about myself again. Okay. The inclusion of words and concepts introduces an unmistakable bias to the testing procedure. The ideas and concepts familiar to a farming community are, possibly, entirely foreign to someone raised in Orlando, Florida amid the glitz and glamour of Universal Studios and Disneyworld!
Let’s go wordless. No bias . . . or maybe they don’t have shapes like that in Omaha.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Portfolio Response (to, not made of)
I’ll try to limit myself to just two paragraphs. Not even John Updike paragraphs.
Portfolios can assess three different categories (at least in Clarke County): achievement, creativity, and motivation. I’m stuck on the motivation part. I guess if you’re motivated enough to complete a portfolio that may end up taking eighteen months (sheesh, children have been planned, debated, rejected, accepted, conceived, and born in less time), then you are truly motivated. Wouldn’t motivation be a factor of any portfolio? I guess if you’re not too independent with it, you’re not too motivated. Time bothers me a lot with these portfolios. I spend most of my time designing assignments that are less than a week or two in duration because of the relatively short attention span of most of my students. Whether this is a perceived attention span or reality, I’m not sure. Maybe my kids could handle an assignment that lasts all semester long. With our block schedule, that’d only be four months or so.
I think we as teachers are portfolio creators. When we sit down to design a semester’s worth of work, we try (sometimes) to develop common themes. My tenth grade classes are all about death and failure. The texts we have—Julius Caesar, Things Fall Apart, Lord of the Flies, Antigone, Night (Holocaust)—all concern themselves with the failures of mankind. I joke that there are no happy moments in tenth grade. You’re not a freshman anymore, so you can’t use that excuse. And you’re not a big kid yet. Even the name, sophomore, means wise fool. They can’t win.
I would be (holy crap, third paragraph—don’t count the first one as a paragraph) terrified to grade a portfolio, a true portfolio. Too many variables, too much that could be left open to interpretation. There is also, for me, too much room for the personal feelings of the judge influencing the assessment of the product. Our guest speakers made an offhand comment that if they were confronted with a portfolio that looked like money, looked like it came from Hobby Lobby and dear old Mom and Dad spent their hard earned cashola on the decorations, it would be almost immediately dismissed. But what if? What if the expensive supplies were used in creative ways? What if, too? What if I just don’t understand what the kid was trying to do? What if, again? What if the kid had no clue what he was putting in the portfolio and is just good at making crap up when he’s explaining it. Too many what if’s for me.
Portfolios can assess three different categories (at least in Clarke County): achievement, creativity, and motivation. I’m stuck on the motivation part. I guess if you’re motivated enough to complete a portfolio that may end up taking eighteen months (sheesh, children have been planned, debated, rejected, accepted, conceived, and born in less time), then you are truly motivated. Wouldn’t motivation be a factor of any portfolio? I guess if you’re not too independent with it, you’re not too motivated. Time bothers me a lot with these portfolios. I spend most of my time designing assignments that are less than a week or two in duration because of the relatively short attention span of most of my students. Whether this is a perceived attention span or reality, I’m not sure. Maybe my kids could handle an assignment that lasts all semester long. With our block schedule, that’d only be four months or so.
I think we as teachers are portfolio creators. When we sit down to design a semester’s worth of work, we try (sometimes) to develop common themes. My tenth grade classes are all about death and failure. The texts we have—Julius Caesar, Things Fall Apart, Lord of the Flies, Antigone, Night (Holocaust)—all concern themselves with the failures of mankind. I joke that there are no happy moments in tenth grade. You’re not a freshman anymore, so you can’t use that excuse. And you’re not a big kid yet. Even the name, sophomore, means wise fool. They can’t win.
