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The main ideas of the book are: We can increase student achievement by changing our assessment practices To do this, we need to assess accurately and involve students Why I chose this book:
Traditionally, we have thought of assessment as a way to measure student learning. I like that the authors propose a powerful new way to use assessment to improve learning and motivate students. They suggest we use a formative type of assessment called assessment for learning which occurs during learning and has a great deal of student involvement. The book contains concrete instructional strategies to excite educators and breathe new life into their assessment practices. The book, and the CD/DVDs that accompany it, serve as professional development tools to help educators learn these new strategies. I also chose the book because the authors of the book are leading experts on formative assessment. They are better known on the west coast and all instructional leaders should know their work.
Imagine a student returning home and instead of saying, We did reading today, being able to say, I learned to make good inferences. This means I can make a guess that is based on clues from the story. Learn how to clarify learning goals.
Many students fail test essay questions because the vague instructions were to, Discuss Spain or Analyze King Lear. Instead, learn how to design assessments to more accurately reflect what students know.
Imagine a conference led by a student who has found, from looking at her corrected math test, that she has trouble multiplying three-digit numbers. She sets a concrete goal with a plan and a time for a retest. Learn to make communication tools, such as conferences, more effective.
Instead of handing students a B, imagine students looking at samples of writing and designing their own rubrics to assess writing quality. In this summary, there are 24 activities that can be used to involve students in taking ownership of their learning. www.TheMainIdea.net
Introduction
Right now, too many educators think of assessment as standardized testing and determining grades. However, if it is done well, assessment can actually be used to motivate students and improve achievement. This is a new idea for many: that assessments can be used to actually create not just measure student achievement. This book shows educators how to do assessment right and use it well, so that we can achieve this new goal of assessment. In order to shift our focus and use assessment to increase achievement, we need to change our assessment practices. We need to learn how to include the following five components of sound assessment practice: Quality Classroom Assessments: 1. Have a clear purpose (Why assess?) Are we assessing to assign a grade or to help inform instructional decisions to maximize learning? 2. Have clear achievement targets (Assess what?) Clear academic expectations help students know where they are going and this helps increase the likelihood that they will succeed. 3. Accurately measure/reflect student achievement (Assess how?) We need to choose the right type of assessment method or we will get inaccurate information about student achievement. 4. Are communicated effectively (Communicate how?) If the above three are place, but we do not communicate the results of those assessments effectively, then the assessment will be ineffective. 5. Involve students in the process (Involve students how?) The instructional decisions that most impact student achievement are not made by adult educators, but rather by students themselves. It is the students who decide whether it is worth it to put in the necessary effort to learn. Only after students decide that it is worth it, can we, the adults, impact their learning. We need to help students believe in themselves. To do this, it is instrumental to involve students in many aspects of classroom assessment.
The first important step in creating quality assessments is to decide how we want to use assessment results. Traditionally, the purpose of assessment has been for promotion, sorting students, reporting and grading. These assessments usually occur after the learning has been completed to determine if learning has in fact occurred. This type of summative assessment is assessment OF learning. However, there is another way we can use assessment to promote learning. The authors call this assessment FOR learning. This more formative type of assessment occurs while students are still learning. Unlike the above summative assessments which might be a once-a-year standardized test, these assessments provide day-to-day information. These assessments can be used to diagnose problems, plan next instructional steps, and provide students with feedback necessary to make improvements overall, to help students see where they are and help them feel in control of their learning. By using more assessment for learning activities in our teaching, we can accomplish two new goals through assessment: increasing student motivation and increasing student learning. Because it is important to distinguish between assessment for learning and assessment of learning to make sure your assessments have a clear purpose, take a look at the excerpted chart below (the full chart is on p. 33 of the book):
Examples Typical uses of this type of assessment Primary audience/ users Primary motivator Assessment FOR Learning Rubrics, student self-assessment, descriptive feedback to students Provide students with insight to improve achievement; help teachers diagnose student needs, help parents see progress and support learning Students, teachers, parents Belief that success in learning is achievable Assessment OF Learning Standardized tests; final exams; placement tests; short cycle assessments Certify student competence; sort students according to achievement level; promotion and graduation decisions; grading Policy makers, program planners, supervisors, teachers, students, parents Threat of punishment, promise of rewards
For example, one special education teacher was afraid to use self-assessment for fear that her students low self-concepts would cause them to give up. However, when she showed her students how to assess their writing, use a scoring guide, and describe their progress over time, her students were excited. For the first time they felt they understood the conditions of their success -- they knew they had made progress, why they had made progress, and what they still needed to do to improve their writing. In contrast, more traditional summative assessments follow the deficit mode of showing students only what they dont know yet or what they need to work on.
