Luke Rapley
EDAP 7802 (2nd hour – Saturday)
Dr. Bill Kruskamp
GPS Training
GPS training was a training activity to familiarize myself with the new Georgia Professional Standards (GPS) mathematics curriculum that will be entering the high school starting next fall. I was chosen by my principal in collaboration with my department chair to be one of three representatives from my school to take part in this training. I spent a full week in the summer of 2007 and an entire school day in the fall of 2007 at a workshop for the new curriculum. Again this semester, I had to take a day off of school for another in-service on the curriculum. The session this spring expanded upon the information we learned last summer and fall. The information discussed was focused towards evaluating students responses based a five point rubric. We spent most of our time reading through multiple student responses and assigning them a score based on the rubric. Every 20 minutes, we would come together as a group and discuss why we gave each student response a specific score. Every group was required to respond during each of these discussion sections. The main purpose of this training seminar was to become acquainted with the use of rubrics to grade student work. The new math curriculum is geared toward having students answer more open ended questions. The use of rubrics for grading is an integral component of teaching the new curriculum. The discussions were very beneficial for all involved because we were able to gain knowledge from our colleagues on their experiences using rubrics for grading assessments. This GPS training session completed the training sessions for the new 9th grade curriculum. Now that the 9th grade training has been completed, I have started creating supplemental problem sets for those teachers at my school that will be teaching the new curriculum next fall. Along with these problem sets, I have started creating examples that reflect how to use the grading rubric correctly. These will include examples of student responses along with the corresponding rubric grade for the response and a explanation as to why the response received a certain grade. These materials will be available during preplanning to those teaching the new curriculum. These materials will aide in relieving some of the stresses the teachers teaching the new curriculum will face with the new curriculum because they will have some examples to guide their approach to the curriculum. This training session was very beneficial for me and once I complete the production of the supplementary materials for my colleagues, the training session will be beneficial for them, as well.