S1E11 - Analyzing Assessment AS Learning

(upbeat music) - Insight into instruction, combining and cultivating, conversations between instructors and students. (upbeat music) - Hey, welcome to Triple Eye, Insight into instruction. My name is Jamie. - I'm Annabelle. - And I'm Fabulous, but you can call me Thomas. (upbeat music) - This week we covered chapter five, assessment as learning from the Gottlieb text. As we were provided in a specific prompt, we'll be taking sections from the chapter, breaking them down, making connections and discoursing. (upbeat music) - So I chose something from the first section of the chapter on page 139. This page Gottlieb brings up a research-based model created by Mary Jane O'Connell and Cara Vandes. I'm not sure the pronunciation of the names, and it was basically designed to foster learner-centered practices and collaborative learning to build trust between teachers and students. And so the models across the namesake, trust reads, talent, discovering every student's assets for learning, rapport and responsiveness, forging relationships based on trust and mutual respect, the us factor, believing that everyone can learn and contribute to the learning process, structures, setting up mechanisms that enable students to become owners of their learning and time, offering opportunities to nurture the relationship between teachers and students. (upbeat music) - So this section resonated with me just because it seems like a really basic level of support, yet as we have seen in a lot of our practice, come experiences, it's really often that it's not implemented. So especially with those EL students. This could really be due to ignorance or just not having received any of those ELL endorsements or having taken personal development courses. And even if they have taken the PD courses, we're spending around two years us in the program, immersed in all of this CLR or culturally responsive pedagogy versus just having like a few classes that are just a couple hours and that's all the knowledge that they're receiving. - And we're also receiving specific classes each semester to specifically help and grow ELL students, right? - And then this really ties to that formative assessment just because we are continually saying throughout the time here at WSUV and within the podcast, teaching to the individual. So, and when you're teaching to the individual, you're scaffolding, you're differentiating, but it's specific to each individual person. So it's not, here's a broad scaffold for all ELL students because each ELL student is going to have a completely potentially different level and not just a level overall, but a level within just speaking oral literacy or reading or writing or whatever it may be. - Definitely and that's where I think the structures section of trust that you were talking about is also so huge. It's setting up those mechanisms that enables them to become owners of their own learning, right? So that has to be scaffolded, like you mentioned, but also just having that be repeated integrated part of your classroom. I feel like that's not something that you can just throw in every once in a while because you learned about it one time at that conference, something that has to be woven into everything else or else that structure's not there for students to feel safe or know how to go about this learnings. Like, I mean, most of the learning minds, and as David taught us that we should also scaffold for each individual level because even if I was a middle school teacher, which we know teachers don't have enough time to do any of the stuff we're asking, as well as just knowing and being able to have to go, like the sheer number of students that teachers have, they give us a middle school level. You're going to have to scaffold and just have level one, two, three, four, and five accessible because you're going to have close to 150 students come into your classroom. Per day, yes, getting to know each individual one is extremely important, but also you may not be able to individualize for that one student, but you know if they're level five in discourse or in speaking, you have those resources and sentence frames and all those graphical organizers ready for them. And it's like you said, it's not to be just thrown here and they're sprinkled in, it needs to be for each individual lesson because those students are there every single day. Right, intentional way. It needs to be intentional every single time. Right, because that's how they're going to grow and that's how they're going to learn. And with using trust, which I love, by the way, like you can actually take the time to do all this stuff, but also use it in a way that's meaningful and also beneficial for you and the student and not taking time but also making a time valuable. - Yeah, so to answer the questions from the reflection, the first one is what are some effective strategies for building trust in your students? So I have, I've got a whole lot in my brain. (laughs) So first of all, reading the student files and the student surveys and knowing their language levels coming in for the different subjects. - True. - Just because they give you that when they come into the school. And so if you have that read, at least the first day when they walk into your classroom, you have some background knowledge. - And if you don't have that, you need to make sure you get it from an administration 'cause I'm one of my practicum teachers. It's like, "Oh, but they never handed to me." And I was like, "Let's hand them." - Crap it. - I would hand them. I want that information to so vital to their learning, so vital. But then I mentioned things like the getting to know you activities. So like the culture bag, the IAM poem or who I am poem. - I am from. - I am from poem and who I am poem. 