So, what do assessment FOR learning strategies look like? What can teachers do to help students answer the three questions above? There is a whole list of strategies in Section V, but here is an overview of the Seven Strategies you can use to implement assessment for learning to help you visualize what assessment for learning looks like. SEVEN STRATEGIES OF ASSESSMENT FOR LEARNING
Student Question: WHERE AM I GOING? Teacher Strategy 1: Make Sure Learning Targets are Clear to Students -- Share your learning targets/goals with students before teaching. Make sure those goals are explained in student-friendly language. Then check in with students. Ask, Why are we doing this activity? What are we learning? Ask students what they think constitutes quality work and develop criteria for scoring guides with them. Teacher Strategy 2: Provide students with models of strong and weak work Provide anonymous examples and have students analyze these samples and justify their judgments. Also, model creating a product yourself the problems you run into, the decisions and revisions you make, etc. Student Question: WHERE AM I NOW? Teacher Strategy 3: Offer regular descriptive feedback Provide descriptive feedback instead of grades during learning. This feedback is most effective when you identify what the student is doing right as well as what to work on (the stars and the stairs). Struggling learners particularly need to know they did something right and the teachers job is to find it and label it for them. This really helps students answer, Where am I now? Teacher Strategy 4: Teach students to self-assess and set goals Teaching self-assessment is not an add-on, it is a necessary part of answering, Where am I now? This strategy helps students identify their own strengths and areas to improve using established criteria. Student Question: HOW CAN I CLOSE THE GAP? Teacher Strategy 5: In a lesson, teach one component of quality at a time To reduce the volume of feedback, focus on one area of improvement at a time. For science that might mean focusing on writing a hypothesis. Focusing on just one area to improve increases the likelihood of student success. Teacher Strategy 6: Teach students to revise one component of quality at a time Show students how you would revise one aspect of an answer, product, or performance, and then have them revise a similar one. This prepares students to revise and improve their own work. Teacher Strategy 7: Teach students to self-reflect on their own progress Self-reflecting reinforces the learning and helps students develop insight into themselves as learners. This helps them see how far theyve come and to feel in control of their success. You can have a student write a process paper explaining how they solved a problem or a letter to their parents explaining where they are with a piece of work and what they will try next.
Below is a typical interaction between a child and parent. This child came home with a math test that had a smiley face on it, a -3, and an M (Meets the standard). She clearly does not know the learning targets she was expected to meet.
Mom: Honey, this looks good. What does this tell you that you know? Claire: Math? Mom: What about math? Claire: I dont know. Just math.
What if she did not meet the standard, how would the parent or child know what she did well or what to improve? This section describes the imperative for having clear learning targets in order to have effective assessments. We cannot assess what is not clear to ourselves as educators, as well as to students and parents.
Below are a few examples of the different kinds of learning targets. To see others, see the full chart on p. 63.
Knowledge Mathematics Language Arts
Recognize and describe patterns. Recognize similes, metaphors, and analogies.
Reasoning
Use statistical methods to describe, analyze, evaluate, and make decisions. Formulate questions, makes predictions, verifies and revise understanding while reading.
Skill
Measure length in metric and US units. Read aloud with fluency and expression.
