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. 

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Final thoughts
Imagine you’re a teacher who wants to begin or refine the use of discussion in your classroom — what’s the smallest thing you can do to make the biggest difference?
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TAGS: ASSESSMENT, TEACHING TODAY

BY COURTNEY BROWN


What is equity? How do we define and use it in education?

​Whenever there is a buzzword at play in education circles, we like to unpack, define, and interpret how the term applies to educators and schools. 

Let’s start with the difference between equity and equality.

A simple, working understanding of equity involves “trying 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. I’d like to suggest that we not only offer students additional opportunities or resources to “catch up” or to “level the playing field”, 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 doesn’t 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

​Equity 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.
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• What are our ultimate goals for our students? 
• Specifically, what are our goals when assessing our students?
• How many different ways can we assess key skills?
• How many different approaches to an assessment are viable and realistic? 
• Is our aim for students to complete tasks so we can enter grades for them?
• How can we develop assessment practices that offer students meaningful opportunities to demonstrate their learning, their progress, skills, and understandings?
• How can an assessment drive students forward on the road to becoming empowered?

Creating equitable assessments

To work toward equity in education and in assessment, let’s 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 “achievement 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.”

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:
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• Ensure our assessments align with what we actually teach
• Formatively assess students on a regular basis
• Differentiate assessment products whenever possible 
• Offer a variety of ways to demonstrate mastery
• Be flexible (but not too flexible), and offer time to make up assessments
• Create relevant, engaging assessment methods
• Make assessments rigorous, not rote
• Develop and maintain a growth mindset
• Emphasize effort and progress, not grades
• Acknowledge and cultivate students’ strengths and talents

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 McTighe’s Understanding by Design model, offers a framing to ensure that we first plan our assessments — including all the key teaching points and skills needed for them — as a guide to our instruction. Next, we “backwards plan” 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 students’ 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 didn’t stick as we’d 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 — 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 Tomlinson’s 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 “levels” of texts, math problems, and complexity of tasks. We strive to create a supportive and differentiated learning environment to meet a variety of students’ 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:

• Create a variety of approaches to assess the same skills and understandings. Make sure that you are assessing students based on their understanding of key content, concepts and mastery of skills — not task completion. Can an assessment be shortened or adapted to solely assess the primary standards or skills? For example, a history assessment may ask students to develop an evidence-based claim about a particular topic. While some students will be able to cite and explain evidence from four sources in the assessment’s timeframe, other students may only be able to gather and outline evidence from two sources. To support a variety of capabilities, we can offer additional scaffolds, such as sentence starters, outlining formats, or quotations that can jumpstart students’ thinking as they support their claims. 

 

• Offer realistic timelines for students to make up or redo assignments. Allow students an opportunity to retake or redo an assessment (or part of it) for a stronger score — within a specific timeframe. We know that having no deadlines for completing work is not generally helpful, since students (and teachers) may have already moved so far beyond an assessment that it no longer makes sense to make it up. But if we can create realistic windows in which students can revisit assessments, we can encourage them to demonstrate their learning, without feeling that they’ve missed their chance. 

 

• Alternatively, offer students streamlined or distilled, shortened assessments as make up options. For example, instead of asking students to retake a test or rewrite a lengthy argument essay, you may ask that students write a shorter piece (for a lowered grade) that allows them to demonstrate each of the target skills. Or, instead of an essay that requires them to use three pieces of evidence, you might offer students the opportunity to write a shorter essay with one body paragraph using and explaining a single piece of evidence, a strong introduction and a conclusion with a counterclaim.

 

• Strategic use of technology can offer additional opportunities to students who need to complete an assessment, but may be struggling to access it in a specific location or at a specific time. For example, a missed lab can be completed using a recorded video of the experiment. Similarly, a student who has missed school due to a crisis or circumstances out of their control can utilize a remote learning platform to make up their work. You may also consider providing a video that students can use as they complete assessments.

 

• Develop project-based assessments that include choice and a variety of components, which students can use to demonstrate their learning in a way that is most relevant and appropriate for them. Project-based assessments that include a choice of topics or modalities can offer students opportunities to apply their knowledge in ways that let them shine. For example, if you’re seeking written arguments from students, consider also offering the opportunity to record a TED Talk-style speech, which may demonstrate the same skills as the written assignment, but create a clearer pathway to success for students who struggle with writing skills.