'Cause we, I think we took one of those as well. - The dear teacher letters that we did in our statistics class, dear Habby, but not Habby. And all of these can be modified to fit to individual language levels. So then also the community events to include family, phone calls, check-ins, whether that be like a monthly thing where it isn't behavior-based. Home visit post-COVID, depending on the district. And then in general, having high expectations for all of your students in an equitable way ensures that productive struggle and helps those individuals stay in that zone of proximal development so that they are able to progress. So those were some of the things that I mentioned. And then just by running that classroom that encourages the student agency and selecting activities that really allow students to learn for themselves rather than for the teacher. I think that those are some really effective strategies just to build that trust. And then the second question was, what are the challenges and how might you overcome them when you are not familiar with the student's languages and culture? So the things that I really like immediately thought of were those misconceptions when it comes to culture. So the no-eye contact, the no-speaking, any classroom norms from different cultures that aren't mirrored here. So things like not understanding idioms or where red ink, I know, I think it was Japan, China, is it China? I was reading one from Japan as well. But China, can you explain 'cause you did that whole thing on China. - I know China with red represents luck, but you're always supposed to use it during the new year. - Okay. And there was another one where red ink was like, was attached to death and things like that. So again, just knowing things like that, depending on the cultures that are within your classroom was huge, but then hugs and shaking hands and physical contact and any of those things that could be potentially disrespectful, shaking with the right hand versus the left hand, and then also language. So in general, language can be a huge barrier. So things like sheltered instruction, the repetition, the things that we learned from David as far as vocabulary. Just to help the students understand what you're talking about in the first place, because if they don't understand directions, I don't know how they're supposed to do anything else. You have to have that base level of understanding to start out. - Well, it makes me think back to what the project we did with Giselle, we chose a country, and I chose China with Ms. Allison. And we both, we did a, we did just basically a Google search and learn just what we could about their culture, like, what are the do's in their doubts when they're in school? What are the do's in their doubts in their home? What does a family structure look like? Just a basic Google understanding or Google search to find out baseline level information, to help bridge, 'cause like I would never have thought that with some of the stuff we did learn, and I will be using that, those reference sheets all through them, my teaching years, but knowing what's acceptable, it's not, 'cause you don't want to call on a student that it culturally doesn't want to be called on, because if they get called on, it's like a symbol that they're not paying attention, they're not doing what they're supposed to be doing. So, and then they get freaked out, because they're so used to just the teacher speaking, and they're required, and they sit there, and they learn, and it takes time for them to understand how we handle our culture and the way that they have theirs, and have that melting pot of culture, that eventually a classroom will become. But when you have a new student, you have to have, you have to have that understanding, so you know barriers you're gonna be overcoming, or melding with, in a way. - Yeah. Well, especially when that culture is in the classroom, but they're also having the other culture that is continuing at home. So even though you're allowed to speak out without either raising your hand or with raising your hand, bringing attention to yourself versus at home, you're still in that potentially that classroom mentality where quiet listening, speak when you're spoken to, something like that, yeah, it's hard. So anyway, but yeah, I think that, I guess, to sort of close everything up, I think that having an intentional plan in place to meet each section of the trust model, we're able to be more responsive to the class overall, but specifically to the EL students, the multilingual students, along with any of those students who are underserved, and it's really prevalent when it comes to assessment. And unfortunately, I'm gonna bring in standardized testing here, not being equitable towards multilingual learners because of cultural differences. So word problems, talking about things that aren't relevant or don't make sense to students from the cultures other than the US. And then that brings in the importance of teaching, again, those idioms or the turn of phrase, but these things honestly shouldn't even be in standardized tests. - No. - And then along with language and translation, there are a lot of things that make sense in rhyme, so I think about music, where it's rhyming in English, but when you transfer it over to another language, there's absolutely no rhyme, because the words are completely different, so there's no accuracy there. Off of that, formative assessment within the classroom can be a lot more easily coupled and differentiated than a standardized test, because when you're specifically learning your own students and their strengths and things that they need to work on throughout the year, as well as already knowing their background and their culture, you're able to tap into those funds of knowledge to utilize them, whether it be on tests or just for the entire classroom. And then you're involving them in that decision making and you're providing activities and assignments that incite that critical thinking that relates to them. And that helps them build that knowledge and understand what would be on those future summative assessments. But then it also allows them the sense of agency and you're able to, again, step back from that teacher, traditional lecture paper, repeat, to do a more student-led classroom. So just by having the trust method before creating your tests or your exit tickets or providing those