Classroom Assessment and Teaching

1. Classroom Assessment and Teaching Chapter 2: Elements of the Instruction-Learning- Assessment Model

2. Pedagogy in the Classroom • Effective teaching requires understanding and implementing effective assessment • Figure 2.1: Essential components of the process: • Learning targets, Pre-assessment, Preview of instruction, Instructional Approach and Technique(s), Formative assessment & Feedback, Self-assessment, and Summative assessment.

3. Figure 2.1 Instruction-Learning-Assessment Elements

4. Learning Targets • A learning target is the educational destination that a student must reach and acquire as a result of an instructional experience.

5. Identifying Instructional Learning Targets • Learning targets need to be selected prior to instruction and shared with the students. • Targets need to be clear and specific so students better understand: • 1) What they are expected to learn; • 2) What they are expected to do as part of the instructional experience. • The lesson needs to align itself and be directed toward acquiring appropriate grade-level indicators and proficiencies.

6. Skill Performance Standards • Along with curriculum coverage, learners need to acquire the performance standards connected with the lesson and its material. • Identifying skill levels according to Bloom’s modified taxonomy (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001) is most helpful for both teacher and students. • Skill levels need to be clearly articulated by the instructor and understood by the students.

7. Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy • Knowledge Dimensions • Factual • Conceptual • Procedural • Meta-cognitive • Cognitive Dimensions • Remember • Understand • Apply • Analyze • Evaluate • Create

8. Skill Performance Standards • For example, if analysis and evaluation of material is expected, then those skills need to be taught and practiced within the lesson for students to acquire those skills. • If only knowledge and comprehension skills are taught and emphasized in the classroom, then students will most likely acquire and use those skills. • Remember: What is taught, at the skill level that it is taught, is what students will likely display.

9. Pre-Assessment • Pre-assessment involves the essential check of confirming that learners are ready to benefit from the instruction that is to be provided.

10. Pre-Assessment of Learners • Pre-assessment: conducted prior to teaching a lesson. • Need to determine what students know and don’t know about the content that is to be taught. • Two basic areas are typically reviewed in pre-assessment: • 1) Assessment of prerequisite skills • 2) Assessment of information and skills taught • Both areas are important • Assessment of prerequisite skills isn’t always necessary: • Previous assessments can confirm the existence of knowledge/comprehension and skill levels.

11. Pre-Assessment Essentials • Pre-assessment activities typically: • Require a short period of time; • Can be easily embedded within the normal instructional process. • It is important to make sure all of the intended learners are pre-assessed (not just a select few) to get an accurate view of the entire classroom.

12. Pre-Assessment Essentials • A pre-assessment activity should measure the students’ skills that reflect the intended learning targets and outcomes of the lesson. • Pre-assessment should confirm that the intended learners have the prerequisite skills necessary and that the material in the upcoming lesson wasn’t previously learned or mastered.

13. Instruction Preview • Preview of instruction should provide an overview to students about the educational journey that they will be taking, the activities that will be shared, and the desired goals and outcomes connected with that instructional work.

14. Preview of Instructional Material • Students need to know where they are going during an educational lesson or activity. • Providing a preview helps students receive: • A clear picture of what they will be learning; • How the information and skills fit into the overall educational plan. • A preview usually provides information to learners in these areas: • 1) General content/information to be covered; • 2) Skills or applications to be gained from the new knowledge; • 3) Relevancy and functionality of the new information and skills for the learners.

15. Instructional Approach • Instructional approach reflects the teacher-guided pathway(s) that is taken to deliver students to their intended educational destination and the expected learning outcomes.

16. Instructional Techniques • Whatever instructional techniques are selected by a teacher, evidence-based research and support verifying the effectiveness needs to exist (NCLB requirement) • Assessment as a process is neutral relative to the type of instructional techniques that are used in a classroom. • Instructional-assessment alignment must exist: • What is taught and learned is what must be assessed in some systematic manner. • The ability to individualize and differentiate instruction for students is critical in generating successful learning outcomes. ALL students, at some point, require individualized instruction to be successful in the classroom. • Differentiated instruction is not just for students with identified disabilities

17. Formative Assessment • Formative assessment involves using current student learning evidence and feedback to affirm and improve future learning.