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 “encompassing the social-emotional, relational, and cognitive aspects of teaching culturally and linguistically diverse students.” 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:

• Choose themes, questions, authors, and texts that reflect students’ cultural backgrounds and familiar experiences. Make sure that assessment questions both expose students to others, as well as reflect on their own beliefs and identities. Students need to see themselves in their assessments, as well as their daily lessons and assignments. 

 

• Survey students and learn as much as you can about them to inform curriculum and assessments. Students might be surveyed about which topics are most interesting, or asked to offer regular feedback about their experiences with an assessment and what would best support them. We benefit from learning as much as we can about students’ specific cultural backgrounds and experiences for reference or inclusion in our assessments.

 

• Offer choice. Whenever possible, allow students to choose topics or work in modalities that connect to them and that are relevant to them — with assessments, as well as in the curriculum. Simple approaches such as choice boards or project-based assessments can build student agency.

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 “too hard” 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, “they don't get it yet.” Many factors contribute to a student’s mindset and development of a learner’s stance, especially a teacher's language and perspective. 

Here are a few simple ways to support a growth mindset for assessment practices:

• Set realistic goals and manageable steps for students to track and mark their progress so that they can see what they can do and have accomplished, as opposed to what they can’t do or haven’t accomplished, which encourages a deficit perspective and a mindset of failure.

 

• Offer actionable feedback for assessments, as opposed to grades or evaluation. Change our language from “not capable” or “never” to “not yet” and “we’ll get there.” Emphasize effort and progress, not grades. Allow students to make up parts of assessments to demonstrate their learning, and motivate them by raising their grades accordingly. Maybe they won’t be able to achieve the highest grade possible, but they should be able to increase their grades to some degree, and in doing so, increase their learning and raise their confidence.

 

• Developing standards-based assessments, combined with standards-based scoring, can increase equity, as these identify the discrete skills that we aim for students to master. Then, instead of evaluating a student's ability to complete a task, we can see how well students have learned each skill or standard.

 

• Rubrics-based grading is another way to support all students by breaking down a task into component parts and more specifically, assessing each skill. This way, students can see their areas of success and of challenge more clearly. Combined with a holistic grading approach, rubrics can offer students feedback and also a more equitable evaluation of each concept or skill they have learned. 

• We may want to rethink our grading policies. While I don’t think we should inflate grades artificially, evaluations should recognize and reward students for meeting and/or mastering standards while also finding ways to acknowledge their effort and improvement. Low and failing grades jeopardize students’ academic opportunities and can be demoralizing and defeating. 

Cultivating strengths and talents

As educators, our job is to cultivate students’ 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 student’s passions and talents, even when assessing them. 

Measuring and recognizing ongoing progress and effort are important components of assessing a student’s 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 — but we must rethink our notions of fairness and begin to think about developing practices that are equitable for the students in our care. 

​TAGS: ASSESSMENT, COURTNEY BROWN, EQUITY, TESTING

BY ROBERTA LENGER KANG
updated September 2021


​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.

​This might sound like an exaggeration, but it isn’t — 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 — 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:

• Student promotion, grades 3-12
• Student graduation 
• Teacher ratings
• Principal ratings
• School ratings & statewide rankings
• District accountability
• College admissions
• Curriculum design & implementation

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, “you need to know this for the test” isn’t 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 tests’ absence, many teachers developed thoughtful, dynamic, and innovative curriculums to capture their students’ 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

​What 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 — 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
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To our partners and colleagues who are decision-makers — big and small — we know you have a bird's-eye view of the now and the next. While we’re waiting, consider (or possibly reconsider) the enormous weight we’ve 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 we’re 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 “normal” a bit more evolved than when the pandemic began. 

