My school has had many more snow days this year than last year...we're already up to 4...and more are predicted. My colleague and I took advantage of the recent ones, since teachers are still required to work, and re-vamped our Algebra One curriculum and assessment scheme. After a discussion prompted by Sean 's blogpost about failure, and a discussion about homework and assessments in general, I gave her a list of required reading (basically, things I have read over the past year to give her the same background knowledge that I have coming into any conversation about these topics). After she read through the blogs (and did some exploring on her own, too, I think), we sat down and talked about Standards Based Grading. I also brought to the table these Algebra 1 concept list s (courtesy of Dan Greene ). By the end of two days, we decided to implement the concept/skill based assessment program, while still continuing cumulative testing. We will call the cumulative tes...
a "hands-on" approach to teaching mathematics