Understanding the connection between what is taught and what is learned is a vital part of your classroom practice.
One effective tool we use when delving into new content is the resource It says...I say...So... With this tool as our guide, we can explore Danielsonās Framework for Teaching, 3d Using Assessment in Instruction.
Danielson 3d says...
āAssessment of student learning plays an important new role in teaching: no longer signaling the end of instruction, it is now recognized to be an integral part of instruction. While assessment of learning has always been and will continue to be an important aspect of teaching (itās important for teachers to know whether students have learned what teachers intend), assessment for learning has increasingly come to play an important role in classroom practice. And in order to assess student learning for the purposes of instruction, teachers must have a āfinger on the pulseā of a lesson, monitoring student understanding and, where feedback is appropriate, offering it to students.ā
This means...
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This looks like...
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This is challenging, because...
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So...
Letās consider formative assessments. They are most helpful to us when making instructional decisions. They are used to monitor student learning and inform feedback. They help give us an overall picture of a childās achievement. Formative assessments are used throughout the lesson.
You can try...
Below are a few examples of practical pre-instruction assessments you can try in your classroom.
What are you trying in your classroom? What do you want to integrate into your practice? Tell us more in the comments! Learn more about opportunities to Design Coherent Instruction for your students.
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In this episode
Discussions are an important component of 21st century learning in all disciplines; they help students process and communicate information, and help teachers better understand which concepts students are connecting with. 21st century learning specialist G. Faith Little joins us this week to unpack the benefits of classroom discussions, and how they can be a simple, authentic way to assess student learning.
Final thoughts
Imagine youāre a teacher who wants to begin or refine the use of discussion in your classroom ā whatās the smallest thing you can do to make the biggest difference? ā
TAGS: ASSESSMENT, TEACHING TODAY
Equitable practices empower students to recognize and develop their own talents and skills, and become agents of change for their futures.
COURTNEY BROWN
āCRSP & New Teacher Specialist ā
What is equity? How do we define and use it in education?
āWhenever there is a buzzword at play in education circles, we like to unpack, define, and interpret how the term applies to educators and schools. Letās start with the difference between equity and equality. A simple, working understanding of equity involves ātrying to understand and offer people what they need to enjoy full, healthy lives." In education, equity means truly striving to achieve the best possible outcome for each individual student. Equality, in contrast, aims to ensure that everyone is offered the same things in order to enjoy full, healthy lives. As educators, the notion of offering all people the same things immediately contradicts our understandings of differentiation. We know that not all students have the same needs. Furthermore, students from underserved backgrounds, generally low-income or students of color, may benefit from a variety of resources to succeed academically. All students benefit from equitable practices. Iād like to suggest that we not only offer students additional opportunities or resources to ācatch upā or to ālevel the playing fieldā, but instead create a new playing field in education. We can start with our own assessment policies and systems in our classrooms, departments, schools, and districts. Creating equitable education and assessment practices doesnāt end with offering students what they need or deserve to succeed. Equitable policies and practices aim to empower students to recognize and develop their own talents and skills; to become agents of change for their futures. Equity means achieving lasting results for all people, regardless of their socioeconomic, racial, and ethnic backgrounds.
Examining our assessment practices
āEquity work in any context may require seeing differently, thinking differently, and even working differently. Therefore, it may be helpful to start by asking ourselves some probing questions about our own assessment practices and beliefs. Consider discussing these questions at your next faculty meeting to norm understandings around assessments, or answering them individually, as a way to understand your own beliefs. ā
Creating equitable assessments
To work toward equity in education and in assessment, letās examine our assumptions about educational achievement and assessment. Ibram X. Kendi, author of How to Be an Anti-Racist, explains how traditional testing policies perpetuate racist (and inequitable) ideas and policies in education. He explains that āachievement in this country is based on test scores, and since white and Asian students get higher test scores on average than their black and Latinx peers, they are considered to be achieving on a higher level.ā We may not have the power to single-handedly change high-stakes testing policies that use assessment scores to measure educational achievement, but we do have influence over our curricular decisions and how we assess and grade our students. We can create more equitable curricula and assessment practices and policies to create more equitable education. To do this, we must: ā
Assess what we teach & teach what we assess
There are some basic rules of thumb that we can use to create a more equitable foundation for assessing students. As a starting point, we can simply ensure that we assess what we teach and teach what we assess. Backwards design, from Grant Wiggins and Jay McTigheās Understanding by Design model, offers a framing to ensure that we first plan our assessments ā including all the key teaching points and skills needed for them ā as a guide to our instruction. Next, we ābackwards planā our units and lessons to ensure that we are meeting each of our teaching goals as we work our way toward the end of unit assessment. In addition to planning for end of unit assessments, we can also plan our formative assessments, which will help us understand studentsā mastery of each discrete skill throughout our lessons. This will also create space to reteach concepts as needed, as well as ensure that we are offering students a range of possible opportunities to learn throughout a unit. When formative assessments reveal or confirm for us which students are struggling or need to revisit a concept or skill, we can differentiate how we reteach or review. If the teaching didnāt stick as weād hoped the first time around, why would we teach it again in the same way? These practices can help us take initial steps toward ensuring our students are offered fair assessment opportunities, and we can build equity from there.
