Final 571 post

I'll take a couple of things from 571 this summer, but primarily I enjoyed working on the synthesis paper assignment. I've been slowly gravitating towards "assessment" as something I want to focus on over the next couple years of my career. This past school year I dramatically altered how I manage my grade book switching to a strict outcome-based format that is centered around a very tight 0-1-2 rubric. Basically every assignment is broken down into several "standards" or "outcomes" and students either earn a 0,1 or 2. It has dramatically altered the behavior of a large percentage of students for the positive .. and is easily the one strategy I've implemented that had the largest impact.

For this reason I was eager to further my understanding of some of the latest "assessement" applications during my work on the synthesis paper. I really like the Caret site and ended up using it quite a bit for my 581 and 575 sections as well this summer.

Well .. I guess that's it for 571. I have some minor revisions to make, but other than that I think the "hay is in the barn" as my dad would say.

Good luck to all of you!

pc