I would be (holy crap, third paragraph—don’t count the first one as a paragraph) terrified to grade a portfolio, a true portfolio. Too many variables, too much that could be left open to interpretation. There is also, for me, too much room for the personal feelings of the judge influencing the assessment of the product. Our guest speakers made an offhand comment that if they were confronted with a portfolio that looked like money, looked like it came from Hobby Lobby and dear old Mom and Dad spent their hard earned cashola on the decorations, it would be almost immediately dismissed. But what if? What if the expensive supplies were used in creative ways? What if, too? What if I just don’t understand what the kid was trying to do? What if, again? What if the kid had no clue what he was putting in the portfolio and is just good at making crap up when he’s explaining it. Too many what if’s for me.
Friday, December 4, 2009
GES-2 Motivation Assessment
It would be funny to say that I was not motivated to do well on the Motivation Assessment. Funny.
I cheat on tests like this. I rarely answer questions truthfully when it comes to motivation, personality, and things like that. I spend a great deal of time analyzing questions trying to figure out what my answer would mean by rating it on the like to dislike, true to false scale usually provided. I am not fooled (or so I think) by the test makers randomizing the types of questions found on the test. The GES¬-2 is a fine test and I have no problem with it other than the fact that it tries to test too much at once. You can use this test to . . . okay, according to a creativelearning.com website, it assesses giftedness in intellectual, creative, specific academic, and/or leadership ability (or in the performing arts). As a test taker, I was all my questions sorted. I don’t want to have to figure out which questions are the creative ones and which are the motivational ones.
I’m confused, though. GES means Gifted Evaluation Scale. Is that the test? or just the scale used to assess the test.
Sheesh. According to the hes-inc.com website, you can purchase the GES-3 for a mere $90. Are we really motivated enough to spend that much money on a kid who might be like me and lie throughout the test to give you the answers he thinks you want? Not me, bucko. I want to spend that money on high-interest materials that will make all kids interested.
We can’t talk about race that much. We can’t talk about gender that much either. There’s a lot of things I won’t say here (whether I believe them or not) about why this person or that person will do better on the GES. Even saying that there are things that I won’t say is problematic.
I am, however, a product of my environment. My father is a workaholic. He remained retired for about four months before he got himself another full-time job. He had worked with the phone company for nearly thirty years. My folks aren’t rich, but they certainly don’t need the money. I grew up with a mother who rode horses and stayed home with the kids (my sister and me). She worked a little, part time jobs, mostly horse-related. I grew up with the understanding that men were supposed to work and women were allowed to work. It’s okay for a woman to have a job, nothing wrong with that, but it’s secondary to the man’s job. I know I’m supposed to be motivated to work, to build, to create just because I am a man. For my twelve years of married life, my job has been the primary money-earner. My wife is not far behind and she does work full-time. I wonder, though, does she work full time because we need the money (which we do, bills to pay) or is it because she wants to work. I’d love to stay home and take care of the house and read books all day long, but that would make me less of a man, wouldn’t it? That would mean I’m not motivated. But just like my father, I plan to stay with the same career for the rest of my life. My wife has had four different career-type jobs in the past 12 years.
Let’s leave race out of this, shall we?
I have to say I am at a loss as to who should administer the GES and why. I don’t see what motivation (specifically) has to do with giftedness. I see that as an independent factor. I can be motivated to build houses but suck at it. I can be completely unmotivated to design new cars and yet be the foremost genius in the field. Yeah, I get it. You have to be motivated on some level to allow someone to be able to see your giftedness. I get that. Yet I still mock.
Scoring. I understand the need for different scales for different ages, even for male/female test-takers. The six-year-old taking charge of doing his homework is highly motivated, but we can’t exactly expect this kid to start a local chapter of Amnesty International. I’m sure there’s some six-year-old out there who’s done it, but it’s rare. Older kids, the teens and late teens, they have to do more to be considered motivated. Makes perfect sense to me.