supports like the sets and starters or the graphic organizers, things like that, as a teacher, you're just able to hone in on the individual needs of the students because of the utilization of that trust model. (upbeat music) - So the area that really popped out to me that we're gonna be exploring a little bit more here in a moment was the benefits of assessment as learning, which was part of this chapter as a whole, but also it really honed in on why we shouldn't necessarily see assessment as a bad thing. It does provide us with the data and if framed in the right way can actually help build students self-efficacy, which was surprising to me because in general, I felt like tests or assessments were always very teacher-centric growing up, but this did a great job of highlighting how you can turn them into a method of learning and a way for students to kind of reclaim their learning in the classroom. (upbeat music) So on page 140, they actually break it down into four huge ways that having assessment reframed as learning really helps students. And the first one is the how it helps develop habits of mind and inquiry. And this made me think about project-based assessments and also just leading units based off of questioning and it can help us build critical thinkers and problem solvers because it's them facing a project and working their way through it and showing their knowledge that way through the whole process. And then having a product at the end versus a multiple choice test where you don't see a long-term goal and there's not that long-term movement throughout it. So if we frame it in that inquiry-based, the students have buy-in from the beginning and work their way through in a similar fashion. We've talked about this a lot in my math class recently, but I've also seen it be executed very well at the high school level for science. A lot of times we would do inquiry-based units and it falls easily into the science category because of how the scientific method works. But really you can have that leading question in a lot of units and in a lot of different areas of study and bring your students through the journey in that way and assess it on a more of a critical thinking lens instead of a answer-giving lens essentially. The next section that they really talked about with self-assessment and assessment as learning was how it helps increase learner autonomy. And so what this talks about is essentially how a huge part that we talk about and go into even further later in the chapter is self-assessment for students and then it's no longer the teacher grading them or at least to the same extent. They can even have it where they get to build the rubric of themselves at the start of the unit and I actually got to witness this at my work not too long ago. They have started a research unit on history and westward expansion and the students are having to do a project on anything that they found interesting they're making their own projects and get to present it in any way they find. And this is at like the fourth grade level and so it was really interesting to see it executed at that age but they got to help build the rubric and they included things like quality work and grammar and precision and sources like on their own. Like those were things they decided to add to the rubric without the teacher prompting which made me think she's probably been doing this co-creation rubric outline concepts since the start of the school year and they kind of looked at what is necessary. - Well, that's really impressive. - Yeah. - They are, she has to have had a discussion with them about what those mean and the importance of them otherwise they wouldn't be putting that on there. So I think that's really impressive. - Yeah, it was really cool. We're especially where she's emphasized we are now correcting grammar and like how to do these certain things so they've picked up oh I need to be doing this so it should be something that should be looked at. Right, that makes sense. - And the importance factor, which one, what is, what do you think is the most important within this assignment? - Yeah, and grammar was seen within the realm of precision like they talked about being specific and the grammar needing to be specific and like a whole little section about that and kind of the detail oriented look at it. But the other parts was it doesn't answer my question is there some sort of visual like right now some of them are making totem pole, some of them are building wagons, some of them are baking things at home and bringing them in because they can't eat them because of different rules at that district but bringing in different baked goods, different like presentations on clothing. And it's been really interesting to see how although they are so different you can assess them pretty similarly based off of the rubric that they'd like to make themselves. It's a very self-directed activity that they are just loving. And that kind of tied into the next benefit that they talked about, which is advancing intrinsic motivation. And we talked about this a lot in Gisela's class in the fall and about how much more successful students are when they have that personal buy-in and they are intrinsically motivated instead of extrinsically motivated. So if they are very mindful of their learning and mindful of their growth and seeing their assessment as a product of that learning, it's a lot easier for them to want to excel and want to do great and work with their strengths versus feeling in that deficit mindset that they can come along with traditional standardized testing. And we've even talked about in Gisela's class how much more quickly students who were intrinsically motivated learned language compared to those who end up as long-term emails and how something that happens along the way with becoming long-term is this, sometimes this loss of intrinsic motivation and how important that is to bring both academically and from a linguistic acquisition sense. - And when they're creating this rubric, they're actually choosing what they want to learn and then they're not what they want to learn