Entry #12

Hello again!

I have so much to tell you all! Okay, so I last week I had the privilege of attending the Nova Scotia Examinations English 10 Scoring Session with the Student Assessment and Evaluation division of the Nova Scotia Department of Education and Early Childhood Development. Basically, I got paid to spend 4 days in Halifax (for free) to mark the Grade 10 exam, and because I've had lots of questions about it from friends and family, I thought it would useful to share my experience with you all (especially you teacher types out there - this is a great opportunity for you!).
First, let me just say that when I applied to join the marking session, I didn't think I'd get accepted. I mean, I hoped I would of course - I knew that I would learn a lot if I got to go and that I'd meet lots of interesting people - but I also knew that, being a pre-service teacher who doesn't have a ton of assessment experience probably wouldn't make me a prime candidate. So, when I did get the email telling me that I was good to go, I was thrilled, nervous because I still wasn't sure I was qualified, but still very excited.
The session started on July 23rd at 9am. The room was filled with circle tables and chairs - half of the room marked the Persuasive Essay section of the exam, and my side of the room marked the Reading Response section. My table included me and 6 other teachers, all of which were very friendly and welcoming - they were surprised that there weren't more student-teachers there, because of what a great opportunity it was to learn about assessment and student work. My nervousness faded quickly - it was hard to be nervous when the people I met at every turn were full of smiles.  We spent that entire morning training, which meant we discussed and practiced using the Scoring Rubric and Scoring Guide. 

The Scoring Rubric used during the marking session. I was scoring the "Reading Response" section of the exam, while others scored the "Persuasive Essay" section, which used a different rubric.

As you can see in the picture above, my copy of the rubric has a lot of notes on it. My nerves were calmed already, having met so many friendly people so soon in the week, but the training session made me feel more confident in my ability to mark, which was a different feeling entirely. The training we had was incredibly thorough and clear, and though my weird note-taking techniques might make it look complicated, getting to sit down with a table of experienced teachers and really dissect the rubric made marking much easier.
It's like this: as you can see in the rubric, to get a 4 in "Quality of Text Comprehension," the student had to demonstrate a "thorough" understand of the text in their response. But, what does "thorough" mean? To one teacher, thorough might be used as a synonym for clear, but, according to the rubric, a "clear" response should be getting a 3. See, that's why the discussion and Scoring Guide were so informative and valuable - if I was marking something and felt like I wasn't 100% sure how I could apply the rubric to a student's work, I was sitting with 6 other people who knew assessment very well who I could double-check with. The Scoring Guide, a booklet of examples of student work and they way they were scored, was also a great point of reference for figuring out how other papers have been marked, and why they were marked that way.
Once we all got in the groove of marking, I thought that the training was basically over, but we actually maintained a level of training throughout the week. We would, around twice a day, complete what they called a "Calibration Paper," which was a paper that everyone marked, and then discussed with the table. This was done to make sure that, even though everyone was getting a bit tired and cross-eyed after so much marking, we were still following the rubric and marking according to the resources we were given. Similarly, we would also mark was called a "Reliability Paper," which was also a paper that everyone marked, but we didn't discuss the marks. Instead, we passed them in so that the leaders of the session could tally and process them to make sure that the entire room was close in terms of scoring. 

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As a student-teacher, this experience was so valuable. I was really happy to have Erin MacDonald, a fellow StFX Education student and friend there too - it was a comfort to have someone I knew to chat with at lunch about trends in student writing and experiences with the session itself. When I started writing this blog entry, I asked her if she could make a statement about how she experienced the marking session, to which she said:

"I guess if there was anything I could say about the marking session it would be that I talked to many teachers throughout the week that were confident that there was no better PD in terms of assessment, which I guess is what keeps them coming back every summer. Regardless of whatever side of the debate you're on in terms of standardized testing, this type of assessment informs our practice as teachers because we are able to see areas where students are struggling, such as inferring from reading responses. And when you're in the business of creating the outcomes for a subject matter, this information is crucial. I think its also important to stress that we're made well aware of the diverse abilities of all learners and we have a lot of training and support throughout the week to be able to mark those exams fairly. In terms of being a student teacher, there's no better way to gain solid skills in assessment, throughout the week you'll mark around 500 exams and be able to take this rubric into your classroom and use it for every student."

Honestly, I don't think I could have said it any better. I left at the end of the week feeling way more aware of my marking habits (I definitely caught myself wanting to mark too hard, which is something I'll have to work on), and feeling like I would be better prepared for the upcoming school year at X. I feel like as a future English teacher I have a more clear idea of how I should be marking, and how I should be teaching. I hope that writing this blog post will make some of my friends at StFX consider attending next summer's marking sessions (which are for English and Math examinations), and consider it an opportunity to learn more about assessment. I had a great time, and I look forward to going back next summer!
Thank you to Vera Grayson, the Literacy Evaluation Coordinator for the Nova Scotia Department of Education and Early Childhood Development, for permitting me to write my experience during the marking session on this public blog, and thank you to the amazing teachers who put up with all my questions and awkward, not-funny jokes throughout the week - you're all 4s to me!

Until next time!

Savannah MacDonald

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For access to Teacher Resources and the Professional Opportunities page provided by the Nova Scotia Department of Education and Early Childhood Development, please visit this website:
https://plans.ednet.ns.ca/