I dislike, however, the flaw in the system. The judge. Handing these out to various teachers, coaches, parents, friends who are involved in the allegedly gifted kid’s life puts a kink in the system that is, as I see it, unavoidable. You have to trust other people. Even if those other people might have a grudge against the kid. Now we get into statistics and standard deviations and margins for error. I, as a tenth grader, was a perfect child behavior-wise for my first five classes. When I got to sixth period, I was a nut. Can’t quite explain it, but if my sixth block Geometry teacher had filled out any sort of behavior-analysis form on me, it would have contrasted starkly with my other five teachers. It’s a flaw, but unavoidable.
I cheat on tests like this. I rarely answer questions truthfully when it comes to motivation, personality, and things like that. I spend a great deal of time analyzing questions trying to figure out what my answer would mean by rating it on the like to dislike, true to false scale usually provided. I am not fooled (or so I think) by the test makers randomizing the types of questions found on the test. The GES¬-2 is a fine test and I have no problem with it other than the fact that it tries to test too much at once. You can use this test to . . . okay, according to a creativelearning.com website, it assesses giftedness in intellectual, creative, specific academic, and/or leadership ability (or in the performing arts). As a test taker, I was all my questions sorted. I don’t want to have to figure out which questions are the creative ones and which are the motivational ones.
I’m confused, though. GES means Gifted Evaluation Scale. Is that the test? or just the scale used to assess the test.
Sheesh. According to the hes-inc.com website, you can purchase the GES-3 for a mere $90. Are we really motivated enough to spend that much money on a kid who might be like me and lie throughout the test to give you the answers he thinks you want? Not me, bucko. I want to spend that money on high-interest materials that will make all kids interested.
We can’t talk about race that much. We can’t talk about gender that much either. There’s a lot of things I won’t say here (whether I believe them or not) about why this person or that person will do better on the GES. Even saying that there are things that I won’t say is problematic.
I am, however, a product of my environment. My father is a workaholic. He remained retired for about four months before he got himself another full-time job. He had worked with the phone company for nearly thirty years. My folks aren’t rich, but they certainly don’t need the money. I grew up with a mother who rode horses and stayed home with the kids (my sister and me). She worked a little, part time jobs, mostly horse-related. I grew up with the understanding that men were supposed to work and women were allowed to work. It’s okay for a woman to have a job, nothing wrong with that, but it’s secondary to the man’s job. I know I’m supposed to be motivated to work, to build, to create just because I am a man. For my twelve years of married life, my job has been the primary money-earner. My wife is not far behind and she does work full-time. I wonder, though, does she work full time because we need the money (which we do, bills to pay) or is it because she wants to work. I’d love to stay home and take care of the house and read books all day long, but that would make me less of a man, wouldn’t it? That would mean I’m not motivated. But just like my father, I plan to stay with the same career for the rest of my life. My wife has had four different career-type jobs in the past 12 years.
Let’s leave race out of this, shall we?
I have to say I am at a loss as to who should administer the GES and why. I don’t see what motivation (specifically) has to do with giftedness. I see that as an independent factor. I can be motivated to build houses but suck at it. I can be completely unmotivated to design new cars and yet be the foremost genius in the field. Yeah, I get it. You have to be motivated on some level to allow someone to be able to see your giftedness. I get that. Yet I still mock.
Scoring. I understand the need for different scales for different ages, even for male/female test-takers. The six-year-old taking charge of doing his homework is highly motivated, but we can’t exactly expect this kid to start a local chapter of Amnesty International. I’m sure there’s some six-year-old out there who’s done it, but it’s rare. Older kids, the teens and late teens, they have to do more to be considered motivated. Makes perfect sense to me.
I dislike, however, the flaw in the system. The judge. Handing these out to various teachers, coaches, parents, friends who are involved in the allegedly gifted kid’s life puts a kink in the system that is, as I see it, unavoidable. You have to trust other people. Even if those other people might have a grudge against the kid. Now we get into statistics and standard deviations and margins for error. I, as a tenth grader, was a perfect child behavior-wise for my first five classes. When I got to sixth period, I was a nut. Can’t quite explain it, but if my sixth block Geometry teacher had filled out any sort of behavior-analysis form on me, it would have contrasted starkly with my other five teachers. It’s a flaw, but unavoidable.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Class, December the first, 2009
It's guest speaker day, apparently. That's okay. Not like movie day. Movie day is great.
