1. Tests that Challenge and Excite: Creative Assessment for the Secondary Classroom Ross Abrams

2. Where We’ve Been So Far * Assessment can often be misused * We often focus too much on summative assessments * Formative Assessment should help teachers and students learn how to IMPROVE * Good Formative Assessment should be focused on specific learning goals and be “low stakes” * Formative Assessments should inspire creativity, persistence, curiosity, and other key academic and social behaviors * We make assessments more meaningful if we de-emphasis external motivations and encourage risk-taking and instructive failure * Multiple Choice does not need to be simple or boring!

3. What about Summative Assessments? * Formative Assessments should inspire creativity, persistence, curiosity, and other key academic and social behaviors.

4. What has been one of your best assignments – something the kids have loved and that you have loved to? What was it assessing? What made it valuable?

5. Summative Assessments should… * Allow students to show off what they have learned. * Challenge students to use higher order thinking by applying what they have learned to a new context, creating something new, evaluating key information, and/or analyzing the parts of what they have learned. * Be as authentic as possible in audience and/or applicability to the student’s life. * Offer the students choice in how they put together what they have learned. * Have at its core the key skills they have learned but also allow them to bring in their other talents and interests. * provide some opportunity for reflection on the part of the students and the teacher.. * No alarms and no surprises. * Can and should be used to balance out required tests that don’t necessarily inspire creativity, curiosity, etc.

6. QUESTIONS TO ASK ABOUT ANY ASSESSMENT: 1. What will be measured? What is being measured that you have directly taught and what has been measured that you have not taught but expect students to know? 2. How accurately does the assessment predict future success on similar tasks? 3. How much time will it take (for teachers and students)? 4. How will it make students feel? 5. What will students produce? 6. What will teachers produce in response?