but what they want to actually show their learning and how they're gonna show that learning in a way that it's beneficial for them as well as for the teacher to be like, "You get it." "You get this, you get this, you get this." And let me see the rubric that you created so I can then help you where are you at and how can I help you move to that next step even though it's still an assessment, it's still a way for a teacher to look at and say, "Okay, this is where you are, it's wonderful." Now what's that next step? How can we make this even more? And a lot of that discourse of other students have been like, "Oh, you're doing the set on pull, I'm doing this, how can we combine our knowledge?" How can we, how can my knowledge help you and your knowledge help me? - Definitely. And two of my major issues when I first not issues with major like areas where I had questions for this teacher when she presented this assignment to me one was time 'cause if students are just once they have the rubric built, if they're looking at it and see those as their checkboxes and they just go through and reach their target, what are they gonna do at the end of it if other students are super invested or taking something that takes longer time? But how she's letting them do it is for these chunks of time. Once you're done with one project, we just move along dance during another research question that they form and they're just doing another project and they just keep going. with it and the idea is to just like be engaged with material that entire time. Yeah, like continuation of learning. And do they are they related? So like from one to the next when she asks another question, are they is it interconnected or is it just completely separate? It's all around like a lot of them are honing in on the organ trail but it's all around westward expansion in general. She gave them a few a few prompts like a few ideas but a lot of it is based off of what they decide. So one kid had started off with the totem pole idea and then realized that too many kids were doing it so they kind of wrapped that up and did it but not super in depth and now the student is looking a lot more into masks and specifically within the specific northwest, how those looked at that time period. My one other major concern when I first was thinking about this project or how I would execute this in my own future classroom was from a social economic status of if some kids are coming in with all of these supplies and your providing certain supplies, what is that going to look like as far as some students being able to produce just these brilliant projects while others should have limited resources and limited support at home. But what's been really interesting is because there's this openness kids kids are more aware than we think of what resources they do or not do or do not have and what strengths they do or do not have and so it's been really interesting to see how they hone in on their interest and then find a way to apply it with what they what resources they have and then they're using that rubric to create a because like if they had that rubric they're able to decide okay well I only can do this but this is going to be really great and so I'm going to do this but this is the only resources I have for it and the one thing that I love now that we live in an age of technology they could take everything virtually yes we do which students are doing that which that opens up wonderful you could make a 3D model or all types of things on the computer which then it's already provided by the district so it's not that that it kind of helps with that social economic status yeah even though those go on oh no um I was just going to kind of piggyback off of you talking about not only the rubric and the resources but that intrinsic want to learn is they're creating things that are probably potentially harder on themselves than what the teacher would do oh 100 oh yeah look at what we're doing right now something crazy and we're doing right now we're creating a podcast I mean you said a 3D model like yeah but I could imagine like a fourth grader being like well I'm gonna create a 3D model because you know I'm given the opportunity to do so and their their minds can go so much further when you open up a rubric but also they're creating the rubric so in their mind they're probably leaving these openings to be able to be so much more creative than something that we might make that might stifle that creativity but just like when we started this program I thought we'd be breaking papers the whole entire time doing stuff like that and that's what I thought teaching look like was papers that it was great was filling in the bubbles is what I did like just standardized tests filling in the bubbles spelling tests and just things that are just like standardized tests and now that I've taken these courses and I saw just the reason why we're doing this because Jessica master's sense rubric was so open-ended for multimodal approach that we are able to make it into a podcast and this is harder than the 500 pages that 500 words that we could have just written and turned in isn't more beneficial already getting so much more of it hey yes a thousand percent oh my god yes but it's hard it is harder but we're getting so much more and if we apply that to our younger students they can store even more yeah and we do have a few students who are making pamphlets or making something that's a little bit more traditional but they super enjoy it and they're super detail-oriented I have one student who is usually pretty apathetic towards some assignments but on this one they're they're using Google sites to make their own website all about Western expansion and they're like nice they look at that so traditional and boring no that's amazing that's nice okay oh my god okay and I was checking in with this student because like they seemed a little bit detached or like they were a little distracted so I checked in with them on what they were doing and they were making a hard tack that was what they were going to do is they have research recipes and