Leahy, S., Lyon, C., Thompson, M., &Wiliam, D.  (November 2005).  Classroom assessment: minute by minute, day by day.  (Electronic version). Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.  18-24.
An Annotation by Laurie Walsh
The authors, researchers at Educational Testing Service, have been testing the impact of assessment for learning.  They have introduced teachers to the idea through a [...]

I had accepted a job as a 7th grade language arts teacher, and I was ecstatic to have a job where I could share my love for reading. However, I had no idea how to best teach these early adolescents who everyone seemed to be scared of. This lead me to the action research project I undertook for my Master’s Degree: brain based differentiation. This series of articles outlines what I learned.

Ball, W. H. & Brewer, P. F. (1996). Socratic seminars. In Teaching in the block: strategies for engaging active learners (pp. 29-65).
An Annotation by Laurie Walsh
This is a practical and theoretical look at using Socratic Seminars in the classroom.  It provides information on room set-up, writing pre-seminar and seminar questions, general guidelines for Socratic questioning, [...]

An Annotation
Earl, L. (2003). Using Assessment to Motivate Learning.  In Assessment as learning: Using classroom assessment to maximize student learning. (pp. 67-77). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
The idea here is to move from our traditional system of rewards and punishments (grades) and more toward an assessment model that is more motivating because it is relevant, [...]

Receiving a Master’s degree from the University of St. Mary’s has been an immensely satisfying experience for me. I’ve learned and changed and grown in innumerable and meaningful ways. But when it comes to professional development, the St. Mary’s program is second to none. I have applied my new learning and confidence directly to my classes and my students have benefited. St. Mary’s breaks their program into four IDEA categories: Instruction, Discipline, Environment, and Assessment. This article outlines the effect this program has had on my instruction.