One of the trickiest things is to figure out what to do when students struggle on an assessment, especially when mandates require you to forge ahead with the pacing of the curriculum. Here are my best approaches. www.edutopia.org/article/supp...

Oral assessment is such an important piece of an assessment system that is often overlooked. Here's how I used it in my classroom: www.edutopia.org/article/bene...

I guess this is proof of life. I’m still around, but my wife and I are taking a leave of absence from our jobs to travel and explore. Still doing lots of writing and still excited to return to education, but holy smokes, the world is incredible and so worth protecting.

I love the visual element of these rubrics. I could really see using the bar chart being useful to help students see growth towards learning outcomes for a unit or term. I used a table for mine, but the added visual element is great. www.edutopia.org/article/repr...

Really appreciated the simplicity and clarity of @beckykeene.com asking this question of her students: “Does this use of AI limit my learning?” Focuses students back on learning without being overly judgmental or placing a morality value on AI.

Expecting every teacher to teach the same thing at the same time is not an effective method to ensure that every student learns what they need to learn. Assessment literacy and design > adhering to curricula This burden only falls on the teacher's shoulders when a district drops the ball.

If you all thought my bird obsession didn’t extend to the classroom, think again. The secret’s out with my attention-getting strategy in this article.

I used to take this all for granted until a torn ACL took it away from me for a season. I am so grateful to be able to be out on the trails and enjoy these views again. (But now looking forward to a couple of days home to work on some projects.)

Before developing these assessment strategies, @mrrablin.bsky.social “felt like I was getting information about what my students needed and then simply ignoring it as I forged ahead with the curriculum.” Now, he can effectively address students’ needs—and increase learning. 💫 #assessment #EduSky

What if you could give an assessment, use the results to design differentiated learning experiences to catch students up, *and* still manage to keep up with pacing requirements? 💯 These are some of the most effective ways @mrrablin.bsky.social has found to do all 3 things at the same time. #EduSky

An important reminder-to-self going into the new school year: just because students have 1-to-1 devices doesn't mean they have to be on them during your class period every day. Prioritize learning and community, even if it means setting technology to the side.

Three hours of photos in ten seconds from my campsite last night.

So, I had the most adorable morning in the mountains.

So your students struggled on an assessment. What’s next? @mrrablin.bsky.social shares strategies to help you address student misconceptions uncovered by an assessment *and* redesign assessments so students have more time to learn about the concept they’re struggling with. 🌟 #assessment #EduSky

Instructional coach @mrrablin.bsky.social shows teachers how to begin with standards-based grading, breaking the work down with practical, usable strategies. 💯 #assessment #EduSky

Lovely sunrise the other morning.

Today was a “whoops, got caught on a ridge in a thunderstorm that I didn’t know was coming” kind of hike, but it was still beautiful.

Some books don't just shape us as people—they transform how we show up in our classrooms. Teachers, what book shaped you? #EdChat #EduSky #teachers

How can you make standards-based grading work if you are required to input a certain number of grades per week? Instructional coach @mrrablin.bsky.social can show you! And he should know—he managed it for a decade. 🌟 #assessment #EduSky

New project in the works. Hoping to have a pay-what-you-want course out this summer to support any teacher interested in using learning progressions in their classroom.

— @mrrablin.bsky.social #EduSky #assessment

Skyward’s new grading software is called Qmlative, and like, I get it, but I still hate it that name so much. I feel like someone is stabbing my brain every time I see it.

Someone just commented that they made it to the end of this blog post, and I feel like they deserve a medal. 6,000+ words probably doubled my previous record for longest post, but I just had so much I wanted to capture in this. www.tylerrablin.com/blog/the-ban...

Had to earn every bit of this view, but getting a view of Ranier like this while having the trail all to myself? Definitely worth it. I saw 2,000 feet up in 6 miles and thought nothing of it. Forgot to notice that 700 of those feet are a scramble in the last .4 miles. Ironstone Mountain is no joke.

There’s a reason this is the longest blog post I’ve ever written. So many grading “reforms” are just bandaids (albeit, sometimes necessary bandaids for the short term), but they can detract from the deeper, more meaningful reform that needs to happen (and can have negative side effects over time).

This video captures why grading reform matters so much to me. So many students receive messages of failure, even when they’ve grown and improved, because of they way we average points over time in many systems.

