 What's scary in teaching is we don't want to look like we're just jumping on a bandwagon, right? But assessment isn't that, formative assessment isn't that. But you know, we all have colleagues who jump on one bandwagon and then they jump on another bandwagon and I think what I'd like to say for us, for all of us who are leaders who are going back to our districts to support the earners on our teams, is that all of these things that we're talking about here, the formative assessment piece, what I'm really interested in is how it's all connecting together. That's how I'm going to justify my existence, is by thinking, okay, how does it all connect? But these other big pieces that are the underpinnings of this work. You've got to honor those people who are reluctant to jump on it because they think it's a bandwagon. We're all at different places on our learning journey and people who take their time before jumping into something new are really valuable to us on our staffs and on our teams as well. So I think a lot about how assessment is that bridge between teaching and learning. I love this quote from Dylan Williams and I'm really loving bridge metaphors and bridge pictures. So I'd like you to think about that and where are you on that bridge and how is assessment a bridge between teaching and learning? And I'd like to say that assessment for learning is evidence-based practice. Holy moly, well it's like the fitness thing, how much evidence is there that we should exercise more and eat better? There's tons of research evidence. Reformative assessment is like that too. If we want to think about evidence-based practice in supporting our learners and moving forward, the research evidence is huge. So don't forget that that's a really important piece of all of this. And you've heard it coming up over and over all day today, which I actually didn't know was going to happen, but I should have known because as a team we're all pulling our strengths together into one amazing package. This is the one I'm reading a lot lately. Has anybody seen this? It's the Atkinson Fellowship in Public Policy and it's where a journalist will be given a get receive a fellowship to explore an area of interest to them. And this whole document has all these different explorations of the connections between neuroscience and education. This is what I love as she talked about. The basic ingredients of a neuroscience-informed classroom. So that's not a brain-based classroom, that's a neuroscience-informed classroom. Children and the teacher on a voyage of discovery together, how great is that? The joy is palpable. The children are often moving. An emotion, the child, and the teachers is openly acknowledged as part of the learning process. That's really exciting. Well, I have to say that assessment for learning is social-emotional learning. So when is assessment for learning a social-emotional learning? When we create a community of learners environment where you're saying we're all different in this place, but we're also a community and we are doing things differently in different ways. And we all move in different speeds and in different ways, but we're all here and we're all learning together. When the classroom is a feeling place where we can acknowledge that we have strengths and we have struggles. When we approach learning in all communication with an open heart, we need to, Susan Leslie, for that language about having an open heart, and that you bring it to all of your learning together. And when we start from, I can. And when we teach learners how to self and peer-assess in a kind and respectful environment, we need to teach our learners how to self-assess, how to assess themselves kindly, and how to peer-assess in kind ways. These are when, oh, one more. And when we offer feedback that moves learning forward, we're learning an environment that connects to social-emotional learning when we do those things. Formative assessment, assessment for learning is self-regulated learning. And it is when we support and teach medic cognition. When we support task interpretation like Deb was talking about earlier, learning intentions are a powerful vehicle for that. Why are we doing this? What are we doing? What's the point of the task when we bring our students into that process when we are teaching self-regulation? When our learners learn how to self-assess, self-monitor, when we allow them to ask questions, when we ask them to explain their thinking, and when they get to make choices, we are creating environments that help teach self-regulation. Assessment for learning supports Aboriginal education as well when we focus on the gifts that each child brings. When we allow our learners to express their understanding of who they are as learners, and when we ask our learners to support each other. So when we create those pieces of belonging for all of our learners. This is one of my favorite principles of learning from Lorna Williams. Achkal is sort of how you pronounce it, I'm working on that. How teachers help us to locate the infinite capacity we all have as learners. What an amazing thing to think about. So when we're not when we control it, but when we release that infinite capacity, and as teachers we support children in developing their gifts. So what are some of the ways we can support our teams in getting started if they're still way over there and trying to pretend that it doesn't exist? Look at the six big AFL strategies again, they're still really relevant and important. Using the performance standards, listening to your learners, and accessing the support and resources that are available. So you've seen