Communication about academic progress is an important part of learning. Each quarter, teachers share a formal report on student progress in the form of a report card grade. But students and their families do not have to wait several weeks to know what a student is learning about and how they are performing.
Each day, teachers share with their students the learning goals or targets for their lessons. These learning intentions include a description of how the teacher will know that a student has demonstrated mastery of what they are supposed to learn and be able to do as a result of a lesson or series of lessons.
The tasks students engage in to demonstrate their learning may be done for practice (formative assessment) or to provide more formal and conclusive evidence of student learning (summative assessment). Students and their families can see this information online, in ParentVUE, provided by every teacher.
The tasks will be described using a title that attempts to make clear what students were learning. For example, a task would be named something descriptive, such as: Causes of the American Revolution Quiz. Oftentimes times there may be numbers and letters following the title to indicate a specific standard of learning.
With clear communication about what students are expected to know and do, and with clearly described tasks labeled in the online grading reports, we can all work together to continuously improve student learning for each student.