Product
Construct bar graphs. None.
If you are a teacher, and you want to teach a larger goal, like how to drive, or to understand the binomial theorem, how can you describe to your students exactly what they must learn? Goals are most effective when they are specific and in language that students understand. Because this is challenging to do, the authors have devised two steps to help you with this process of clarifying goals.
While the book devotes an entire chapter to how you take each of the four assessment methods through this development cycle, many of the steps are the same regardless of the method. Instead, this summary includes a few examples of effective and concrete techniques teachers can use to help better PLAN, DEVELOP and CRITIQUE their assessments.
To PLAN more accurately: Decide how important various learning goals are (sampling)
After choosing an assessment method, next decide how important each learning goal is. For example, a drivers test will focus more on steering than buckling a seatbelt because presumably the instructor spent more time teaching this more important skill. To do otherwise would inaccurately assess what students have learned. If you have ever taken an exam that you felt did not match the most important points in the course, you have experienced a validity problem: a mismatch in instruction and assessment. Sampling also requires you have enough questions, tasks, or personal communications to provide accurate evidence of student learning. For example, do you have enough multiple choice questions or performance tasks in a portfolio to draw a conclusion about student learning? To help you address the issue of sampling and make sure your assessment reflects the relative importance of each learning goal, the authors suggest you create a test plan. This is a chart that allows you to assign more points to the more important goals on a test or written assignment. For example, if we spend 50 percent of the time learning to read maps, then about 50 percent of an assessment should focus on map reading, not 5 percent. See the example below from p.11 in the book:
SCIENCE TOPICS
Concentrations of pollutants Effects of Pollutants How to Reduce Pollution TOTAL KNOWLEDGE 10 points 7 points 6 points 23 points
RELATIVE IMPORTANCE
TOTAL 10 points 15 points 25 points 50 points
Group Discussion Rubric It is difficult to rely on your memory of oral questions. In a group discussion, one way to create a dependable record of student performance is to use a rubric. The teacher, or the students (using the student-friendly group discussion rubric on the CD), can rate each students performance in the discussion. The rubric has four categories, or traits, that are used to evaluate students: Content Understanding, Reasoning, Interaction with Others, and Language. For an excerpt of this, see the middle of the page. PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT SUGGESTION
Have teachers, individually or in a group, review the Student-Friendly Group Discussion rubric and add anything they feel is missing from it. Then, videotape students during a group discussion. Then, practice analyzing the group discussion using the rubric. Again, this activity can be modified so students also work on the rubric and then practice using the group discussion rubric. Teachers can bring back their observations to a group of teachers: Could students score discussions successfully? Do teachers and students agree on what makes quality participation in a discussion? Would the rubric need to be modified before using it to assure accuracy?
Instead, we want to develop more thorough rubrics that have clear definitions, descriptive language, and are written in student-friendly terms like the one excerpted below (a group discussion rubric). See the variety of sample rubrics on the CD for other samples.
SCORE HIGH MEDIUM LOW CONTENT
I understand what everyone is talking about, the technical words used, and I give good examples and good evidence. I dont understand all the ideas or the technical words and sometimes I can give examples of what I mean. Im not sure I understand what everyone is talking about or the technical terms used. Im not sure the information I use is correct.
LANGUAGE
I say things in a way others will understand with clear words. I dont use more words than I have to. I think I sometimes use words people dont understand. Sometimes I use too many words to make a point. I try to use big words to impress people. I didnt realize I had to think about how I say things. I dont know how to say things so people understand.