Vicki Krugman is first. I think that's how you spell her name. She's the goto contact for all matters gifted in Clarke County. She has a swanky office at the board office. Sweet.
The first thing that happened, before Vicki appeared on the scene, is some folks handed out some . . . handouts. All four concern portfolio plans.
Srivistava. She's talking. Portfolios. The kid who uses Lilith as an alter-ego/avatar.
Here's my impression of what it means to do well on a portfolio: you have to care enough to keep on talking about your feelings. You also have to not care too much about other people possibly laughing at you. To create a good portfolio
a portfolio needs a good ten to fifteen items or artifacts they're called
you have to be willing to go on and on about the artifacts you have chosen. Your emotions must show through in the works you create. People might laugh at you because you have to, just as in any good metaphor, make an unnatural comparison between the artifact and what it means to you.
portfolios are not used a lot around the state of georgia
Why not? Because they're so difficult and time-consuming to create. Look like a booger to assess too.
it's useless to do a portfolio that is not in one of the student's strength areas
Sure. I'll buy that. Vicki just admitted that the most difficult area of portfolios to assess is the creativity component. Well, not really a component, but I like that word. There are three target areas for portfolios: achievement, creativity, and motivation. Going back to Srivistava's presentation of her student's portfolio, I would have sworn it was on creativity. Looked that way to me. Not true. It was motivation. Go figure.
Know what? This reminds me a lot of what we in the English department go through when we try to select kids for the English honors distinction around graduation. We want kids who are self-motivated, pursue their interests outside the classroom (reading and writing in the case of English).
Rapport. That's a funny word.
How much does environment play into portfolio development and the reality of the creative process. The third guest speaker, no clue who she is, but she seems attached to Vicki, mentioned a kid who would not/could not write a lick in writing class, but at home she was creating magnificent lyrical poetry (songs, I mean). I write different ways after reading different texts. One story I wrote sounded like Kafka. that's because I had just read several Kafka short stories. Read The Trial, too. That makes me cool.
Who is that third lady? She really seems to know what she's talking about. Has a great deal of information.
I'll be right back. I'm going to find a like to put in this blog.
Hoagies' Gifted Education Page offers some information on skipping a grade by using a gifted portfolio. It's an article by a woman named Sandy advocating for her fifth grade child moving directly into seventh grade. I wouldn't do that. Middle schoolers are cruel. That's a horrible age to be different from the people around you. Then again, it would really bite to be an overachieving sixth grader stuck in a sixth grade class.
Woman3 is still wearing her scarf and it's not that cold in here. Maybe she was bitten by a vampire. Stymie. She said stymie. Definition two.
My wife calls me a supersniffer. I blame my mother. She wore too much (and too much for me is any) perfume, Chanel no. 5, on car trips. Made me nauseous. I sit here in this new elementary school and can smell nothing but the New School smell. The carpet's too clean. The walls are too freshly painted. Too few bodies have gone through here. I dread the day I have to drive my own new car. Will I ever get one? Doubt it. I like used. But that's because I don't have enough money to buy a new car.
You know what I've missed through this whole thing? Why? That's what I've missed. If this portfolio takes up to a year and a half to create, why are the kids doing it and what do they get when they finish it that they could not get in other ways?
Outliers. Vicki made reference to outliers. I have a visual memory of the book. The link is to the author's own website concerning his book, Outliers. That title sticks with me.
three types of gifted services within the classroom: collaboration, advanced content, and cluster
Liberty County offers more models than we do. Go them. The pdf file does, however, offer pretty succinct definitions of the different models offered at the three educational levels (elementary, middle, high).
