October 18

Our Journey to Student Portfolios

Leaders-of-LearningThe following is a blog post written by Assistant Principal, Grayson Lawrence (@graysonlawrence).  #Exceptional blog and an #exceptional day of learning!

 

Teaching and Learning is alive and well at Winterboro High School. Recently, the teachers collaborated with each other to brainstorm about Student Academy and how we can best serve our students.  Some reading this blog may remember a previous post last year about Student Academy which with our students, strives to serve the following purposes:

  • Student Professional Development
  • Student-engaged assessment
  • Students learn the language of standards
  • Students set academic goals
  • Students monitor progress
  • Students identify patterns of strengths and weakness
  • Students become self-advocates
  • Students access their own work with honesty and accuracy

Students Leading their own learning is something we feel strongly about, and we want to do it in every way possible that is most beneficial to our students. “Student-engaged assessment involves students in understanding and investing in their own growth. It changes the primary role of assessment from evaluating and ranking students to motivating them to learn. It empowers students with the understanding of where they need to go as learners and how to get there. It builds the independence, critical thinking skills, perseverance, and self-reflective understanding students need for college and careers that is required by the Common Core State Standards. And, because student-engaged assessment practices demand reflection, collaboration, and responsibility, they shepherd students toward becoming positive citizens and human beings (Berger, 2014).

imgres-1What better way to help our students lead their own learning than through a school-wide decision to use student portfolios that will usher in this process from the time they enter the door at Winterboro as a 5th grader, and then leave College and Career Ready as a Senior.  We look forward to beginning this process as students take charge of self-monitoring their learning, collecting work samples, developing an online portfolio, tackling the enormous task of reflecting, and holding student conferences utilizing google sites. This is just the beginning, but we anticipate great things to develop throughout our year.

March 6

Data Walk!

The following post is written by Assistant Principal, @GraysonLawrence! He is paving the way in student professional development, called Student Academy!  #Exceptional job Mr. Lawrence!

“Data is not about adding more to your plate. Data is about making sure you have the right thing on your plate.” –Unknown

Growth-1Data can sometimes be a dreaded word as we discuss its relationship to teaching and learning. I must say, this year has been a fantastic year of looking at Data at WHS. Teachers are continually moving kids by creating action plans for their students and developing villages within the school to move students, or as we tend to say “move mountains.” This past Friday the faculty at WHS collaborated to discuss Data Walk Through WHS. We were excited to take pictures of Data displayed in our classrooms. We noticed that data is presented in many unique ways, but more importantly the central purpose is for growth.

IMG_0148Great discussions were cultivated from the mentor text used at the beginning of the chat. One quote that kept stopping us in our tracks was: “As long as we use assessments/data only as a means to rank schools and students, we will miss their most powerful benefits. We all agree that if we only look at data in such a way it can become frustrating. Should we be the only ones controlling and looking at this analysis? Who else can we coach in the process? Although we continually work to improve student data, another quote from our mentor text sparked more conversations. “ The largest untapped source of potential in any school is, undoubtedly, the students.” What better way to motivate student growth by simply taking time, just a little time, each day to discuss data with students, and charge them with the idea of self-monitoring for growth. We are in the very beginning stages of developing Student Academy with our students, and if proper collaboration in this process, great things can happen and even change the culture of monitoring student data in our school.

IMG_0171The purpose of Student Academy is for our students to do the following:

Student Professional Development

Student-engaged assessment

Students learn the language of standards

Students set academic goals

Students monitor progress

Students identify patterns of strengths and weakness

Students become self-advocates

Students access their own work with honesty and accuracy

This discussion is the begging of what will become future planning of how students can use their digital portfolios being created in Student Academy to be used as a central location for self-assessment and data monitoring in each class every day. We are excited to see this develop within our school culture so we continue moving mountains fostering in our students being as #exceptional as they can be.