To help you DEVELOP a generic rubric that can be used repeatedly, the authors have developed a thorough process to do this: 6 STEPS TO DEVELOP GENERAL RUBRICS
Step 1 : Sometimes you have no idea where to begin, What the heck is critical thinking? In this case, it is helpful to review existing rubrics and discuss with colleagues (rather than reinventing the wheel!) Step 2 : Gather student work samples at all levels (poor, fair, excellent, etc.) on the task to be assessed (ex. analytical writing samples). Step 3 : Sort the student samples into three stacks: strong, middle and weak. What makes the stacks different? Create a broad and long list of the qualities that describe each group. For example, a group of foreign language teachers came up with the following descriptors for their strong stack combines several sentences, pronunciation is accurate, speaks in paragraphs, etc. For their weak group they had descriptors like: speech is slow, responds inappropriately, hesitates excessively, etc. Step 4 : Combine descriptors into categories that will become traits of strong, middle and weak performances. For example, the foreign language teachers realized that speaks in paragraphs is the same as combines several sentences. Step 5 : From student samples, select ones that best illustrate each trait at each level (ex. find a weak example of fluency). Step 6 : Improve it by adding, deleting, refining traits, changing the numbers of levels, or otherwise revising it.
METARUBRIC SUMMARY
1. CONTENT Which learning targets count?
* Does it contain all items that are important? * Does it leave out what is unimportant?
There are some common problems with rubrics. Rubrics often involve counting,Has at least 3 supporting details. However, isnt it better to have 2 really good supporting details than 5 bad ones? In general, dont use counts to indicate quality. Also, dont include irrelevant details. For example, in scoring a poster about knowledge of dinosaurs one irrelevant criterion might be, Must have three colors. Couldnt a black-and-white poster show quality work? Focusing a rubric on what is important shows that we understand the learning target well enough to know what is important. Then the rubric can really teach students what constitutes quality in their work. PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT SUGGESTION
Have groups of teachers choose a learning goal (like proficiency in problem solving) and ask teachers to bring samples of student work in this area (at all levels) to a meeting. Have teachers create a general rubric for this learning goal by following the 6 Steps to Develop General Rubrics on p.6. Then, at a follow-up meeting, have teachers critique these rubrics by using the metarubric questions above.
The fourth ingredient in sound assessment practice is to ensure that assessment results are communicated effectively. The key concepts in this book are to assess accurately and involve students, and these ideas are crucial in communicating assessment results. This section covers four types of communication tools report cards, portfolios, conferences and standardized tests each of which require accuracy and student involvement to become effective. Traditionally, all aspects of student work homework, quizzes, labs resulted in a grade. Teachers were the ones who collected all evidence of these grades, and grades were determined based on events (homework, quizzes, labs, etc.). However, the authors suggest changing these traditional notions. To begin, below are some general suggestions to ensure the four communication tools will be effective:
CONDITIONS FOR EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION TARGETS ARE CLEAR INFORMATION IS ACCURATE SYMBOLS, SUCH AS GRADES, ARE UNDERSTOOD COMMUNICATION IS TAILORED
Clarify specific goals (more specific than reading,), share student work samples and rubrics, and define terms. Choose an appropriate assessment, gather enough information, ensure results are accurate. Clearly define grades, check marks, smileys, or other symbols. Everyone must have the same understanding of the symbols. This means the teachers must agree on what grades mean or there will not be a shared understanding of student achievement. Make sure timing is appropriate (that it is frequent enough), level of detail is adequate, and negative side effects are minimized.
If you want to communicate about effort, simply create a separate space/column for this information when grading.
7 (Classroom Assessment for Student Learning, Educational Testing Service) The Main Idea
To more accurately reflect student learning, grades should be recorded based on the learning targets that have been assessed. Instead of having columns in a gradebook for homework and tests, teachers should have columns for identifies place value to 10,000s and adds three-digit numbers in columns like the excerpt below (see p. 289 for the full chart).
EXCERPT OF A GRADEBOOK ARRANGED BY LEARNING TARGET (This is from the section on Number Sense)
Identifies place value to 10,000s Date Task (SR = Selected Response; PA = Performance Assessment; Q = Quiz, H = HW; etc.) F (formative) or S (summative) To decide whether it contributes to the final grade) Johnny Rachel, etc. Reads, writes common fractions
To further improve accuracy, rather than averaging grades from an entire semester, grades should reflect the students current level of achievement. This means older assessments and formative assessments should not contribute to the final grade. For example, the student below (from p.317 in the book) improved her mastery of the components of writing, but the average (69% -- a C or a D) would not reflect this mastery. Perhaps averaging the last four papers would be more accurate.
