Tyler Rablin

docs.google.comAssessment Resources and TemplatesCollected Work on Assessment & Grading (with Resources) Created by Tyler Rablin (@Mr_Rablin) If you are on this page, thank you for being willing to rethink assessment and grading. As with all of my ...

14 Nov 2024

I think one of the most important pieces I can bring over from Twitter to start is a collection of assessment resources that everyone is allowed to copy and use, if it's helpful. docs.google.com/document/d/1...

There's a special place in hell for the curriculum developers that go, "Yeah, we can cover every standard in a year. No problem." Now I'm trying to get kids to learn to dive deep in a puddle that's miles wide and millimeters deep. Want to know the most learning that's ever happened in my class? +

When I taught debate. We did the same thing over and over and over and over. We had six learning progressions that we worked on every single time. We used feedback, we reflected on growth, and we saw that improvement. But, I'm supposed to cover every standard once or twice and see...

growth? If a curriculum is covered in a classroom but nobody ever really understood it, did learning ever happen? It's hard to be able to be informed and aware of what students are learning, so most schools settle for being in control of making sure they cover everything. One works. One won't.

The assessment nerd in me is having a field day today. Individual assessments are linked to a spreadsheet that automatically updates a mastery tracker that's linked to a Data Studio report that filters by email so that a student who's logged in can click on the link and see their mastery report.

edutopia.orgPodcast: I Stopped Giving Tests. Here’s What I Do InsteadFive years after banning tests from her classroom, a high school science teacher explains how she tracks student growth and keeps rigor high.

One of the biggest changes I made is when I stopped thinking about giving assessment and started thinking about looking for evidence. Wild mindset shift for me.

Edutopia@edutopia.org

Is it even *school* if there aren’t any graded tests? Short answer: Yes! In the latest episode of School of Practice, we talk with high school teacher Jodie Deinhammer about how she removed high-stakes tests while keeping her class rigorous. Listen and follow on Spotify or Apple Podcasts! 🎧

Tyler Rablin reposted

In this School of Practice, ELA teacher @mrrablin.bsky.social shares some of his favorite classroom management strategies! ⁠ Listen & Follow: https://edut.to/4B0CzMC

Recently I’ve been feeling like the amount of effort I’ve been putting into my teaching just isn’t worth it. Then today I watched a couple of my students with significant learning disabilities absolutely crush reading their narratives to elementary students. Tank refilled, for sure.

Accidentally figured out a cure for the Sunday scaries. It involves a Saturday night in the backcountry and nature saying, “You think that’s scary? Hold my beer,” where your gear gets wet, freezes solid in your tent overnight, and the temp drops into the 20s. Monday’s less frightening now.

Tyler Rablin reposted

From a simple squat to three unexpected magic words, ELA teacher @mrrablin.bsky.social shares classroom management strategies you can try tomorrow! 🎧 Listen & Follow: https://edut.to/4hQnMeP

edutopia.orgPodcast: 9 Simple (But Transformative) Classroom Management ShiftsFrom a quick crouch to three surprising magic words, ELA teacher Tyler Rablin shares his favorite zero-prep moves that can turn a chaotic classroom into a calm one.

This was a more emotional recording for me than I expected. We like to make classroom management sound so straightforward, but the reality is that we are complex beings working with a room of complex beings, and sometimes that’s lovely and other times so very hard. www.edutopia.org/podcast/9-si...

Always a pleasure to get to hop on the mic with @edutopia for another School of Practice episode. This one is all about some tricks I’ve learned that have helped me with my classroom management. www.edutopia.org/podcast/9-si...

Tyler Rablin reposted

Has a power struggle with a student ever derailed a lesson? Or do you have a student you got off on the wrong foot with and aren't sure how to repair the relationship? Listen as @mrrablin.bsky.social breaks down how to shift a chaotic classroom to a calm one: www.edutopia.org/podcast/9-si...

Tyler Rablin reposted

🔎 @mrrablin.bsky.social

tylerrablin.comWhy I, A Former Tech Coach, Am Anti-AI in Classrooms — Tyler Rablin ConsultingAs I head back into the ELA classroom after years off, it seems appropriate to start this post with a little vocab. Cognitive Offloading: A process in which we use an external tool (genAI) as a se...

17 Sept

I've been tiptoeing around it, but it's time to come out and say it: I'm officially against student use of AI in the classroom for learning-related activities. Here's why... www.tylerrablin.com/blog/why-i-a...

I really wish more of the people pushing AI into schools understood the difference between cognitive outsourcing versus cognitive offloading, and more importantly, how our current grading culture makes it nearly impossible for a student to choose the former when the latter's an option. 1/

route to that goal, regardless of whether or not I learn along the way. If we ever want to see AI be used productively in classrooms, we have a lot of work to do first in the realm of shifting the grading culture and cultural expectations of education. 6/

To say that "the power of AI can change learning" without disclaimers is to ignore the neuroscience of learning, grading culture, and wider context of our modern educational system. 7/7

to claim that AI can support student learning ignores the reality of the high-stakes grading culture present in most American schools. Points and grades, which (arguably) were intended to be measures of a goal (learning), have now become the goal in our educational system. 4/

