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Class 3: Finding The Optimal Match

"Assessment is today's means of understanding how to modify tomorrow's instruction." (Carol Ann Tomlinson)

The word assessment is derived from the Latin assidere, "to sit beside" and suggests an on-going assessment is a way to connect the curriculum, instructor, and learning. It also suggests a plan of action, linking the teacher to standards and desired outcomes. On-going assessment is a process of accumulating information about student progress to help make instructional decisions that will improve their understandings and achievement levels. On-going assessment and feedback given as a result of it, is vital to the instructional process. Grant Wiggins offers these points that help make the connection:

1. People can't learn without feedback
2. It's not teaching that causes learning. Attempts by the learner to perform cause learning, dependent upon the quality of the feedback and opportunities to use it.
3. A single test of anything is, therefore, an incomplete assessment. We need to know whether the student can use the feedback from the results.
4. We're wasting our time inventing increasingly arcane psychometric solutions to the problem of accountability. Accountability is a function of feedback that's useful to the learner, not to a handful of people who design the measures. The more arcane the measure, the less likely it is that it will cause any useful progress, despite its validity and reliability. Or to say it the other way around, the more self-evident the feedback to the performer, the more likely the gains. (Wiggins, 1997)

Wiggins, Grant (1997, November). "Feedback: How learning Occurs", AAHE Bulletin

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Why do teachers assess?
Teachers suggest that they assess:

• to see if I need to re-teach
• to mark progress
• accountability
• to see when to begin to teach
• to raise the level of instruction and to see where we can go
• to give grades

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It is useful to think of assessment as an ongoing process comprised of preassessment, formative assessment, and summative assessments. Let's take a look at each type.

Preassessment refers to any strategy used to determine what students know about a topic or process before it is taught. Preassessment may also be used to determine a student's interest in an upcoming topic. Preassessment can be used to:

• help teachers plan for instruction
• yield information about options for learning
• allow teachers to anticipate differences
• respect what students already know and are able to do
• acknowledge the role of students' interests
• maximize actual learning time

Some examples of traditional preassessments include:

paper pencil pretests KWL charts portfolio analysis writing samples questionnaires, surveys, checklists discussions questioning

interviews and conferences self evaluations standardized test data every pupil response 3-2-1 teacher observation parent survey drawing related to content

Some examples of non-traditional preassessments include:

• exit cards
• guess box
• picture interpretation
• stand and deliver

Using your capture sheet, select preassessments that are unfamiliar to you, find definitions, and record them.

Formative assessment is a process of accumulating information about students' progress to help make instructional decisions that will improve their understandings and achievement levels. Formative assessment can be used to:

• depict a student's life as a learner
• make instructional adjustments
• build up student information
• serve as an "early warning"
• broaden the assessment lens
• align content with instructional/curricular outcomes
• emulate real life

Listed below are some examples of formative assessment strategies:

1. RSQ at C is a four-part assessment, which can be spread out over several days. Students are asked to:
   • recall and list some of the most important ideas discussed in class today (yesterday, this week).
   • summarize the ideas in one sentence in order to "chunk" the information.
   • pose a question they have.
   • connect a new learning to another learning they have had in the class.
2. Direct Paraphrase, asks students to summarize a key idea, concept or idea. However, they must do so to a (virtual) audience, i.e., an absent peer, a city official, a younger child, etc. When using this strategy stress brevity and ask students to consider word choice.
3. Muddy Water is used to get feedback about a "muddy point," concept, process, or idea, asking students what is not clear to them. Use this strategy with care. You do not want to emphasize the negative, but to use it to help students learn to rate their own understanding of something new. Watch for trends! Too many muddy responses on the same topic may suggest the need to re-teach.
4. A Minute of Your Time has students "chunk" new information quickly. This is a low-risk form of feed back, provides quick feedback, and it asks students to organize their thinking. It asks students to
   • list the two or three most meaningful (interesting, useful, important) things they have learned
   • identify a question they may have.
5. Transfer and Apply asks students to consider what they have learned and how they can apply it to their real lives. It works well when done either individually or in partners. Students are asked to:
   • list some interesting ideas, strategies, techniques learned in class today.
   • write some possible ways to apply this learning at home, in another class, in the community.

Again, using your capture sheet, identify a formative assessment you will try in class.

Summative assessment is used to determine a student's mastery and understanding of information, skills, concepts, and process. Summative assessments:

• should reflect on formative assessments that precede it
• should match the material taught
• may determine a student's exit achievement
• may be tied to a final decision, grade, or report
• should align with instructional/curricular outcomes
• may be a form of alternative assessment

Some examples of summative assessments are:

• tests
• performance tasks
• products/exhibits
• demonstrations
• alternative assessments
• portfolio

Regardless of the assessment you give, be sure that:

1. it will yield information to help you plan instruction
2. it will provide useful feedback for both you and your students
3. it relates to background knowledge on previous experience and instructive
4. it is respectful of al learners

When working on your assignment for this class keep in mind the following questions Carol Ann Tomlinson asks teachers to help ensure that grading practices are productive for all students:

• How do learners benefit from a grading system that reminds everyone that students with disabilities or who speak English as a second language do not perform as well as students without disabilities or for whom English is their native tongue?
• What do we gain by telling our most able learners that they are "excellent" on the basis of a standard and requires modest effort, calls for no intellectual risk, necessitates no persistence, and demands that they develop few academic coping skills?
• In what ways do our current grading practices motivate struggling or advanced learners to persist in the face of difficulty?
• Is there an opportunity for struggling learners to encounter excellence in our current grading practices?
• Is there an opportunity for advanced learners to encounter struggle in our current grading practices?

  Tomlinson, C.A. (2000, September). "Reconcilable differences? Standards-Based Teaching and Differentiation." Educational Leadership, 6-11.