Carrying Out the GAME Plan

• Goal: Increase student innovation by providing choices in formative assessment situations.
• Action: Develop 3 rubrics for assessment of student mastery, to foster creative solutions while maintaining the integrity of department-wide assessments.
• Monitoring: Success will be marked by an increase in non-traditional student work on assessments. Such work may be different in format from the traditional paper tests that students may see in high school math, but the students will still demonstrate mastery of the same State of Michigan mathematics standards.
• Evaluation: Quantitative data can be collected from State MME/ACT scores from successive years to determine if State standards trend upwards, downwards, or remain unchanged.

Resources Needed: Time! In order to develop effective rubrics, it is necessary to have the time to thoughtfully craft rubrics that are flexible enough to allow for student choice, but also specific enough to accurately describe what high quality products look like. Possible other resources include investigations into the multimedia resources available to students during school hours, and availability of computer labs and other creative spaces after school.

Information Needed: What are the constraints on our departmental "common assessments?" What measures of mastery are sufficient to satisfy State of Michigan standards?

Steps so Far: My previous work in teaching Digital Video Projects has provided a solid foundation for developing rubrics that allow for student creativity within the confines of particular requirements. My recent efforts have revamped existing rubrics to mathematical situations, and have provided measures of "mastered", "developing", and "emergent" proficiency in various skill areas.

• Goal: Increase students’ ability to drive their own learning experience through the use of technology.
• Action: Modify existing classroom methods for student self-reflection so as to include technological enhancements. Some modifications may simply be to go “paperless” with some forms. However, new activities such as developing a video log of learning, maintaining a wiki site for shared classroom knowledge, or other student-created options are more likely.
• Monitoring: Successful implementation will include an increase in the number of student-generated personal reflections on their learning.
• Evaluation: Much of the long-term impact of such reflection will not be fully realized until much later. In all likelihood, the true effects will not be seen except for those few anecdotes from students as they make their way in the world. Our global market has caused a great demand for students to be able to self-monitor, self-assess, and create new pathways based on their analysis.

Resources Needed: In order to fully allow for students to apply technological solutions to problems, I need ready access to computer resources. I currently have two computers available for student use in my classroom, and hope to add four more computers. This will allow for more simultaneous use by individuals or groups.

Information Needed: How can student use of personal electronics for academic purposes be made compatible with currently restrictive school policies? What changes could be considered to policies to allow for appropriate use of personal technology?

Steps so Far: Initial efforts to increase the amount of personal reflection have been low-tech or no-tech in nature. Students are writing in personal logs about their successes and failures after each quiz. Over the course of a chapter, each student generates a quiz log that describes the specifics of the skills they have mastered, the places they made mistakes, and the steps needed to fix those errors.