AGATHAS SCORES ON EIGHT PAPERS
Date 9/5 9/9 9/13 9/17 9/21 9/25 9/29 10/4 TOTAL Ideas 2 3 3 4 3 4 5 5 29 Organization 2 3 3 3 4 3 5 5 28 Voice 2 2 3 3 4 4 5 5 28 Word Choice 2 2 3 3 4 3 4 5 26 Sentence Fluency 3 3 3 4 3 4 4 4 28 Conventions 3 2 3 3 4 4 3 4 26 Total 14 15 18 20 22 22 26 28 165 Percent 14/30 = 47% 15/30 = 50% 18/30 = 60% 20/30 = 67% 22/30 = 73% 22/30 = 73% 26/30 = 87% 28/30 = 93% Avg 165/240 = 69%
For teachers who are frequently using rubrics, there is a thorough section in the book about accurately translating rubric scores to grades (see pp. 316-24). A report card can be used as an effective communication tool, but only if it follows the principle stated above.
Like report cards, portfolios can be powerful communication tools that clearly benefit students if the guidelines below are followed: EFFECTIVE PORTFOLIOS
* The purpose of the portfolio (as described just above) is completely clear know what story you want to tell. * The learning targets demonstrated in the portfolio are clear to the students. * Portfolios do not simply show that work has been done, but rather, they demonstrate the thinking behind the work. To help students with this, you can provide phrases for their annotations, goals, and reflections such as: One important thing I have learned is _____ . Here is the evidence: Next, I would like to learn One area that needs work is In working on _____, I also learned _____ . I have become better at This work is an example of level ___ on the ___criteria because ____. * Sampling is important - enough artifacts (student pieces) must be present to provide adequate evidence of levels of achievement. * Let students, not the teacher, do the majority of content selection, commenting on contents, reflection and goal setting. * Include a method to judge the portfolio with criteria for entries, self-reflection, and the portfolio as a product. Without any criteria, students fall back on their own devices to judge quality. Perhaps they can only think of length or neatness to judge quality. It is therefore essential that rubrics are used to define what quality looks like (see the CD for rubrics to evaluate portfolios). * Make sure portfolios have an audience. This generates additional learning as well as increased motivation to keep going.
The Goal-Setting Conference GOAL: to guide students in setting short- or long-term goals Goal setting is most satisfying when we see real progress. It is this evidence of progress that can provide the motivational hook to reengage marginally interested students. To come up with a clear and attainable goal, students should examine their work and choose an area to focus on. When students get used to regularly identifying their strengths and areas of improvement, they are ready to outline the next steps in their learning. To create an effective goal, students need an action plan which identifies needed assistance and sets a time frame to complete the goal. A simple format for goal-setting, such as the ones on pp.370-71 (one is below), can help. Note that to fill this out, students must understand: what the intended learning is, where they are, and what their options are for closing the gap.
GOAL SETTING SHEET
Name:____________________________ I will learn: My before picture (evidence of current level of achievement): My plan is to: I will ask for help from: Date: __________________________ I need these materials: I will be ready to show my learning on this day: My after picture (evidence of achieving my goal):
The Intervention Conference GOAL: to discuss a problem any time a student is having difficulty. The teacher meets with specialists and other teachers the student is not present. The Demonstration of Growth Conference GOAL: to demonstrate improvement over time on one or more learning targets. Students help choose the work that serves as evidence of their growth and prepare to explain the learning targets the work represents. A portfolio is useful to show the before and after picture. These conferences help students take pride in what theyve learned. The Achievement Conference GOAL: to share information about a students current status A portfolio can be the basis of an achievement conference. These conferences can be particularly effective if led by a student. Preparation and follow-up are key to making conferences effective communication tools. Make sure the student understands the learning targets, assembles and reviews the necessary work samples that demonstrate student learning, has had practice commenting accurately and in detail about his/her work all year, uses structured materials (such as the goal-setting sheet above), and that everyone fills out a conference evaluation form to write what they learned and what they would change about the conference.