18. Formative Assessment • Formative assessment, or “assessment for learning,” serves an essential and direct purpose: • To provide the learner and instructor with useful feedback regarding students present performance; • To improve or enhance that performance in the future. • This type of assessment is not evaluative, so a “no cost” effect is associated with the performances generated. • Learning and performance mistakes do not alter or directly impact a student’s grades or official standing or status within a class.

19. Formative Assessment • Formative assessment focuses on confirming or corrective instructional feedback to students systematically along the instructional pathway. • Thus, student learning should not veer off the intended pathway • If misdirection does occur, then corrective action can and should immediately take place. • Throughout the process, students remain informed of their progress and what goals still remain within the learning activity.

20. Learning Feedback • Progress feedback is the essential learning return and status check that a student needs when engaged in an instructional activity.

21. Learning Feedback • Critical elements of effective teacher feedback (Van Houten, 1980) that have been identified include: • 1) identifying and addressing a specific aspect of performance; • 2) precise performance feedback; • 3) immediate feedback (as opposed to delayed feedback); • 4) feedback frequency; • 5) positive feedback regardless of performance; • 6) correct modeling of the desired response; • 7) differential feedback with an emphasis on improvement. • Collectively, these practices are recognized as basic and foundational to student learning success.

22. Self-Assessment • Self-assessment is a review process designed to check, monitor, and modify one’s progress in order to reach an intended learning outcome(s).

23. Self-Assessment Defined • Self-assessment involves: • Internal review of an individual’s learning progress; • Recognition of required adjustments and modifications needed based on personal review that need to be made to reach an intended learning target or goal. • With this form of assessment, students learn to self-monitor their own learning progress and to recognize needed learning “corrections.” • Completed during the learning event so students ensure that they attain the intended learning outcomes of the lesson.

24. Self-Assessment Essentials • Conditions and opportunities must be provided in the classroom so students can learn and practice to evaluate and monitor their own learning progress. • Self-assessment is a process that requires effort, practice, and critical review on the learner’s part. • Needs to be a public event • “Public” because one primary way we learn is by watching • By modeling self-assessment as a productive and useful learning tool, teachers can provide direct instruction to their students, as well as provide essential practical experience.

25. Self-Assessment Essentials • Self-assessment is a life skill that can serve learners in many aspects of their lives: • Practical problem-solving; • Can serve as a foundation for learning issues and challenges that students face in and out of the school. • Given the immense complexity of today’s world, we want young people to make “good decisions” and to make the “right choices.” • Self-assessment can help with that mission.

26. Summative Assessment • Summative assessment serves as the formal record and measure of an individual’s accumulated learning and achievement progress.

27. Summative Assessment • Summative assessment or “assessment of learning” represents the formal and traditional measure and evaluation of a student’s accumulated learning. • Within the classroom, summative assessment involves formal measurement and evaluation, often in the form of testing, of student learning at some predetermined point. A chapter test or final exam serve as key classroom examples of this kind of measurement and is designed to evaluate an individual’s acquired learning.

28. Summative Assessment • This form of assessment is important and clearly essential given its basic function of measuring learning gains of students. • However, because of the continuous push for accountability and ever higher test scores, the importance of summative assessment often (and in some cases inappropriately) overshadows the other forms of assessment and important instructional processes.

29. Summative Assessment • It functions as a needed indicator and measure of acquired learning at a particular instructional point. • It is evaluative in nature. • Quality of learning and performance of skills is examined. • This form of assessment will not diminish now or in the future. • Since summative assessment plays an important role in the classroom, it is essential that valid and effective measures be constructed and utilized by teachers.

30. The Assessment Troika • Formative, Summative, and Self-assessment need to be part of the instructional process. • Although configured for different purposes, collectively they provide the opportunity for academic success to be maximized for all learners. • All have value and purpose • Need to be considered and utilized when constructing a classroom assessment system.