If the goal truly was learning, pushing AI into school MIGHT (big emphasis there) be possible as a way to support student learning. However, if my goal is to accumulate the most points (as opposed to achieve high levels of learning), then our very efficient brain will see AI as the fastest... 5/

For context, cognitive outsourcing is simply letting an AI do all the thinking for you, and cognitive offloading is using AI to support your own active thinking processes. For starters, cognitive offloading is only effective and possible when you have enough... 2/

expertise to be able to critically analyze the AI's outputs. Someone who needs to begin learning a skill does not have the ability to do that, and thus, will naturally slide into cognitive outsourcing because they can't be an active agent. More importantly... 3/

14 Sept

For those who don't know... Chromebooks just have this feature built in. Right click. Search with Google lens. Answer. No thinking needed. 🙄

8 Sept

Nearly ten years later, this is still one of my favorite images I've ever made to demonstrate a concept.

4 Sept

Today I learned my middle schoolers are pretty well versed in the lyrics of “Don’t Stop Believing.” I learned that when an instrumental acoustic version of it came on in the playlist I was using to help us focus for a reading diagnostic. You can imagine how that went.

3 Sept

Today I asked my first period to help me put chairs down and someone asked, "Do we get PBIS points for this?" Which is exactly why I hate PBIS points. As grades are to learning, PBIS points are to behavior. Short term facade of benefits with more concerning long-term consequences.

Tyler Rablin reposted

Monte Syrie

@montesyrie.bsky.social

@adolfoneto.elixiremfoco.com

“Is this for a grade?” “It’s for learning.” My latest response to the age-old question. And the play goes on, my friends. The play goes on.

Tyler Rablin reposted

Adolfo Neto

30 Aug

Why young people hate AI even more?

I know I've been out of the game for a bit, but the ability to do voice, video, and screencast feedback (in addition to the comment bank where you can link resources) is a game-changer. Love it!

Today we are doing one of my favorite group activities. Last night I read through the students' writing and highlighted my favorite sentence in each one. Today, students are sharing their highlighted sentences while their peers guess what I saw in them that was good. 1/

So, I get to sit in a room of students complimenting each other while thinking critically about what makes good writing. Every student – every, single student, including the ones in my inclusion classes – gets to here the good in their writing communicated by their peers. 2/

Sometimes it's great to have positive feedback from a teacher, but I can't understate the power of that same feedback coming from peers. The best part is that no one really even realizes what's happening, but everyone can feel it. 3/3

For those who view the threat of low grades as a motivator: Today for our writing diagnostic, I told students, "If you give it your best effort, you'll get full credit." 8th graders. I figured some would try to toe the line of what was "enough." I figured it would be sloppy work. 1/

When students responded with a "Yes," I didn't have that tinge of guilt that sometimes sits on my chest when a student struggles on an assignment and gets a low score. I didn't feel any sense of hypocrisy in what I was saying versus what I was doing, and I think kids could sense it, too. 5/

I guess, if nothing else, this is my encouragement to you to experiment. Instead of carrots and sticks, see what happens when you wield hope and self-efficacy. How can you make sure students are more focused on a successful outcome than a negative one? 6/6

When a teacher wields grades like a sword, students care more about what the teacher expects than what they can produce. Do what the teacher wants, or else. Don't make a mistake, or else. Don't take a risk, or else. It feels unsafe and unsure. When students feel safe, it changes things. 3/

All accountability isn't a bad thing, but I think we get so afraid of what happens if we loosen the grading reins that we end up holding on too tightly. When I told students they would get full credit for an attempt, I could follow it up with, "Are mistakes a good thing?" 4/

It was the exact opposite. Most kids wrote well beyond the amount I expected, and I was constantly being asked for help in how to spell something, what a paragraph was missing, etc. I think there is an element of psychological safety that we don't discuss enough with grading. 2/

I love making up random things in the classroom that end up working. Today’s was “fist bump or thumbs down.” While students were writing, this was my check-in. A fist bump meant they were doing fine. A thumbs down meant they wanted me to sit with them and help. Lots of celebrations and support.

tyler-rablin-photography.square.siteHome | Tyler Rablin Photo

29 Aug

Saturday hyperfixation turned into making an entire website print store for my photography. ADHD is lovely sometimes. tyler-rablin-photography.square.site

Tyler Rablin reposted

Adam Grant

@adamgrant.bsky.social

28 Aug

AI struggles to make creative leaps. Large language models are trained on data from the past. Original thinking involves recognizing novel patterns in the future. Machines converge; minds diverge. Long live human ingenuity.

29 Aug

Things I learned about middle school today: 1) Bald jokes work super well. 2) Be wary of making too many bald jokes or you will have to agree to bedazzling your bald head if a certain number of students get 4.0s.

28 Aug

To be honest, really didn't expect to have remembered to take attendance every period of my first week teaching middle school, but here we are.

28 Aug

There is a very different version of me that encourages students to write drafts, revise, get feedback, proofread, and then publish… …and then the version of me that hammers out a 1600-word blog post in 30 minutes that I don’t even glance at again before hitting publish and walking away. Oops.

27 Aug

My favorite "engagement strategies": 1. Sitting with a struggling student and asking if they're doing okay. 2. Showing a student where they are being successful. 3. Giving a positive note to a student to let them know I see them. When did engagement get translated into flashy fun? 1/