Differentiating assessments
Traditional assumptions about assessment may lead us to believe that asking students to complete different assessment tasks to demonstrate mastery may not feel fair ā but it may actually be more equitable. I admit that early in my teaching career, the concept of differentiated assessments took me a while to grasp and to actually believe in. Many of us use differentiation expert Carol Ann Tomlinsonās helpful framework to guide our daily planning and instruction. We plan differentiated processes using a variety of scaffolds, tools, extensions, student groupings, pacing and modalities. We differentiate content in the form of offering or using a variety of ālevelsā of texts, math problems, and complexity of tasks. We strive to create a supportive and differentiated learning environment to meet a variety of studentsā needs. But, when it comes to differentiating products or assessments, it is a little more complicated. Here are a few simple ways to differentiate assessment products to create equity:
Make assessments rigorous, not rote
Research shows that, especially in marginalized or lower income neighborhoods, lessons for students often focus on rote skills and procedures. Often, this means that students are not expected to achieve, nor learn more rigorous skills and content, when compared with their peers in higher income communities. As we know, rote and procedural learning tends to be boring, and when learning is boring, we often disengage or act out. This may become a serious equity issue in marginalized communities, especially for students of color, where, when students opt out of learning or act out, they may face harsh (or criminalized) punishment. Either way, students lose. Instead of focusing assessments on acquisition or mastery of rote skills or procedures, we can aim to emphasize reasoning and problem-solving skills. Research consistently proves that opportunities for supported, productive struggle can motivate students to stick with a task and to stay engaged as they learn. We all do better when we can engage in productive challenges.
Make assessments relevant
Culturally relevant curriculum and instruction create more equitable education for all students. Zaretta Hammond, in her wonderful book Culturally Responsive Teaching & the Brain, defines culturally responsive teaching as āencompassing the social-emotional, relational, and cognitive aspects of teaching culturally and linguistically diverse students.ā She believes that when we teach with these concepts as our guiding lights, we create more equitable education. Similarly, we can create more equitable assessment practices if we offer students experiences that are adapted for their cultural and linguistic diversity and are cognitively appropriate and engaging. Here are a few simple ways to make assessments more culturally relevant or responsive:
Develop and maintain a growth mindset
We often think about how important it is for students to develop a growth mindset, yet, as educators, we need to take a hard look at our own biases and assumptions that things may be ātoo hardā for students. As Carol Dweck points out in the The Power of Yet, with scaffolding and high engagement tasks, we may find that students surprise us and we can reframe our thinking to become, āthey don't get it yet.ā Many factors contribute to a studentās mindset and development of a learnerās stance, especially a teacher's language and perspective. Here are a few simple ways to support a growth mindset for assessment practices:
Cultivating strengths and talents
As educators, our job is to cultivate studentsā strengths, as well as help them develop in areas of struggle. All students benefit when teachers recognize and cultivate their passions, talents, and skills. Students also benefit when teachers recognize that a class or subject is an area where they need some extra support and that simply making progress is an achievement, even if their skills have not met or exceeded standards. When students are not achieving in a particular subject area, it may be time to think differently about how we assess them. It is possibly a waste of talent and potential if we expect students to spend academic time and energy striving to achieve in an area that continues to be a struggle for them. Instead, we can think more holistically about each student, in an effort to balance supporting improvement in areas of challenge with sponsoring soaring success in areas of strength. We can continue to cultivate and encourage a studentās passions and talents, even when assessing them. Measuring and recognizing ongoing progress and effort are important components of assessing a studentās learning.
Many of us were educated within systems that housed traditional or standardized assessment and grading systems. As educators, we have all consciously or unconsciously based a grading policy or assessment practices on the modeling we learned as students. It can take a leap of faith to imagine new and innovative assessment practices ā but we must rethink our notions of fairness and begin to think about developing practices that are equitable for the students in our care.
Resetting instructional priorities in the absence of high-stakes tests.
Across the US, state tests are high-stakes exams that have become a driving force in educational policy, funding, accountability, curriculum development, and achievement for students, teachers, and school leaders.
