Exit Slip: Inquiry Project thoughts

The subject of assessment outside of tests is an extremely interesting concept for me based on today's discussion. Especially knowing now that administrators are generally more open to it now and going forward, it seems that there are so many opportunities to evolve assessment to be much more meaningful and useful in the interest of the students' development. Project based assessment occurs to me as a very practical, effective, and encompassing way to build core competency skills while addressing context. A very interesting inquiry project could be developing this method and including testing for the tools students need to complete the project while the actual marks come from the evaluation of their project. This evaluation could be a combination of 180/360 degree peer reviews and teacher evaluations. Coming from geoscience however, I am very interested in the concept of using field trips as part of schooling and education. Being a very conceptual area in general, it is very important to tie those abstract concepts to the real world and be able to observe and explore the result of those concepts in real life. I would like to focus on exploring the effectiveness of field trips, especially in other subject areas out side of geoscience. I believe that these trips are very valuable in regards to engaging students in connecting their knowledge and skills learned in the classroom to the real world and especially applying them one day to their university and future careers. They can take substantial time out of the course of a semester however so I would also like to explore how to meaningfully incorporate other subject area topics into a field trip for effectively using the classtime used for the field trip. (I am planning to work with Martin on this inquiry project).