TAGS: ASSESSMENT, ROBERTA LENGER KANG, TESTING

BY LAURA RIGOLOSI

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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 Jackson’s The Lottery. I was nervous, and anticipated comments like, “Miss, aren’t we too old to read aloud? And in pairs? That’s little kid stuff.” 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 — 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 — James Popham says it best: “Formative assessment works!” — 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:

1. Create a bank of responses: After reading and commenting on a few papers, you can begin to create a series of comments. G. Faith Little & Sean Hughes note that Google Classroom allows you to make a comment bank — a multiple choice dropdown feature that allows you to choose from comments you have already created. If you are not using Google Classroom, you can create a bank on your own by listing repeated comments in a Word document, and then pasting those comments into students’ papers. 
2. Respond as you go: Comment while you are reading a student’s paper by sharing your thoughts and questions as a reader, and showing them the patterns you are noticing, instead of creating one lengthy comment at the end of the paper. When I try to write an overarching comment at the end of a student’s work, I find that I am essentially writing my own mini paper as a response to my student’s paper! Commenting in a Google doc (or on other platforms) allows you to store comments along the way, which Dr. Adele Bruni Ashley notes will be helpful for you and your students to refer back to before the next assessment.
3. Live conference: It may be more efficient to spend five minutes conferencing (via Zoom or in person) with each student in real time rather than writing down your comments on their papers. Not only is this a time saver, Jacqui Stolzer notes that it creates space for students to ask questions and respond to your feedback. As Dr. Sherrish Holloman points out, this creates a more intimate interaction, and may help students stay more motivated and interested in the writing process. It can also relieve the pressure of receiving feedback in private, where it can't be discussed or clarified.
4. Tick tock: Set a timer for each piece, and try to stay within the limits of the timer. It is too easy to get distracted and lose track of time! 
5. Peer edit: If you have the time and can plan it out, have students peer edit each other’s pieces. Before students begin the process, consider modeling and discussing the components of helpful comments and appropriate feedback. Be sure that students understand that their feedback should reflect the criteria in the rubric. It helps to hold the peer editor accountable by counting their peer editing as a homework assignment, or something similarly weighted. 
6. Know where to begin: If you are in a time crunch, Courtney Brown suggests grading your most at-risk students first, so that they have the time to adjust their work and resubmit to you. 

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 students’ work is an effective step in meeting their needs. 

What methods have worked well for you? We’d love to hear the ways in which you’re effectively managing your time and assessments — comment below or tag us online @tccpet!

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TAGS: ASSESSMENT, LAURA RIGOLOSI

By CRISTINA ROMEO COMPTON


When you’re caring for children who are participating in remote learning, it can be challenging to identify and understand their progress and growth as readers. You’re 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 — if not more — participation from parents, in order to support and ensure the advancement of students’ 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 don’t tell the whole story. We could be missing out on identifying areas of growth and celebration, as well as a robust understanding of our children’s areas of struggle.

But there are promising — and practical — 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 — that is, unless you have the time, capacity, and energy! Instead, consider some quick, informal strategies to monitor students’ growth. These strategies can tell you a lot about a child’s reading behaviors, habits, and progress. 

Habits & behaviors of good readers

In her book, 7 Habits of Highly Effective Readers, Joanne Kaminski explains, “Kids who are highly effective readers and score high on their state exams seem to have similar habits.” She goes on to explain that she has seen these habits in her own children as well as children she’s taught and tutored. The seven habits she describes are: 
   

1. They love listening to books
2. They have books everywhere 
3. They know how to pick out “just right” books
4. They read often 
5. They read for meaning 
6. They like to read aloud 
7. They use the most frequently taught comprehension strategies 

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: 
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• Determining what is important
• Drawing inferences
• Using prior knowledge 
• Asking questions 
• Monitoring comprehension and meaning
• Creating mental images

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 what’s important? Identifying skills that children are exhibiting during reading is often left to teachers. 

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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 child’s 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: 

• Before reading, you can ask what questions: “What do you think the story/book will be about?” 
• During reading, you can ask what and why questions: “What’s happening in this picture?” “What did you learn?” “Why do you think?” “Why did ____ do that?” and “How do you know?” This last question is a particularly good option for supporting children in explaining their thinking! 
• After reading, you can ask how questions: “How did the character(s) solve their problem(s)?” “How did the story connect with your predictions?” 

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 child’s 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 you’ve 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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​TAGS: ASSESSMENT, CRISTINA ROMEO COMPTON, READING, REMOTE LEARNING

By LAURA RIGOLOSI


​​​Although I have been teaching via Zoom for several months, I don’t know if I will ever truly adjust to speaking to my computer and seeing the faces of my muted students in little boxes. But Zoom etiquette, as we have all come to learn, is to mute when someone else is speaking so everyone can hear the speaker. Herein lies my main discomfort as a Zoom teacher: to speak to my students and to not hear their little sighs, mmhmms, and quiet huhs?, has been my biggest unexpected challenge. It’s hard to get a sense of what my students are thinking or reacting to without hearing these small sounds. And while I know I can’t rely on these impulsive responses as a form of assessment, they’ve always helped me take a quick pulse of my class to check for understanding.