we're going to make hardtack at home right and so I was talking with them and I'm like oh yeah can you show me your sources like show me how this is research based and what you're going to do to present this to them because we we had established that the other students can't eat the food that you bring it right and so they showed me this huge document with all the different researchers how they had looked on numerous different cooking sites and different things to find one that had all the ingredients that they had access to at home and when I was asking them to show all this stuff to me the kid was also like yeah well I live I live in a trailer park and I don't have access to this thing or this thing that so-and-so is doing but the pioneers had to make something out of nothing and I have all of these things at home it's so she made she made it and then I come in the following week and there was the hard tack and there's a vlog baggy to show me and turns out they'd go on their dad to like run over the hard tack and hardtack didn't break oh it was that hard yeah and so it was a really really immersive really cool way to see how families were getting involved outside of it at every level it was very much a low floor high ceiling activity and that's exactly what this reminded me of in the book so I super resonated with this section your teachers killing it your teachers killing it right so as everyone's talked about different parts of this chapter Jamie started with the trust model and how just really getting to know your students so you can actually assess them and then how NFL talked about how we're actually assessing them making it very student-led making it very open-ended multimodal for the student autonomy and the student itself efficacy and what I wanted to really touch on and what really resonated with me is how are we evaluating these assessments and so I'm going to speak about the reflection part so I'm going to say these questions real quick and then I will talk about it the first question was assessment as a learning practice was most valuable to me as a teacher or teacher leader and which practices do I believe are most adventurous for my students as a grade level or department team how might I think about creating a survey to glean information on students personal interests and learning styles so on page 142 in our book that talks about ways that we as teachers can make learning intrinsic like you were talking about in a bow and the ways you do that is devise ways of expanding students learning so as you were talking about how they are creating these projects and then they are like what are they doing afterwards like Jamie asked they have other questions so it's devising ways to expanding their students learning they finished their project like hey now what do I do the teachers is like okay well let's think about this here's this question a ponder here's this thought to ponder here's this scenario to ponder and then taking all of their learning all of their projects and then finding ways to devise a way to then have students lead their conferences for their parents so and a way to do that learn back up a little bit so planning their conferences fostering students accountability for learning and sharing learning with others are primary goals of having students take a lead in preparing and leading conferences either with teachers or family members so having them say okay this is what I've learned this is my summative so I'm creating this huge project and now I've created all of these projects and I want to show it to someone whether they have the ability to have family members come or have the teachers come but this process it isn't easy as I'm going to create all this stuff and I'm going to then go and give it to my parents or I'm going to give it to the teacher there has to be a lot of potential planning because the time for prepping is invaluable this comes in with the students role playing a conference this is where students are coming together and having that discourse with each other about this is what I'm going to show my family what are you going to show your family and having that discourse of like oh well that's really wonderful but didn't you do this that maybe this may be a little bit different because you only have such like what 30 minutes to 45 minutes for it's it's really sure it's really a snippet of time and it's to all student led so the teachers are giving their thoughts but they're really taking that back seat and be like okay yeah you did learn that and remember you did learn this too like helping moderate but it's all student lamb they're creating they're like you create a side show or create a book or to reel it into my last one is creating a portfolio of their learning so they are creating a portfolio of their yearly learning or even there's some teachers do it semesterly some people do it quarterly some do it once a year it depends on what is what your district is really from what their guidelines are per se I would do it quarterly because what you learned at the beginning of the year channel and it presents at the end of the year can be hard but creating these portfolios really helps a way of like pictures of their products explanations of their products stuff that they're doing intentionally through the year to say this is my portfolio this is what I've learned in second grade this year I learned about the plants growing I learned that i've i've where to add more fertilizer, what happens to the plant if I X, Y, and Z, trying to create a portfolio for my head is not going to work really well, but so it often works. It says that portfolios contain representation of students' original work products often with a letter and a reflection of their learning and their immediate goals. So it has that rubric that you were talking about. It has the product itself. It has what their intentions were and what they gleaned from it afterwards, which is what we as teachers are assessing on. So the work is kind of done for us in a way that is extremely beneficial for us in the students. And they're probably, again, being harder