The mountains threw all kind of weather at me this weekend, but if you look for it, there's beauty even on the most adverse of days (namely, when you wake up at 2:30 to hike to a summit only to find clouds).

I am always grateful to get to join in on someone's podcast, but this one was a conversation I especially enjoyed. Such tricky topics, and I really appreciated processing them with @marcusluther.bsky.social

"It's the idea that we want students to maintain hope." Throughout this conversation with @mrrablin.bsky.social I was so appreciative of how he talked about grading in a way that balanced nuance and clarity—and were really helpful to bring into my own thinking in the "why" behind grading policies.

There are a lot of "things" within the conversation of grading in schools right now and people sometimes have different thoughts on those things. For example: ✓ minimum grades — 👍 or 👎? ✓ late work penalties — 👍 or 👎? ✓ assessment retakes — 👍 or 👎? ✓ averaging grades — 👍 or 👎? Thoughts, #EduSky?

This conversation is 100% a result of two things: [1] years of following @mrrablin.bsky.social's work and being curious to learn more about his thinking re: grades and [2] this not-long-at-all (*wink wink*) blog post that left me ruminating for days: www.tylerrablin.com/blog/the-ban...

"It's a form of holding students accountable, but it doesn't fix the problem." I'm really excited to share this conversation with @mrrablin.bsky.social tomorrow morning, in which we tackle all sorts of grading topics: minimum grades, averages, retakes, and late penalties Lots to think about! 🤔

Won’t work for everyone, but my kids knew I was a bird nerd. Every Monday we would pick a new bird and learn its call. That was the sound I would use for a call-and-response to quiet my freshmen. The goofiness and the student choice element helped increase buy-in.

Instructional coach @mrrablin.bsky.social shares strategies that make formative assessment *even more effective*, especially in promoting students’ metacognition, ownership over learning, and self-efficacy. 📝 🙌 #assessment #EduSky

Got to sit down with @marcusluther.bsky.social this morning, and I am so excited that we finally got a chance to chat and get to know each other. Such a great guy doing incredible work.

"I asked ChatGPT" "I asked Grok" ok well I asked Gandalf and he said he has not passed through fire and death to bandy crooked words with a witless worm

Late work point deductions never seemed to really help in my class. Want to know what did work for me and my students? This late work contract. Feel free to copy, use, and adapt as needed. docs.google.com/document/d/1...

New blog post: "The Bandaids and Backflips of Surface-level Equitable Grading Practices That Avoid Meaningfully Equitable Grading Reform" In the era where the internet is like, "Don't write long content. No one will read it." Here's a 6300 word blog post. Oops? www.tylerrablin.com/blog/the-ban...

Imagine if I submitted a photo for a contest, and the evaluators were like, "This is a phenomenal photo, but we scrolled back a few years on your Instagram, and because those photos suck, we decided this one isn't as good." Absurd, right? Now, why is that how we calculate student grades then?

I'm almost done with my longest blog post to date that's titled "The Bandaids and Backflips of Surface-level Equitable Grading Practices That Avoid Meaningfully Equitable Grading Reform." I have lots of feelings about this, clearly.

While it was absolutely beautiful to get up into the mountains this weekend, it was a little heartbreaking to see how little snow is up there at this point in the year compared to other years. I barely needed to put spikes on to get up to the ridge line.

The art of teaching is often in taking what is standard practice and looking for ways to make it more effective in the classroom. These are 15 of my favorite ways to tweak common formative assessment techniques to increase student reflection and ownership in the assessment process. #EduSky

Great stuff in here including TEMPLATES!!!!!!! Thanks @mrrablin.bsky.social www.edutopia.org/article/15-f...

There’s not much better in my opinion than a mountain sunset with the people you love and a Tupperware of meat and cheese.

I've been reflecting on the questions that have helped me rethink my assessment practices. Here are four of the biggest ones. www.tylerrablin.com/blog/four-qu...

One of my favorite moments from my time in the Tetons last week. This sunset was incredible.

I promise I will get back to educational content eventually, but right now my heart and brain are still in the Tetons taking photos.

Today was one of those experiences that make you think, “Maybe magic does exist.”

Took a couple personal days to escape into the Tetons before things get too busy in national parks. These are from the first night.

"In essence, self-efficacy involves intentionally providing students with evidence of early success to help them build the belief that they can be successful in the future." @mrrablin.bsky.social via @edutopia.org www.edutopia.org/article/boos...