• peer coaching,  Professional Development,  Teacher Reflection

    Asking the right questions – #2

    Empire State Pigeon by ZeroOne CC BY SA A few weeks back I started blogging about the journey that I am on as I evolve from an ‘old-school’ PE teacher into what I believe (and have for some time) is the PE revolution – concept based learning embedded in physical activity.  I am working with some very talented people and this is fuelling my intrinsic desire to be a better teacher, and to learn more from those around me.  I am not an expert, but am enjoying learning more and feeling more fulfilled on this journey. I want to look at the questions and the question progression that I am…

  • apps for academics,  peer coaching,  Professional Development,  Teacher Reflection

    Are we asking our students the right questions?

      Sensitive Noise/obvious 2 by Milos Milosevic CC BY Last year my PE team at YIS got really into deep conversation about how we assess our students.  YIS is an MYP school and so we are required to assess specific criterion and within these criterion we have strands that need to be assessed regularly each semester.  At the crunch times (report writing times…) students were being hit up with many homework assessment items and in the PE and Health department, we were finding students weren’t always coping with what was being asked of them in these weeks. This lead to our decision to stop giving homework to students, unless the…

  • admnistraion,  formative assessment,  MYP,  pegeeks,  Teacher Reflection

    Assessment

    We are having some great discussions at school at the moment around assessment.  It seems that our students are overwhelmed by summative assessment and to be honest so am I.  I have been trialing playing with more formative assessment this year and it is going well, but it still adds up to more marking and time away from feedback and advice in lessons (things slide when I am tired of marking…) but I thought it would generate some more questions.  I pondered whether I needed to offer a ‘large’ piece of assessment to students – could I offer smaller pieces of work over time and forego the summative big piece? …