Vicki Krugman is first. I think that's how you spell her name. She's the goto contact for all matters gifted in Clarke County. She has a swanky office at the board office. Sweet.
The first thing that happened, before Vicki appeared on the scene, is some folks handed out some . . . handouts. All four concern portfolio plans.
Srivistava. She's talking. Portfolios. The kid who uses Lilith as an alter-ego/avatar.
Here's my impression of what it means to do well on a portfolio: you have to care enough to keep on talking about your feelings. You also have to not care too much about other people possibly laughing at you. To create a good portfolio
a portfolio needs a good ten to fifteen items or artifacts they're called
you have to be willing to go on and on about the artifacts you have chosen. Your emotions must show through in the works you create. People might laugh at you because you have to, just as in any good metaphor, make an unnatural comparison between the artifact and what it means to you.
portfolios are not used a lot around the state of georgia
Why not? Because they're so difficult and time-consuming to create. Look like a booger to assess too.
it's useless to do a portfolio that is not in one of the student's strength areas
Sure. I'll buy that. Vicki just admitted that the most difficult area of portfolios to assess is the creativity component. Well, not really a component, but I like that word. There are three target areas for portfolios: achievement, creativity, and motivation. Going back to Srivistava's presentation of her student's portfolio, I would have sworn it was on creativity. Looked that way to me. Not true. It was motivation. Go figure.
Know what? This reminds me a lot of what we in the English department go through when we try to select kids for the English honors distinction around graduation. We want kids who are self-motivated, pursue their interests outside the classroom (reading and writing in the case of English).
Rapport. That's a funny word.
How much does environment play into portfolio development and the reality of the creative process. The third guest speaker, no clue who she is, but she seems attached to Vicki, mentioned a kid who would not/could not write a lick in writing class, but at home she was creating magnificent lyrical poetry (songs, I mean). I write different ways after reading different texts. One story I wrote sounded like Kafka. that's because I had just read several Kafka short stories. Read The Trial, too. That makes me cool.
Who is that third lady? She really seems to know what she's talking about. Has a great deal of information.
I'll be right back. I'm going to find a like to put in this blog.
Hoagies' Gifted Education Page offers some information on skipping a grade by using a gifted portfolio. It's an article by a woman named Sandy advocating for her fifth grade child moving directly into seventh grade. I wouldn't do that. Middle schoolers are cruel. That's a horrible age to be different from the people around you. Then again, it would really bite to be an overachieving sixth grader stuck in a sixth grade class.
Woman3 is still wearing her scarf and it's not that cold in here. Maybe she was bitten by a vampire. Stymie. She said stymie. Definition two.
My wife calls me a supersniffer. I blame my mother. She wore too much (and too much for me is any) perfume, Chanel no. 5, on car trips. Made me nauseous. I sit here in this new elementary school and can smell nothing but the New School smell. The carpet's too clean. The walls are too freshly painted. Too few bodies have gone through here. I dread the day I have to drive my own new car. Will I ever get one? Doubt it. I like used. But that's because I don't have enough money to buy a new car.
You know what I've missed through this whole thing? Why? That's what I've missed. If this portfolio takes up to a year and a half to create, why are the kids doing it and what do they get when they finish it that they could not get in other ways?
Outliers. Vicki made reference to outliers. I have a visual memory of the book. The link is to the author's own website concerning his book, Outliers. That title sticks with me.
three types of gifted services within the classroom: collaboration, advanced content, and cluster
Liberty County offers more models than we do. Go them. The pdf file does, however, offer pretty succinct definitions of the different models offered at the three educational levels (elementary, middle, high).
