Another Look at Senior Project

1. Another Look at Senior Project Louisiana Senior Project CCR Summit December 2011

2. Agenda • Performance-Based Assessment Whitney Whealdon • Senior Project Overview Amy Deslattes

3. What is assessment? Assessment is: “the process of collecting evidence of student learning.” • Jan and Stephen Chappuis Understanding School Assessment: A Parent and Community Guide for Helping Students Learn, Assessment Training Institute, 2002

4. Formative Assessment • Process used by teachers and students during instruction to provide feedback and adjust teaching and learning • Defined by its use (i.e., nothing is inherently “formative”)

5. Summative Assessment • Evaluation at the conclusion of instruction to determine or judge student skills and knowledge or effectiveness of a plan or activity

6. Key Differences

7. Traditional Assessment

8. When implemented with fidelity, Senior Project maintains a balance between assessment of learning and assessment for learning.

9. Senior Project

10. Performance-Based Assessment

11. Used with skill, assessment can • motivate the unmotivated, • restore students’ desire to learn, • encourage students to keep learning. • Stiggins, Arter, Chappuis & Chappuis Classroom Assessment for Student Learning: Doing it Right—Using it Well, Assessment Training Institute, 2006

12. Self-efficacy • Albert Bandura’s theory • Defined as a person’s belief that he/she can successfully plan and execute a course of action; can be high or low

13. Increase self-efficacy through: • MASTERY EXPERIENCES– participate in and successfully complete challenging but doable tasks • VICARIOUS EXPERIENCES– observe others similar to self successfully completing a task; modeling • VERBAL PERSUASION– receive specific praise and feedback connected to the task and focused on guiding success • AFFECT/EMOTIONAL STATE– gain positive feelings from successfully completing a challenging task

14. Quest for Quality

15. Senior Project

16. Senior Project

17. Senior Project

18. Learning and Motivation The following quote is from Flow: The Psychology of the Optimal Experienceby MihalyCsikszentmihalyi Higher self-efficacy = more likely to engage in task, make more of an effort, and persist longer

19. “Optimal Experience” “The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile. Optimal experience is thus something that we make happen. For a child, it could be placing with trembling fingers the last block on a tower she has built, higher than any she has built so far; for a swimmer, it could be trying to beat his own record [. . .]. Such experiences [however] are not necessarily pleasant at the time they occur. [. . .] But in the long run optimal experiences add up to a sense of mastery—or perhaps better, a sense of participation in determining the content of life” (12-13).

20. Learning and Motivation OPTIMAL EXPERIENCE Higher self-efficacy = more likely to engage in task, make more of an effort, and persist longer

21. Contact Information Whitney Whealdon Middle and Secondary ELA Curriculum and Senior Project Coordinator Louisiana Department of Education 225.342.6200 whitney.whealdon@la.gov