on those than we would be on, like, oh, you did do that. And we've done a lot of prep work for that, not necessarily easy checking off, but we know as teachers going through all of this, where they are, where they're going because we've done a lot of form of assessments and some of assessments. But it's a way for them to say, I did that. This is what I did. I'm proud of what I did. And I thought about all this myself. I did all the research myself. I created this stuff myself. I may have had scaffolded learning and scaffolded since it's frames and graphic organizers, but this is what I did. And I'm proud of it. And what way, what amazing way is that for us to present that to the families? And I love that you said quarterly, because imagine building yourself up throughout the year, rather than just, I don't know, just not getting any feedback through an entire year of school and not being able to be proud of yourself or show the teacher what you're proud of until the end of the year with this huge, summative thing that is probably going to create more stress than it is happiness plus you're reflecting on your learning and saying, how can I move forward from this? How can I learn more? How can I push myself further? And if you were to do, if you do it quarterly, you could say, these are my goals for the next quarter. These are my goals. And the teacher who is currently there can be, can keep those students accountable for their goals, because if you created goals at the end of the year, you have no idea if the next teacher is going to help them keep accountable or what their intentions are, portfolios are, whatever you may have it, may happen. And like how when children make up their own rules for the classroom, you can say, you created this rule. So you should be following this rule. This is what you did, and it's their goals that they created. So you say, this is what you wanted to do. It wasn't me saying you have to do this. This is what you wanted to do, and this is how you thought that you could move forward. So that's, again, more intrinsic than it is, hey, I'm giving you these things that you have to do. And what I love so much about this being for ELLs is that students have multiple ways of trying to get all this information on there. They are the ones taking the photos. They're the ones either typing or recording, depending on where you are. They may be using their first language, and you may not know a lot of what they're saying, but they're family as well, or the interpreter that you have at those conferences as well. And so you can, that you still have a way of assessing, but it's still, it's been put all in their, all in their field for them to create whatever they feel like creating. And I think that's just wonderful. Well, and you like, I threw out ed tech in there, but the fact is, is there, they're becoming a digital citizen by doing this. So there's some more common core state standards that are being, just by them being able to do something like record a video or whatever it may be. Yeah, it's just, I can think of a bazillion ways you can create it, you can create a portfolio, you can do it online, you can do it even the 3D, like the 3D fold of, yeah, the trifle, that's the one I'm looking for. A poster board. You do poster board, you can even do, if you were really, if you wanted to do a storytelling in a way, I'm just like show pitchers or like create an art project if you're comic book or comic book. And you, there's plenty of ways that it can be integrated for, to meet with a child once or a student. We go into what we're learning right now, like the fine arts music. Yeah. Ting. Like, can you imagine them like, like, dramatizing? Oh, my goodness. Or a chart for the, yeah. Turbo team. It's kind of dance. Here's this picture. I'm doing it for the dance board. I don't know. But it could be, it could be. And what I love about what you mentioned, Thomas, is all of this is so immersive, but it can all be done within the classroom because as we know, there's so many administrative hoops to jump through as far as making anything school-wide. And we hear about project-based schools. I know out in campus, they have a few going. And that mindset and that thought is all stuff that you can implement at a smaller level within your own classroom. It's about our mindset. And I think it would be really amazing because when you think back on your, like, my own schooling experiences, the ones that like stuck with me were definitely those projects. Definitely the things where you were personally invested and it was your learning. But who doesn't have, if you do have personally mine got burned down. But who doesn't have art, if there was that portfolio given to a parent who doesn't have that, you get to reflect that on that for years to come. So whether or not school, like, it's school-wide, that into the year, portfolio is going home. It gets to be with the family and or and the student, like, this is what I did. It's like, great. And I rocked it. My mom still has her English portfolio from her junior year of high school. And it was right around the same time that she met my dad. So there are entries of her talking about meeting my dad in there that we still have. It's so cool. I have the portfolio from when I was a senior in high school. And that you have to do the senior portfolio for the senior project. And that this was 12 years ago, 13 years ago, but we had to create a, and I still have it. I still have all that work. And I reflect back on to him, like, this is why I went to chill. This is why I was a teacher. And this is why I love kids. And like, it kind of, it all makes sense and it was just wonderful. So applying that and all of this into just teaching, it just, it feels like it could be so seamless. And it makes me think of Irina and when she shared all of her EL, like her writing from the beginning, when she first came into the program. And then when she exited the program and the difference between the work product and how proud she was even, how I don't know how old she was and how long ago it was. But I mean, years afterwards, she