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Response to the Torrance Test for Creative Thinking
Response to the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking
Joshua Sampson
The Torrance Test of Creative Thinking? The Schmorance Schmest of Schmeative Schminking, more like it. I have always been an adept test taker. That’s what I tell my students, anyway. Never quite understood test anxiety or freezing up on tests. Time limits rarely bother me. Of course, I have not been a part of high-stakes testing like my students are today. They have graduation-test and EOCT stress. I just had vocabulary quizzes and final exams. Taking tests, I always knew what I knew and recognized what I did not know. If I didn’t know the answer to question fifteen, I spent no more than ten seconds accepting that fact and moved on to question sixteen. It pains me to see students who are stuck on question one, unable to move on. The TToCT was a little different for me. I found myself rechecking my answers, wondering if they were truly correct, what the instructor/grader would understand as creative. I had a hard time moving on to the next question (or example of drawing) until I felt I was completely finished with the previous one.
As the test started, I was comforted by the understanding that this was not the real test, that I was not going to be judged, and that the environment was not what it really should be. I would prefer a smaller environment, something less communal. Time was a constant factor in the quality of my results. I felt at first that I had too much time, but then as time ran out, I struggled to make sure any potential grader could understand what was going through my mind. Any deficiency I have in my artistic (ability to draw) skills, I tried to bolster with an over-exaggerated written creativeness. I spent more time thinking of the titles that I did on the drawn responses. I even tried to incorporate three drawings into the first problem. Would my grader understand this? Would I be more creative because I tried to shove more information into the limited space rather than work on quality? I understood going in to the test that the completeness of a product was important. The number of details you include do affect your score.
But that is where I see the limitation of the TToCT. Why the time limit? Do I have to be creative in just ten minutes? Does not the creative mind sometimes need time to fully express itself? I ponder this when I ask my own students to develop creative products. Is it fair to tell my students at 10:11 that a poem is due at 11:46 (the timeframe of my second block class)? Can a creative poem be written in just an hour and a half? I can surely write one, several, in fact. If I’m in the mood. This test is a snapshot of creativity and while I believe that creativity can be taught, I believe that it is initially imitation creativity. I can coach my students about the details they need to include in their poems, words they can choose and end up with a 50% student/50% teacher creative poem (actual percentages may vary). Eventually, a student may be able to create magnificent poetry, fantastic paintings, splendid musical overtures. But at first, they are all artificial. “If you add ten toes to your person, it’ll be more complete. What about toenails? Should some of them be painted? Does your person wear rings? What about curls in the hair? Eyebrows?
But ten minutes? Come on! I’m not that creative.
Scoring the TToCT? I have to admit, I was a bit put off by this. Not being qualified is one thing, but I just don’t have the experience I feel I need to judge the results I had before me. I think I know what a creative product looks like, but that is my subjective opinion. It was helpful to have our instructor going through a grocery list of pointless (not pointless, but point-less, without points) responses. I could not help but think, as many of the pointless responses mirrored my own, that it meant I, myself, was not creative. Individual responses were judged, oddly enough to me, not on completion, but on non-completion. I was taken aback by the notion that a closed drawing was worth less than an open drawing. I understand the notion that those who crave order and regularity (perhaps the less creative) want things to have a definite beginning and a definite ending. We close our drawings . . . err, I mean they close their drawings. While the creative among us are open and free with both their thinking and their pen-to-paper work. The lack of clear directions—complete directions may be a better way of saying it—aggravated me while we were grading. I constantly thought, well, if I had known it was better to combine these and not draw that kind of thing, then I would have done much better. But that’s the point, isn’t it? Those who have an innate sense of creativity are not bothered by incomplete directions. They are wild and free and make their own rules. I had a few questions while we were grading. Asked some of them aloud, but relied mostly on the help of my fellow table-mates.
I understand the test is supposed to show how far your mind can go when it is set free. If I give you a first word, “Once” will you be like everyone else and continue with “upon a time” or will you do something unheard of? “Once the soldier realized his legs were not going to work, he had to figure another way out of the ship.”