No Child Left Behind and its counterpart, Race to the Top, were the national policies that dominated education spaces and shifted the focus from school and district autonomy to a culture of testing. While the Every Student Succeeds Act lessened some of the federal mandates on state testing programs, some individual states, like New York, have redoubled their efforts to use high-stakes assessment data as a way to evaluate education at every level. That is, until 2020 when COVID-19 systematically closed schools, reshaped instruction into hyper-customized blends of in-person and remote learning systems, and fundamentally prevented large groups of students from sitting in the same place, at the same time, to take a paper and pencil, fill-in-the-bubble test, like the generations of students who came before them. āThis might sound like an exaggeration, but it isnāt ā in its 200-year history, 2020 was the first year in which state tests were canceled. Now that schools around the country are coming back in person almost exclusively, we're looking at a school year that will formally assess student performance for accountability for the first time in almost three years.
What will you teach?
For the past twenty years, rigorous high-stakes state tests have become the leading influence on curriculum development and instructional priorities for most public schools. These structures for accountability send a direct message to educators ā the only knowledge that is important is the knowledge that aligns with the test. State tests are directly connected to the following evaluation and accountability processes:
Traditionally, almost the entire schooling experience, at every entry point, is connected to a test which reviews, monitors, and evaluates performance. Many schools have used this mandated external guidance as a way to vet their curriculum, solidify their unit and lesson plans, set the plan and pace for their instruction, and set specific goals for students. While, āyou need to know this for the testā isnāt always a compelling reason for students to become interested in a specific topic, it has certainly been a driving force for teachers in the past. But without the guidance provided by the test, many educators were free to ask, what should I teach? After getting over the initial shock of the testsā absence, many teachers developed thoughtful, dynamic, and innovative curriculums to capture their studentsā interest in the content, even while learning through difficult times. As the exams come back into focus, are we at risk of losing this personalized curriculum in order to return to the kill and drill of test-driven instruction?
Shifting your approach
āWhat should we be teaching, and who should decide? After two decades of test-informed planning and two years of freedom from exams, how do we decide on our next steps? It is my hope that we can use this as an opportunity to take an honest look at who gets to set the agenda for learning, and in doing so, acknowledge the reality that while oversight is absolutely necessary in education, high-stakes testing is limited, and limiting. We have to be able to move from simply valuing the test, to testing what we value in each subject area ā and teachers and local school communities should have a say in what that looks like. Even as testing returns, there are three approaches to unit planning that we can use to frame instruction that is relevant, personalized to students' interests, and prepares them for future exams.
Considerations for policy makers
ā To our partners and colleagues who are decision-makers ā big and small ā we know you have a bird's-eye view of the now and the next. While weāre waiting, consider (or possibly reconsider) the enormous weight weāve placed on a single day exam. Current policies give the test a monopoly on setting the values for an entire generation of students, and silence the voices of classroom teachers and school leaders who work directly with students on a daily basis. These educators have insight into what we could be valuing across fields, and how student progress and performance can be reflected to increase student achievement. We have a rare, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to rethink the role of high-stakes tests and shift the structure of accountability to one that incorporates true multiple measures, embraces diverse learning needs, and reflects the population of students weāre serving.
Reflecting on our values and focusing our instruction on what will help students get engaged, stay engaged, and keep coming back day after day is where we should invest our time and energy. After what we've been through, our instruction should look different than it did before. We have a unique opportunity to apply our new skills, refine what we've designed, and return to ānormalā a bit more evolved than when the pandemic began.
BY LAURA RIGOLOSI
ā I have been an educator for over twenty years, but I can still remember being a first-year teacher and asking my students to pair read Shirley Jacksonās The Lottery. I was nervous, and anticipated comments like, āMiss, arenāt we too old to read aloud? And in pairs? Thatās little kid stuff.ā But after I modeled the process with another teacher, I broke my students off into pairs and, within minutes, my ninth grade students were reading with one another. Students plopped themselves throughout my classroom, on the floor and at desks, and were taking turns reading aloud and talking to each other. I glanced around the room in amazement at the pairs reading softly, talking, giggling a bit, looking at each other, looking at their books. This is what school should look like, I thought to myself. This is what learning looks like. This is what working together looks like. I felt tears well up in my eyes witnessing reading as a social activity, and was never more certain of my career choice. This moment embodies what I love about teaching. But anyone who teaches will tell you that this moment represents a mere slice of teaching life. Teaching is also grading papers, homework, projects, and everything in between. And at the end of each term, every student needs to have a grade next to their name. What plagues so many of us is how to grade students as fairly as possible ā how can we assess students frequently enough to give them multiple opportunities to demonstrate their learning, and to inform our lesson planning?