this before? I think you've seen this before. And this version is from Carol Walters and the great work they're doing in the Comox district. What's exciting about this is these six strategies of formative assessment have been around for a while. And what research has shown is that even if teachers just take one, just take one and start working on it, all the rest will come along. And I have colleagues who spent the whole first year of this journey just working on learning intentions. And it's so powerful what it does to your practice when you convey to your learners what this is about for their learning and why. For example, and you've seen these come up over and over today, feedback criteria, assessment and ownership. Another way in, let's support our teams to get comfortable with the performance standards. These are a really wise and important piece of work that exists in BC. It's envied all over the world. We've got to start using them. And what I really hope we're going to begin doing is using them more formatively. So let's not worry at the beginning of the year about what descriptors are along the top. How can we use the performance standards to support us in describing what's going on for our learners, describing reading behaviors, figuring out where they are and then using these to help us to decide what the next steps are. And in our team in Gold River, we made some progress with that. I was going to ask Dana to tell us just a teeny bit about what she did and where she came to with performance standards. Okay, Dana? So we were having our meeting in May and I was trying to figure out if my student met expectations or not and what I typically use for assessment was PM benchmarks and so when I was thinking about where she landed with the benchmarks I was thinking, well, yeah, she meets expectations. But some of her behaviors just made me unsure. I was thinking about, you know, was she really comprehending? Was she telling me what she thought I wanted to hear? And then Paige said, well, have you looked at the reading performance standards? And it was kind of an aha moment for me. I actually, I think I said out loud, duh, because I've always, I use the writing performance standards and I use the social responsibility ones. I was so focused on using the PM benchmarks I hadn't thought to look at the reading performance standards. And so that really was an aha moment for me. Thanks, Dana. Thank you for being brave. That was a really fun moment and Dana said, that's what I'm going to add into my practice next year. So, you know, the performance standards aren't just about measuring and you probably can figure out what this is about. You can weigh it all you want, but what are you doing to help it to grow? So, think of the performance standards as a tool for that. I love what Comox has done with this, the start coming along, that's it, wow. Isn't that great? And they've got some great tools like this on their website. I'm going to ask your learners what's going on and listen to them. Access the resources that are available to you and I'm pointing you to this district, I mean this district's website because there's some amazing resources including some lessons that show you how to weave formative assessment practice into your lessons. And what I've noticed also, well Carol just sent this to me. I didn't have the most reason for it. Look at this, it's changed. What's that about Carol? Well you can tell from this graphic compared to the other one that it has changed. We've got arrows in there and that's because as we, as teachers crunch these formative assessment strategies, we're learning and one of the things that we've learned or several things that we've learned is that we always seem to start with clear learning intentions and we thought, you know, well wait a second, those are our thoughts about what needs to happen next. And so we switched it around and we put co-constructed criteria at the beginning and we thought, you know, we really need to hear what the kids know and what they don't know. And as soon as we wove that into our practice, that impact impacted our next step. And I think there's even a newer graphic that we've added self-regulation in that bottom spot. We used to think there were six strategies, the formative assessment. Now we really think that there are five and what we get when we hand these strategies over to kids is we get their engagement, their ownership, motivation, their ability to write meaningful goal statements and their ability to self-regulate in the classroom. But it really takes handing it over to the kids. We can't crunch it ourselves. Nice, that's a really important piece of that. Thank you Carol. So I just want you to think about if assessment is a bridge between teaching and learning, where are you on this bridge and where are your kids? Are you still sending them all in one direction or are we all in this journey together? And bridges can look different and I love these bridges in India where they're built together over generations. And these bridges eventually span waterways. Sometimes the person who starts building that bridge is no longer alive by the time you can actually cross the bridge but those bridges are being created together. One more thing I want to say is this is an amazing image that was shared with me by Bill Helene and Strong Nations Publishing. You've hopefully introduced yourself to outside and this just really represents for me how we're all in this together and how it's all connected and we're pulling together in this journey with our whole diversity of strengths and approaches and our passions. Thank you very much.