Bump It Up Wall

The “Bump It Up” Wall is based on the work of Rick Stiggins and Damien Cooper. Stiggins suggests that most students can hit a learning target if they can clearly see it.

A “Bump It Up” wall is a visual reference that displays levelled student work and allows students to independently recognize what areas of their work need improvement.

Used in conjunction with a rubric, students become involved in the evaluation process and learn to analyze and assess their work.

By using samples of anonymous student work (or exemplars) at various levels along with the rubric, have students work in groups to collaboratively identify what is good about each piece of work and what areas need improvement. Once students have identified what was done well and what needs improvement, post the work samples along with the “success criteria” on your “Bump It Up” wall. I believe this is the key step to making a “Bump It Up Wall” work effectively.

Many of you recognized that our students were struggling with communication and connections on our Math benchmarks and have targeted this as an area for improvement this year. Perhaps a “Bump It Up” wall is a strategy you could use to help your students. What does a quality math journal entry look like? What does a level 3 or 4 in Communication and Connections look like on the math benchmark? If your students had an example right in front of them, perhaps they would strive for that 3 or 4. I’m thinking this would be excellent for the written response questions on the RAD assessment as well. For sure this would be great for writing!

This Week's Hi5s!

1. It appears all classrooms have Guided Reading running smoothly. I have seen many classrooms full of students who have mastered how to read and write independently while teachers are providing guided instruction to small groups of students. Nice work!

2. Grade 4 is currently in FIRST PLACE in the "Pig Out on Reading" contest. Awesome work to the grade 4s. Let's encourage them to keep it up!

3. I noticed there is a little friendly competition brewing between our two grade 5 classrooms...whose class will be the first to have all (or most) students know their multiplication facts?

4. It was nice to see so many Halloween themed tasks and assignments this week that support curriculum outcomes: estimating pumpkin seeds and as well as how many pounds of candy the average human consumes in on year for math, reading and writing recipes for Pumpkin pie as well as poems about about Halloween, science projects and artwork...just to name a few. Thank you for making school fun, engaging and educational for students!

5. We survived Halloween!