Seven Strategies for Formative Assessment

1. Seven Strategies for Formative Assessment

2. Housekeeping • Restroom • Breaks • Use of the library • Lunch • Questions

3. Poll Take out your cellphones!

4. Information • View today’s presentation at • http://tinyurl.com/TSNHSlides • The K-12 Student Sample booklet can be viewed at • http://tinyurl.com/TSNHSamples • The files are large and may take a few minutes to load in your browser.

5. Parking Lot • http://www.todaysmeet.com/TSNH • Access from a laptop, iPad, smartphone, or other wired device. • Use this site to ask questions and make comments. • The site will be up for one year.

6. Learning Target • I can recognize formative assessment techniques and plan for their use in effective classroom instruction.

7. Introduction

8. Formative Assessment • Formal and informal processes teachers and students use to gather evidence for the purpose of improving learning.

9. Summative Assessment • Assessments that provide evidence of studentachievement for the purpose of making a judgement about student competence or program effectiveness.

10. Conditions Required of Formative Assessment • Aligns directly with the content standards to be learned. • Tasks match what has been or will be taught. • Provides information of sufficient detail to pinpoint specific problems, such as misunderstandings, so that teachers can make good decisions about what actions to take, and with whom. • The results are available in time to take action with the students who generated them. • Teachers and students do indeed take action based on the results.

11. Activity 1: • Is It Formative Assessment?

12. Benefits of Formative Assessment • Who is and is not understanding the lesson. • What are this student's strengths and needs? • What misconceptions do I need to address? • What feedback should I give students? • What adjustments do I need to make to instruction? • How should I group students? • What differentiation do I need to prepare? • Student becomes self-directed. • Students develop the capacity to monitor the quality of their own work during production.

13. Strategies • Provide students with a clear and understandable vision of the learning target. • Use examples and models of strong and weak work.

14. Seven Strategies of Assessment for Learning • Where Am I Going? • Strategy 1: Provide students with a clear and understandable vision of the learning target. • Strategy 2: Use examples and models of strong and weak work. • Where Am I Now? • Strategy 3: Offer regular descriptive feedback. • Strategy 4: Teach students to self-assess and set goals. • How Can I Close the Gap? • Strategy 5: Design lessons to focus on learning target or aspect of quality at a time. • Strategy 6: Teach students focused revision. • Strategy 7: Engage students in self-reflection, and let them keep track of and share their learning

15. Poll Results

16. Where am I Going? • Strategy 1: • Clear Learning Targets

17. Video

18. Learning Targets • By the end of this section I want you to be able to understand: • How to give students a clear vision of what you want them to know at the end of the lesson. • How to use examples and models of strong and weak work.

19. Performance Goals that focus on task completion. • Learning goals - goals that describe the intended learning.

20. Learning Goals • Research by Black and Wiliam shows that when students are given learning goals, goals that describe the intended learning, they perform significantly better than students who are given performance goals, goals that focus on task completion.

21. I Can! • We want to make sure our learning goals are written so the students understand them!! It is best to put them in “I Can statements, or My goal is…. or We are learning to…”

22. How to Make Target Clear to Students • Identify the word(s) an/or phrase(s) needing clarification. Which terms will students struggle with? Imagine stating the target in its original form to your class. Then envision the degree of understanding reflected on faces throughout the room. At which word did they lose meaning? • Define the term(s) you have identified. Use a dictionary, your textbook, your state content standards document, or other reference materials specific to your subject. If you are working with a colleague, come to agreement on definitions. • Convert the definition(s) into language your students are likely to understand. • Turn the student-friendly definition into an “I” or a “We” statement: “I am learning to _________”; or “We are learning to ________.” Run it by a colleague for feedback. • Try the definition out with students. Note their response. Refine as needed. • Let students have a go at this procedure occasionally, using learning targets you think they could successfully define and paraphrase. Make sure the definition they concoct is congruent with your vision of the target.

23. Student-Friendly Language: Inference 1. Learning target: “Make inferences from informational/ expository and literary/narrative text” (Grade 2) 2. Word to be defined: inference 3. Definition: conclusion drawn based on evidence and logic 4. Student-friendly definition: a guess based on clues 5. Student-friendly target: I can make inferences from what I read. This means that I can make guesses based on clues when reading. Notice that for second graders, you may not want to define informational/expository and literary/narrative text in the statement. If you want to define those terms, you may want to create separate statements, e.g., “I can read informational text. This means I can read books and articles that tell me facts.” And, “I can read literary text. That means that I can read stories.”

