Proficiency-Based Assessment and Grading Workshop

1. WELCOME TO: PROFICIENCY BASED ASSESSMENT AND GRADING!PLEASE SIGN IN, GET PACKET, MEET AND GREET AND GET A TREAT! Day 1 Thursday, September 22

2. Community Agreements • Stay Engaged • Speak your Truth • Experience Discomfort • Expect/Accept Non-Closure

3. Introductions • Susan Payne, Instructional Coordinator, TuHS • Kim Lindsey, TOSA, Curriculum & Instruction

4. Packet page 1

5. Get to Know You • Partner up • Share: name, school, what you teach, and something positive that has happened in the first few weeks of school • Introduce partner to group

6. Learning Objective . . . Course Objective Learn how to merge curriculum with standards to create proficiency-based units of instruction in order to work effectively with diverse populations and to ensure all learners succeed.

7. Learning Outcomes . . . • Prioritize and unwrap standards for at least one unit of instruction. • Create a rubric/scoring guide tied to the priority standards for an instructional unit. • Create/modify formative and summative assessments that are tied to the priority standards for an instructional unit. • Explore research based practices in regards to proficiency-based instruction, assessment and grading and design a framework for implementation.

8. Assessment and Grading Jigsaw Articles • “The Case Against the Zero,” and “Effective Grading Practices.” (Reeves) • “Seven Reasons for Standards Based Grading” (Scriffiny) • “Making the Grade, What Benefits Students” (Guskey) • Chapter 6 “The Last Frontier: Tackling the Grading Dilemma” (O’Connor). Pages 127-130, 131-137 • Chapter 6 “The Last Frontier: Tackling the Grading Dilemma” (O’Connor). Pages 127-130, 138-144

9. Jigsaw Activity 45 minutes . . . • Read Article, highlight key information • Meet in color group and discuss article • Create visual graphic for the article that represents the key information and 1quote • Break 25 minutes . . . • Meet in rainbow groups • Rotate through posters with color expert explaining poster

10. Discussion • Designate a time keeper (approximately 5 minutes per question), a facilitator to ensure everyone’s voice is heard, and reporters. • What are some of the authors’ general beliefs about grading? Do you agree or disagree with these beliefs? • What do you think is the primary purpose of grades? • What are some of the reasons for changing our current grading practices? • What questions are still percolating, insights, or ah-ha’s? (reporters to share with large group)

11. Website Resources

12. Summary of Sound Grading Practices Steps in the Grading Process (Packet, page 2) Step 1: Start with a clear and appropriate set of achievement standards Step 2: Map an assessment plan to gather evidence periodically by standard Step 3: Develop or select assessments and use them as planned Step 4: Record information by standard as accumulated Step 5: Summarize results into one index or achievement Step 6: Convert that index into a grade Packet, page 2

13. Start with a clear and appropriate set of achievement standards Prioritization, Not Elimination! • All standards are not equal in importance! • Prioritize those standards by distinguishing those that are essential from those that are supporting. • Teach the supporting standards in the context of or in relation to the essentials. • Identify Power Standards: Endurance, Leverage, Readiness for the next level of learning

14. The Priority Standards “Fence Metaphor” • Fence posts and supporting rails – • Without both, there is no fence!

15. Helpful Tip

16. Two Standards: One Post, One Rail • Explain how characters deal with diversity (e.g., culture, ethnicity, and conflicts of human experience), and relate the characters’ response to real-life situations. • Explain the use of flashbacks to convey meaning.

17. Start with a clear and appropriate set of achievement standards • Identify Power Standards: Endurance, Leverage, Readiness for the next level of learning • The Priority Standards Process: A Practice Activity Packet, page 9-10

18. Work Time • Map Priority standards over the quarter (semester/year) to determine grade book set-up. Form: Course Standards Map (on website) • Proficiency-Based Practices Website for forms and links (TTSD, C&I) • Content standards: TTSD Website or ODE • Return from 30-minute lunch by 1:10

19. Summary of Sound Grading Practices Steps in the Grading Process Step 1: Start with a clear and appropriate set of achievement standards Step 2: Map an assessment plan to gather evidence periodically by standard Step 3: Develop or select assessments and use them as planned Step 4: Record information by standard as accumulated Step 5: Summarize results into one index or achievement Step 6: Convert that index into a grade Packet, page 2

20. Keys to Quality Classroom Assessment Key 1: Clear Purpose What’s the purpose? Who will use the results? What will they use the results to do? Key 2: Clear Targets What are the learning targets? Are they clear? Are they appropriate? Key 3: Sound Design What method? Quality questions? Sampled how? Avoid bias how? Packet, page 4 Key 4: Effective Communication How manage information? How report? To whom? Key 5: Student involvement Students are users, too. Students need to understand targets, too. Students can assess, too. Students can track progress and communicate, too. Stiggins, RJ., Arter, J.A., Chapppus, J., Chappuis, S., (2004) Classroom assessment for student learning. Portland, OR: Assessment Training Institute.

21. The Two Tools of Assessment “No single assessment can meet everyone’s information needs…To maximize student success, assessment must be seen as an instructional tool for use while learning is occurring, and as an accountability toolto determine if learning has occurred. Because both purposes are important, they must be in balance.” NEA, 2003

22. Assessment Terminology

23. Assessment For LearningFormative Assessment • Formative: given before and during the teaching process • Diagnostic: intended to be used as a guide to improve teaching and learning • Answers key questions: Do student possess critical pre-requisite skills and knowledge? Do students already know some of the material? -S.L. Bravmann, “Assessment’s ‘Fab Four’, “Education Week, March 17,2004, p. 56

24. Assessment Terminology Formative Assessment

25. Assessment of Learning Summative Assessment • Summative assessments for unit, quarter, semester, grade level or course of study • Provides “status report” on degree of student proficiency or mastery relative to targeted standard(s)

26. Assessment Terminology Summative Assessment Formative Assessment

27. Progress Monitoring Checks Progress Monitoring Checks

28. Step 2: Map an assessment plan to gather evidence periodically by standard. Website • Examples • Course Assessment Plan 45 min work time

29. Taking a closer look at Step #1 Packet, pg 2 For an upcoming unit . . . • Identify Matching Priority Standards • Review the Priority Standards for your grade/course • Identify those essential standards that match your topic • Limit the number you select

30. “Unwrap” Selected Priority Standards • Identify the key concepts (important nouns or noun phrases) by underliningthem. • Identify the skills (verbs) by circling them or making them All CAPS.

31. “Unwrap” Matching Priority Standards • 5.2.3 Recognize main ideas presented in texts and provideevidence that supports those ideas. • 5.2.4 Draw inferences, conclusions, or generalizations about text and supportthem with textual evidence and prior knowledge. • 5.2.5 Contrastfacts, supported inferences, and opinions in text.

32. TTSD Unwrapped Standards PLANNING TEMPLATE Grade/Course: 6th Grade Science Topic: Chemistry Authors: Kim Lindsey

33. Packet, pg 15

34. Unwrap your Unit Website • Complete a standards unwrapping template that represents all “unwrapped” concepts and skills from from the standards in your unit. • List each concept • List each skill with its related concept(s) in parentheses. • Identify the approximate level of each skill according to levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy (see handout) Packet, pg 11

35. Homework: 1-Reading Ch 4, 6, 7Selective Attention: Key ideas, author assumptions, agree with, argue with, aspire to 2- finish unwrapping the unit standards (Due 10/13)