I’m not suggesting that we use the impromptu reactions of our students as a way to assess them — but as teachers, hearing students’ reactions nudges us to wonder, Is this a good place to stop? Do I need to check in with a few students? I miss that.

So with our students on mute (unless they are speaking), formative assessments are as essential as ever in online teaching. James Popham, the assessment guru, explains that “formative assessments help students learn” because they are “assessments for learning;” not “assessments of learning.” In other words, formative assessments gauge how much our students are understanding or processing information; the purpose is not an assessment for teachers to grade for accuracy, but for teachers to use to adjust their lesson planning. After all, formative assessments are often linked to effective teaching practice. The Black and Wiliam Research Review, from over 20 years ago, “shows conclusively that formative assessment does improve learning.” (Black and Wiliam, 1998a, p. 61). 

Recipes for success

I have used a variety of formative assessments in online teaching, and they each serve a different purpose. Here are the formative assessments I am currently using while teaching online:

Consistent breakout groups
As Courtney Brown mentions in Discussions During Distance Learning, it is best to keep students in the same small groups throughout the semester, instead of randomly grouping them. When students are online, they have no chance to get to know each other — there is no partner share, no turn and talks, no walking into class together and making conversation. To implement this with my students, I put them in small groups using the breakout rooms feature on Zoom, and then used the polling feature to ask students whether or not they were okay staying in these same groups throughout the semester. This would allow them an opportunity to form deeper connections within their group, and feel more comfortable interacting with one another. Thankfully, they all answered “yes.”

Once students are in the same groups, they are able to visit our class Google Drive folder where they can find folders for each week we meet. For each class, I create a simple note taking template that changes depending on our topic of the day, and students use these templates to capture their small group discussion ideas. When students return to the main group, they share these documents with all of us by sharing their screen in Zoom. 

While students are in their groups, I can assess how they are doing in two ways — first, by popping into each breakout room, to hear moments of their conversations and to see if they have questions; and second, by viewing their Google documents to see how they are progressing. This is my favorite way to check in on my students’ learning in real time — viewing their writing as it happens helps me determine who may need some more scaffolding or assistance, as well as which group is already finished with the note-taking document and may be ready to move on. It is also my way of noting which students are writing in these documents, thanks to Google’s editing feature. 


Flipgrid
To vary how students discuss their learning, I turn to Flipgrid as a way to hear students’ takeaways from class. First, I create my own video to model what they might say in theirs, using a text or discussion topic we have already discussed previously. This way I don’t steal any of their good ideas! By demonstrating how I would like them to respond to a text (by discussing quotes, or connecting the text to a real-world connection), I help them craft their Flipgrid video. To ensure my students watch others’ videos, I ask them to reply to at least two other classmates’ videos on our class discussion board. Using Flipgrid as a formative assessment is a way to assess student learning, using an alternative genre. 
 

Padlet
I often use Padlet as a type of “exit slip,” or as a way for students to give me feedback. When asking students for the latter, I make sure to update our Padlet’s settings so that participants can submit their responses anonymously. Both types of Padlets will include a direct prompt, such as: What did you learn today about ____? What questions do you still have? Students can see each others’ responses, and they, too, can get a pulse on how our class is doing and what their classmates are thinking. When I ask for feedback, I might prompt them by asking, How is our class going? Or What suggestions do you have? This is a great way for me to receive feedback directly, and because it is anonymous (a must for this kind of teacher feedback!), I trust that students can be more honest. Using a Padlet board as a formative assessment is a way for me to check for their understanding, confusion, and gather overall suggestions for our class. 

Teaching online has pushed me to become even more intentional about how I informally assess my students, and how I use those assessments to adapt my instruction. I will continue to find more ways to include formative assessment in my classroom, not only because these types of assessments lead to more effective instruction, but because I know it makes me more responsive to my students’ needs — especially when I can’t rely on hearing their in-the-moment responses during class. When we return to normalcy, I can’t wait to hear their thinking sounds again. 

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​TAGS: ASSESSMENT, LAURA RIGOLOSI, REMOTE LEARNING