24. ACTIVITY 2: • CREATING A CLEAR LEARNING TARGET

25. Activity 2: Create a Learning Target • Now we are going to do one. Using the standards I have provided, pick one and make a clear learning target as a group. • Record the standard and learning target on the chart paper.

26. Rubrics

27. Formative Assessment • Studies Black and Wiliam (1998) cite as evidence of the impact of formative assessment on student achievement include the practice of teaching students the criteria by which their work would be judged.

28. A good assessment for learning rubric answers for students the question, “Where am I going?”

29. Student-Friendly Rubric • Arter and Chappuis, 2006 suggest this process for developing a student-friendly rubric: • Identify the words and phrases in the adult version that your students might not understand. • Look these words up in the dictionary or in textbooks. Discuss with colleagues the best phrasing choices for your students. • Convert the definitions into wording your students will understand. Sometimes you need to convert one word into one or more phrases or sentences. • Phrase the student-friendly version in the first person. • Try the rubric out with students. Ask for their feedback. • Revise as needed.

30. Match to Targets • The content of your rubric should match your learning targets. When you are considering a rubric for possible use, ask yourself if it includes the dimensions you will be teaching. If not, revise the rubric or find a different one that matches the elements of quality you and your district or state believe are important.

32. Student Work • “The features of excellent work should be so transparent that students can learn to evaluate their own work in the same way that their teachers would.” • Frederikksen & Collins, 1989, quoted in Shepard, 2001, p 1092

33. Examples and Models of Strong and Weak Work • Samples should be: • Anonymous • Find on state or provincial websites • Ask students for permission to use their work as a teaching example and save it for the next year. • Create your own example, inserting errors students typically make.

34. Table Protocol for Analyzing Sample Papers • Students working in small groups can follow this protocol to work through the process of analyzing samples for one or more criteria (traits) on the scoring rubric. They can take turns around the table acting as moderator. • 1. Everyone reads the scoring guide for __________ (specify trait) in this order: The highest level, the lowest level, and then the middle level or levels. • 2. The moderator reads the sample paper aloud. • 3. Everyone else thinks, “Strong or weak for _____________ (specified trait)/” • 4. Everyone (including the moderator) silently and independently reads the high or low level of the rubric corresponding to their own judgments of strong or weak. If the high or low level doesn’t describe the sample well, then read the middle level (or progressing toward the middle) until you find the phrases that accurately describe the quality of the sample. Everyone writes down his or her score. • 5. When all are ready, the moderator conducts the vote and tallies the scores. • 6. The moderator conducts the discussion- “What did you give it and why?” – encouraging the use of the scoring rubric’s language and concepts.

35. Table Talk: Reflecting on Strategies 1 and 2 • How do you plan on communicating the intended learning of a lesson, activity, task, project, or unit to students? • How would you explain the difference between a learning goal and a performance goal?

36. Conclusion • By making the learning targets or goals clear to students from the outset, we build student confidence and increase the chances that students will reach the target.

37. By the end of this section I wanted you to be able to understand: • How to give students a clear vision of what you want them to know at the end of the lesson. • How to use examples and models of strong and weak work. • Did we achieve our goal?

38. Break When you return from break, find a partner from a different grade level and a different school.

39. Break Activity: Think, Pair, Share • Please find a partner from a different school and different grade level that you teach and discuss the following questions: • When do students in my class receive feedback on their progress? • What forms does feedback take in my classroom? • What do I expect students to do with feedback information?

40. Effective Feedback • Where am I now?

41. “Feedback is effective when it consists of information about progress, and/or about how to proceed.” • Hattie and Timperley, 2007, p. 89

42. The presence of feedback does not improve learning. It is the quality that determines its effectiveness.

43. Characteristics of Effective Feedback

44. What is the purpose of intervention feedback?

45. Intervention feedback • Identifying areas in need of improvement and providing enough information so that the student understands what to do next

46. Although many students enjoy praise, if the praise is directed to characteristics of the learner rather than to characteristics of the work or the process used, it appears to be less effective both as a motivator and an agent for improved achievement.

47. Human Barometer: • Grades are essential to teaching and learning.

48. “Assigning grades practice work inhibited further learning and that students ignored comments when they were accompanied by grades.” • Butler, 1988

49. Effective Feedback • Effective feedback occurs during learning.

50. We cultivate this mindset when we offer feedback with opportunities to improve during the learning. • Feedback is most effective in improving achievement if it is delivered while there is still time to act on it, which means before the graded event.