One Year Series

By Mark Heintz

For the 2017-2018 school wrote, I wrote a blog to document what happened in that school year.  I wanted to reflect on my practice and share that reflection with my students, their guardians, and the larger community.   I had two main focuses as I wrote this weekly blog. Two driving questions that I had in my mind while making decisions.  They were:

• How do I know if my students know? 
• How do I get them to know if they know?  

Whether that was a skill or content, I wanted to know if they know it.   I didn't think it was acceptable for me to guess or get a feeling on whether or not they knew it. Getting the students to know if they know it is downright hard, but I was really attempting to get to a point where the students could recognize their understandings or progress on their skill levels and content knowledge.  Therefore, the purpose of this year of reflection was to see how I make progress towards those two goals and elicit feedback from staff, students, and hopefully people who follow along on the journey.

By the Weeks

Week One: Getting to Know Your Students 

Week Two: Contextualization

Week Three: The First Assessment

Week Four: The Thesis

Week Five: Failure

Week Six: Moving On

Week Seven: Final Preparations

Week Eight: Assessments

Week Nine: Same Skills, New Unit

Week Ten: Writing

Week Eleven: Proud

Week Twelve: Learning With Your Students

Week Thirteen: How Do You Know?

Week Fourteen: Assessment Data

Week Fifteen: Do Students Feel the Same As I Do?

Week Sixteen: Student Suggestions

Week Seventeen: All Learners Write

Week Eighteen: Instructional Planning

Week Nineteen: End of the Semester

Week Twenty: Student Perspective

Week Twenty-one: Do Grades Represent Mastery? 

Week Twenty-two: Getting Back to Writing

Week Twenty-three: A Really Positive Message

Week Twenty-four: Student Insight and Workflow

Week Twenty-five: Student Positivity

Week Twenty-six: Transparency

Week Twenty-seven: Student Feedback and Reflection

Week Twenty-eight: Students Plan the Lessons

Week Twenty-nine: Class Lesson Planning

Week Thirty: What Grade Have I Earned?

Week Thirty-one:  Teaching is Getting in the Way of Learning 

Week Thirty-two:  What did Students Learn? 

Week Thirty-three: Student Values

Week Thirty-four: Retrieval Practice

Week Thirty-five: Student Reflection on Reviewing

Week Thirty-six: Grades Part II

Week Thirty-seven: A Year of Blogging