11/30/09 and 12/01/09
Joshua Sampson
The Torrance Test of Creative Thinking? The Schmorance Schmest of Schmeative Schminking, more like it. I have always been an adept test taker. That’s what I tell my students, anyway. Never quite understood test anxiety or freezing up on tests. Time limits rarely bother me. Of course, I have not been a part of high-stakes testing like my students are today. They have graduation-test and EOCT stress. I just had vocabulary quizzes and final exams. Taking tests, I always knew what I knew and recognized what I did not know. If I didn’t know the answer to question fifteen, I spent no more than ten seconds accepting that fact and moved on to question sixteen. It pains me to see students who are stuck on question one, unable to move on. The TToCT was a little different for me. I found myself rechecking my answers, wondering if they were truly correct, what the instructor/grader would understand as creative. I had a hard time moving on to the next question (or example of drawing) until I felt I was completely finished with the previous one.
As the test started, I was comforted by the understanding that this was not the real test, that I was not going to be judged, and that the environment was not what it really should be. I would prefer a smaller environment, something less communal. Time was a constant factor in the quality of my results. I felt at first that I had too much time, but then as time ran out, I struggled to make sure any potential grader could understand what was going through my mind. Any deficiency I have in my artistic (ability to draw) skills, I tried to bolster with an over-exaggerated written creativeness. I spent more time thinking of the titles that I did on the drawn responses. I even tried to incorporate three drawings into the first problem. Would my grader understand this? Would I be more creative because I tried to shove more information into the limited space rather than work on quality? I understood going in to the test that the completeness of a product was important. The number of details you include do affect your score.
But that is where I see the limitation of the TToCT. Why the time limit? Do I have to be creative in just ten minutes? Does not the creative mind sometimes need time to fully express itself? I ponder this when I ask my own students to develop creative products. Is it fair to tell my students at 10:11 that a poem is due at 11:46 (the timeframe of my second block class)? Can a creative poem be written in just an hour and a half? I can surely write one, several, in fact. If I’m in the mood. This test is a snapshot of creativity and while I believe that creativity can be taught, I believe that it is initially imitation creativity. I can coach my students about the details they need to include in their poems, words they can choose and end up with a 50% student/50% teacher creative poem (actual percentages may vary). Eventually, a student may be able to create magnificent poetry, fantastic paintings, splendid musical overtures. But at first, they are all artificial. “If you add ten toes to your person, it’ll be more complete. What about toenails? Should some of them be painted? Does your person wear rings? What about curls in the hair? Eyebrows?
But ten minutes? Come on! I’m not that creative.
Scoring the TToCT? I have to admit, I was a bit put off by this. Not being qualified is one thing, but I just don’t have the experience I feel I need to judge the results I had before me. I think I know what a creative product looks like, but that is my subjective opinion. It was helpful to have our instructor going through a grocery list of pointless (not pointless, but point-less, without points) responses. I could not help but think, as many of the pointless responses mirrored my own, that it meant I, myself, was not creative. Individual responses were judged, oddly enough to me, not on completion, but on non-completion. I was taken aback by the notion that a closed drawing was worth less than an open drawing. I understand the notion that those who crave order and regularity (perhaps the less creative) want things to have a definite beginning and a definite ending. We close our drawings . . . err, I mean they close their drawings. While the creative among us are open and free with both their thinking and their pen-to-paper work. The lack of clear directions—complete directions may be a better way of saying it—aggravated me while we were grading. I constantly thought, well, if I had known it was better to combine these and not draw that kind of thing, then I would have done much better. But that’s the point, isn’t it? Those who have an innate sense of creativity are not bothered by incomplete directions. They are wild and free and make their own rules. I had a few questions while we were grading. Asked some of them aloud, but relied mostly on the help of my fellow table-mates.
I understand the test is supposed to show how far your mind can go when it is set free. If I give you a first word, “Once” will you be like everyone else and continue with “upon a time” or will you do something unheard of? “Once the soldier realized his legs were not going to work, he had to figure another way out of the ship.”
11/30/09 and 12/01/09
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