Grading efficiently
This assessment dilemma is real for me. In addition to my work at CPET and as a literacy consultant, I am also an adjunct professor, and my roster this term has doubled in size. I know how important it is to use formative assessments in my classroom ā James Popham says it best: āFormative assessment works!ā ā but the only way formative assessment really works is when the teacher efficiently grades and provides feedback in a timely manner. Nobody sets out to be that teacher who students refer to as "the one who never gives anything back" (cue student eye roll). I reached out to my colleagues at CPET for advice on how to grade formative assessments effectively and efficiently, and will share with you some of their pragmatic tips:
While I may not love grading papers as much as I love watching my students read to each other or interact with one another as curious learners, I know that assessments matter to my students, and they guide my lesson designs. Reading our studentsā work is an effective step in meeting their needs.
What methods have worked well for you? Weād love to hear the ways in which youāre effectively managing your time and assessments ā comment below or tag us online @tccpet! ā
Promising & practical strategies to help track the growth of children's literacy skills.
When youāre caring for children who are participating in remote learning, it can be challenging to identify and understand their progress and growth as readers. Youāre likely wondering: Am I doing this right? Are we making progress? How will I know? When children are in the classroom and engaged in in-person learning, the responsibility for these questions largely lies with their teachers. However, the new normal for teaching and learning requires equal ā if not more ā participation from parents, in order to support and ensure the advancement of studentsā reading skills.
Given how busy we are trying to balance our own work responsibilities along with the needs of our children, it can often feel easiest to default to tools like reading comprehension quizzes, multiple choice tests, or even worksheets to help recognize and assess reading progress at home. While these measures can be helpful, they certainly donāt tell the whole story. We could be missing out on identifying areas of growth and celebration, as well as a robust understanding of our childrenās areas of struggle. But there are promising ā and practical ā strategies that parents can utilize to help monitor and track the growth of their children's literacy skills. Don't feel as though you need to create your own assessments, rubrics, or projects to achieve this ā that is, unless you have the time, capacity, and energy! Instead, consider some quick, informal strategies to monitor studentsā growth. These strategies can tell you a lot about a childās reading behaviors, habits, and progress.
Habits & behaviors of good readers
In her book, 7 Habits of Highly Effective Readers, Joanne Kaminski explains, āKids who are highly effective readers and score high on their state exams seem to have similar habits.ā She goes on to explain that she has seen these habits in her own children as well as children sheās taught and tutored. The seven habits she describes are:
This list can be helpful to parents as they look for evidence of their children's reading behaviors. When these behaviors are present, you can feel good that your young learners are on the right track! As we level up our understanding of a child's reading progress, we can turn to Mosaic of Thought: The Power of Comprehension Strategies, in which the authors Ellin Oliver Keene and Susan Zimmermann outline a list of habits that are more reflective of the kind of work students are doing while reading, including: ā
For parents, a list like this can feel daunting. You may not know how to look for these specific skills, and are likely asking yourself questions, such as: How do I know they are inferring? How can I prompt them to determine whatās important? Identifying skills that children are exhibiting during reading is often left to teachers. ā ā ā Knowing what to look for There are ways to simplify the identification of reading habits and skills so that you can determine what children are doing before, during, and after their reading. We can break down more complex reading habits into observable actions, behaviors, or concrete examples that signify the deeper learning that is taking place. When it comes to reading, we can look for the following: Stamina If your child is reading for long(er) periods of time, this is great! Interest and stamina are very important, especially as books increase in demands and complexity. Fluency Have your child read to you! This can be a great way to monitor fluency, decoding, and self-correction strategies on the part of students. Comprehension and thinking skills: A simple set of questions can be very telling when it comes to a childās predicting, inferring, and comprehension skills. You can use these same questions each time they read, and students can either answer for you, or as part of writing and drawing exercise. Here are some suggestions for what you can ask a child before, during, and after they read:
Thoughts about reading Talk to your child about what they are reading. Ask them about the kinds of books they are reading, what they're enjoying (or not enjoying), and why. This can help you gain insight into your childās general attitude toward reading, the kinds of books they gravitate toward, and the types of books that they find easiest to read.
When you've got young learners in your home, you deserve a lot of credit for balancing work, at-home learning, childcare, and household tasks. What youāve been able to do during this unique time has been nothing short of remarkable. Remember that when it comes to supporting learning at home, we can monitor a child's reading progress with simple strategies that make the process feel useful and manageable for everyone involved. Start with a strategy that feels feasible and accessible, and build from there. Happy reading!
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