We Are All Developing Learners
It’s time to normalize learning at all levels of proficiency.
I teach in the Canadian province of British Columbia, where the Ministry of Education has mandated the proficiency scale you see here for all K-9 students.
Emerging, Developing, Proficient, and Extending: these are now the four levels of proficiency that students can demonstrate against curricular competencies (or learning standards).
It’s a simple scale, and I like it. But with new assessment paradigms and language come important conversations about the nature of learning and assessment.
Normalize Developing Proficiency
In August, my middle school team of teachers and EAs crowd-sourced a bulletin board display titled ‘We Are All Learners.’ Every member of our team answered three questions from the perspective of areas of personal learning:
- What is your learning target?
- How is your learning going?
- What are your next steps?
Each team member contributed pictures to go with their targets, and I couldn’t have been happier with the final results.