WHERE AM I GOING?
Strategy 1: Share Learning Goals with Students * For selected response and extended written response assessments, share your test plan (see the sample on p.5 of this summary) with its learning targets in student-friendly language to students BEFORE you teach the unit. * Use the test plan to help summarize after a lesson or a week by having students point out which parts of the test plan were learned. Have students write a summary of what they learned and place this summary in the appropriate category of the test plan. * For performance assessments, introduce the concept of quality to students by asking students, for example, to list qualities of good writing, supplement this list after hearing some sample weak and strong student writing read aloud, and categorize their ideas into traits of good writing. Then share your own set of traits by passing out copies of your own student-friendly rubric. * For personal communication assessments, show students the question stems you might use to elicit their reasoning skills (p.5 of the summary). Have students generate questions using these stems to see how the questions connect to specific learning targets.
9 (Classroom Assessment for Student Learning, Educational Testing Service) The Main Idea
Strategy 2: Provide Models of Strong and Weak Work * Give students incorrect selected response or extended written response answers and ask them to explain why they are wrong. * For performance assessment, gather student samples of strong and weak work, and, choosing one trait at a time, ask students to use a rubric to score a few samples. Provide opportunities for students to share and explain their scores in small groups. * For performance assessment, provide examples of student work at each quality level (low, med, high) for each trait on a rubric. * Show students a videotape of a group discussion and ask them to evaluate it using a rubric.
WHERE AM I NOW?
Strategy 3: Offer Regular Descriptive Feedback * Provide descriptive feedback on learning targets, do not just mark a question correct or wrong. For example, if a student incorrectly answers a multiple choice inference question from a reading, do not simply mark it wrong. Write, You chose an answer which is an inference, so you know what one is. However, your answer is not supported by evidence in the reading to make it a valid inference. * Descriptive feedback is most effective when students have a chance to revise their work and also when they learn what they are doing correctly in addition to what they need to improve. * Before the final grade, set up feedback conferences (see p.8) with students, choose just a few aspects of quality to focus on. Have students use a rubric to score themselves on these areas before the meeting. They can highlight words that describe their work in yellow, then you do the same with blue, and the areas that turn out green will show agreement. Strategy 4: Teach Students to Self-Assess and Set Goals * Hand out your test plan and, as you teach each concept, have students self-assess for each learning target. (Mastery? Partial mastery? No understanding?) * To help students move beyond, I am OK at math, and I should study more, and instead come up with more specific assessment and goal statements, try the following: After giving out an interim test, ask students to fill out a chart that shows, by learning target, whether they got the question correct/wrong and whether it was a simple mistake or is for further study.
Problem Number Learning Target Correct? (Y/N?) Incorrect? (Y/N?) Simple Mistake? (Y/N?) Further Study? (Y/N?)
Then have students use this information to make a plan for further study by listing:
1. My Strengths (list learning targets and examples from the test) 2. My Highest Priority for Studying (list learning targets in the Further Study column and explain errors made) 3. Other Items to Review (list targets and items that were wrong due to simple mistakes)
* Teach students to use a rubric to self-assess everything from an extended written response to their participation in a discussion. * For personal communication, share the types of reasoning skills you look for in communication (synthesis, analysis, etc.) and have students learn to identify these skills in their own work. For example, in their journals/logs you might teach them to use graphics to identify which type of thinking is displayed (like a small Venn Diagram to represent comparing or a lightbulb for analyzing). * Plan a goal-setting conference (see p. 9) to model how to set concrete and attainable goals.