kept that and was like, look at this. Look what I did. And I was in this program. I think that was just so tangible for me to see an EL student who had started at whatever level she was at and had exited out of the program and how proud she was of that still to this day. I was like, ah, snaps. And one thing that I would like to stress about this, it can work for any age as young as toddlers, yes, with more scaffolding, of course, and you're taking pictures and you're putting it in there and doing all this stuff all the way up to where we are now because we're creating, we're going to create portfolios for our teaching. It can go to any, any student and it's so, it's so applicable across all the ages. And I can see kindergartners doing this, I could see middle schoolers doing this. As long as we start from where Jamie was talking about where it comes to trust and then moving to where it's self directed, they have this thought about what they want to learn. But they're creating all, they're researching, they're gaining all the knowledge of course with this teacher's health. They're going to give, like, it's a lot of our teachers going to have to give resources and stuff and give them right along the right track. And then taking it to a portfolio where they present it in a student-like conference. It's just my boy. Anyone can do it. I think all the students can do it even a kindergarten. I learned about this and I'm flipping through the book and just talking about what I learned and how I learned it. It's just wonderful. Or what I was thinking, I literally said it and that's what I was trying to remember what I was going to say is when Annabella and I were talking earlier, we were talking about how so many things are done in preschool that are like so far ahead of what people are doing in elementary school. I feel like that was that basis of having the portfolio showing each individual milestone doesn't seem like you would be doing that for a toddler, but guess what, they're learning fine motor skills, they're learning gross motor skills. The fact that you can hop up and down on this little bouncy hippo is a huge milestone and it's a gross motor skill. And I was like, these are the things that we were doing in preschool and beforehand early childhood education that should be implemented in elementary education and we don't think about that. But it's prevalent for literally infants and adults and I really think that has to come down with the standards because in preschool, it's all like if you were to do a teaching strategy school, they have a list of standards all the way from birth, all the way to third grade and it's a continuum of learning and then you know where they're going to go or where they start and where they're supposed to be, where their grade band is and it's continuum and what's really great about it, it's in one place and it has examples and it all builds off of each other. Each section, it goes from math, fine motor, gross motor, cognitive, social emotional and takes each one of those, there's like 31 different standards in there and they're all broken down their subcategories too and they're just wonderful. And you create a portfolio based on that if our standards were more, each standard was more aligned with each other. And they were actually built as a full uniform. I feel like that would be such a great way to bend actually implement portfolios because we have all these standards are supposed to teach. But there's so many that we could pick and choose which ones because there's only 180 days, 181 days of teaching days of the year that we have to do. And to be able to frame all the standards into it's kind of hard. So if we could cut off some of the ones that are not as or implement integrated or move them around or figure out a way for them all to be integrated would be lovely. Definitely. And I think the standards are huge. And the other thing I was thinking about just from a mindset perspective, especially once you hit middle school, is I feel like some people start to see school as an area to be a student instead of an area to be human. If that makes sense versus in preschool, it's a place to learn and be educated children and they're learning but you're aware of who they are as people versus the further on in schooling. I got and took like until this program on time out middle school high school, it became much more prevalent like you are a number or you are a production, you are you are your brain, not your whole self. You're a statistic. Yeah. That kind of takes me back to where we have like their teacher has 100 and some on students and to be able to like individualize for each one takes time, which they don't got. Which takes energy, which they don't really have. Right. And like well, they have the energy and but the time is the biggest thing they just there. There are too many students per teacher to be able to effectively differentiate and also do wonderful things like this. So maybe if we turned away from as much summative assessment or traditional assessment and more towards our formative assessments in our portfolios as a form of summative. We're focusing more on the portfolio and more on the process and quality over quantity to get us back to seeing our students as well rounded individual. Yes. Yes. That was full thoughts. Yeah, full thoughts. Another EL episode on the books. Thanks again for listening. We have just one more reflection due for this semester. Then we are on summer vacation over the summer we plan to work on our website and will be attending the Lilly conference in North Carolina in August. If we are able to drop some mini episodes before then we will. But if not, we will definitely be reflecting on the conference and all of the amazing things we are able to learn from the experience. So if you don't hear from us over break, we will definitely see you in the fall for season two of Triple I insight into instruction. Thank you for coming along with us on this academic journey. Click that follow button so you can join us next time for more ends and out of education, past, present, and future.