Strand III Formative Assessment

Goals of Strand III Formative Assessment Training To explore teachers’ perceptions of assessments and how these perceptions influence current practice To examine how to create a culture within the school that recognizes and values the role of formative assessments in student achievement To investigate ways to develop partnerships with students to provide them with quality feedback in order to increase their achievement

Goals Develop an understanding of formative assessment Identify ways that formative assessment can inform instruction to improve student achievement Understand the difference between formative assessment and summative assessment Identify strategies for incorporating formative assessment into your school improvement plan

Topics Covered At The Summer Institute Assessing For Learning Providing Feedback Checking For Understanding

TeachFirst Webinars Share videos with participants that show formative assessment in action (ex. Checking for understanding; pre-planning higher order thinking questions) Survey of Formative Assessment Indicators – completed by principals prior to the second webinar; these are different from the Indistar indicators Principals and their team’s began developing SMART (Specific, Measureable, Attainable, Relevant, Timed- Out) goals after identifying indicators they were going to focus on based on the survey – will share during January webinar.

TeachFirst Webinars Strategies for checking for understanding included: a. Pre-planned higher order thinking questions b.Allow students to build on their own (and each other’s) answers c.Develop scaffolds to ensure higher order questions and active participation for all students by using prompts.

TeachFirst Webinars Identify the instructional conversations that will be the focus prior to the next webinar with TeachFirst in January a. Checking for understanding b. Providing feedback c. Formative v. Summative assessment

Assessment For Learning Why do we assess students? What are the effects of different kinds of assessment on students and on teachers? What are the challenges of using assessment for accountability? How can teachers use assessments to promote learning?

Formative v. Summative Assessment FormativeSummative Ongoing/dailyPeriodic assessments Part of the instructional processTells us what the student knows or does not know Helps teachers adjust teaching and learning as it happens Part of the grading process Think of it as practice – helps the teacher determine the NEXT STEP State assessments Student involvementBenchmark tests Descriptive feedbackUnit/Chapter tests Think of it as practice – helps the teacher determine the NEXT STEP Gauges student learning at a particular time relative to content standards Checking for understandingCan be a tool to evaluate the effectiveness of the instructional program

Successful Formative Assessment Involves changing perspectives and enhancing current practices by providing relevant, descriptive feedback to students; developing greater student understanding of learning goals; and valuing the quality of student work over quantity (Black & Wiliam, 1998)

Providing Feedback Feedback should be “corrective” in nature. You need to explain to the students what they are doing that is correct and what they are doing that is incorrect. The research has found that simply telling students that their answer on a test is right or wrong has a negative effect on achievement. Providing students with the correct answer has a moderate effect on achievement. The best feedback appears to involve an explanation as to what is accurate and what is inaccurate in terms of student responses. In addition, having students continue to work on a task until they succeed appears to enhance achievement.

Providing Feedback Feedback should be timely. The timing of feedback is critical to its effectiveness. Feedback given immediately after a test-like situation is best. The longer the delay in feedback the less its impact on achievement. Feedback should be specific to a criterion. Feedback needs to reference a specific level of skill or knowledge. This lets the student know exactly where they are relative to specific knowledge or skills.

Providing Feedback Students can effectively provide some of their own feedback. Have the students keep track of their own learning as it occurs. (For example, keeping charts of their progress towards a specific goal.) Once students have a clear understanding of learning goals, they can then understand where they stand in relation to those goals and take some ownership of how to close the distance between the two (Dylan & Wiliam, 1998)

Checking For Understanding 1. Avoid yes/no questions ◦ How many times have you heard a teacher ask the class, “Does this make sense?” ◦ Why is this not a good question? ◦ How can the teacher “check for understanding” to see if what he/she has taught actually makes sense? ◦ Teachers need to ask “pointed” questions when checking for understanding. More on questioning later.

Checking For Understanding 2. Have students put the information into their own words (oral language and/or writing) ◦ Paraphrasing/Retelling ◦ Summarizing ◦ Exit cards – what are three things that you learned in class today. ◦ Read/write/pair/share ◦ Repeat back – think of an airline pilot

Checking For Understanding 3. Graphic Organizers ◦ There are six common patterns used to organize information (Marzano, 2001) a. Descriptive pattern organizers b. Time sequence organizers c. Process/Cause-Effect organizers d. Episode patterns e. Generalization pattern organizers f. Concept pattern organizers g. Pictographs

Checking For Understanding 4. Response Cards/Dry Erase Boards/Hand Signals 5. Think/pair/share

Formative Assessment and Remediation Effective remediation cannot occur without formative assessment. During the 1970’s, Benjamin Bloom referred to formative assessments as “learning tools” and “progress checks”. He emphasized the need for regular progress checks to provide feedback to students that would be followed with corrective actions to address individual student needs.

Understanding Joe PRODUCTS: tests, quizzes, projects Observation Notes Reflection on student/teacher communication CONFERENCES: Student/teacher Parent/teacher Student/parent/teacher SOL Tests PALS

School Improvement Plan Minimum of five indicators One indicator from Classroom Assessment (IIB01, IIB02, IIB03, IIB04, IIB05) One indicator from Periodic Assessment (IID02, IID03, IID06, IID07, IID08, IID09, IID10, IID11) The School Leadership Team will identify three additional indicators.

School Improvement Plan The focus is on using pre-tests to identify gaps and inform instruction v. giving a pre-test and then teaching the unit the way it was designed without using the data from the pre-test. Remember that the goal of the formative assessment training throughout the year is to make formative assessment a part of daily instruction in every classroom in your school. As you select the indicators, you will want to develop tasks that address the three areas of formative assessment that were emphasized during the Summer Institute: Assessment for Learning; Checking for Understanding; and Providing Feedback.

TeachFirst Training Modules All Strand III schools are expected to provide training to their faculty throughout the year using the four TeachFirst training modules. Checking For Understanding Feedback Assessment For Learning Uncovering Misconceptions Developing Self- Regulating Learners

Formative Assessments Designed to inform Pinpoint the skills and concepts that have been learned well Identify students’ individual learning difficulties Must be part of an ongoing effort to help students learn Bloom, B.S., Hastings, J.T., & Madaus, G.F. (1971). Handbook on formative and summative evaluation of student learning.

Garrison & Ehringhaus (2003) “When a comprehensive assessment program balances formative and summative student learning/achievement information, a clear picture emerges of where a student is relative to learning targets and standards. Students should be able to articulate this shared information about their own learning. The more we know about individual students as they engage in the learning process, the better we can adjust instruction to ensure that all students continue to achieve.”

The Rest of the Story... formative assessments alone do little to improve student learning or teaching quality. What really counts is what happens after the assessments. Just as regularly checking your blood pressure does little to improve your health if you do nothing with the information gained, what matters most with formative assessments is how students and teachers use the results. Unfortunately, many educators today overlook this vital aspect of formative assessment. And by missing ‘the rest of the story,’ they fail to produce the most valuable benefits of the formative assessment process. (Guskey, 2007, p. 28)