Assessment That Transforms Teaching Formative Assessment Assessment That Transforms Teaching

What is Formative Assessment? “Formative assessment is a planned process in which assessment-elicited evidence of students’ status is used by teachers to adjust their ongoing instructional procedures or by students to adjust their current learning tactics.”

Formative Assessment A Process A Planned Process An instructional strategy for using assessment-elicited evidence to enhance teachers’ instruction and improve students’ learning.

Formative Assessment Appraising the worth of a ‘yet malleable’ instructional program. Formative assessment focuses on improving the way teachers are teaching something and the way students are learning something.

Formative Assessment A ‘test’ may be used in either a formative or summative manner. It is the USE of a given test result that helps us decide whether it is formative or summative. What does this statement mean? Can you give an example?

Formative Assessment Periodic: Collection of Assessment-Based Evidence, more formal, focused on significant curricular aims. Example: Bench Mark Testing, mini-quizzes, etc. On-Going: Daily, on-going assessment of student understanding and effectiveness of lessons and teaching strategies on the part of the teacher or student.

Formative Assessment As an instructor, you choose how to use formative assessment. My perspective: Best formative assessment employs a combination of ‘bench mark’ or more formal checks on student acquisition of important concepts in combination with the on-going daily assessment of student understanding, engagement and the adjustment of instruction to meet ongoing needs.

Research-Based Practice Black and William Research Review (1998): Review of 10 years worth of empirical research dealing with classroom assessment. Identified 680 research studies. Included 250 reports in their meta-analysis. “ Research showed conclusively that formative assessment does improve learning.” (Black & Williams, 1998, p. 61)

Learning Progression as Frameworks Target Curricular Aim Subskill A Enabling Knowledge A Enabling Knowledge B

Learning Progression: Learning progressions are not unerringly accurate. Learning progressions usually represent the best estimate that educators have made about what things students must master on their way to mastery of a significant curricular aim. Most learning progressions undergo modifications as they are developed and used. Even the best learning progression may ‘flop’ for a few. For those students modifications will be needed.

Example of a Learning Progression: Backward Design Unit Reading for under-standing of BD Concepts (1) Review of State Core Curriculum used for BD Unit Design (2) Practice: BD Lesson Plan (3) Rough Draft: Framework (4) Plans (5) Formative Assessmts (6).....

Learning Progression Steps: 1: Acquire a thorough understanding of the target curricular aim. 2: Identify all requisite subskills and bodies of enabling knowledge. Ask: What must students be able to know and do to be successful in mastering target curricular aim. (Knowledge or Process)

Learning Progression Steps: 3) Determine the measurability of each preliminarily identified building block. 4) Arrange all the building blocks in an instructionally sensible sequence.

Learning Progressions: Different for Different Disciplines Knowledge Based: What over-arching concepts? What smaller (or sub-set) concepts? Performance Based: What over-arching outcome or product? What smaller (or sub-set) skills or understandings?

Levels of Formative Assessment: Level 1: Teachers’ Instructional Assessments: Teachers collect assessment-elicited evidence to use when deciding whether or adjust their current or immediately upcoming instructional activities. Level 2: Students’ Learning Tactic Adjustments: A second level for formative assessment takes place when students use assessment-elicited evidence about their own skills or knowledge to decide whether to adjust how they’re trying to learn something.

Levels of Formative Assessment: Level 3: Classroom Climate Shift In melding Level 1 formative assessment and Level 2 formative assessment, a fundamental transformation occurs so that a traditional, comparison-oriented classroom becomes a learning-dominated classroom in which the chief purpose of classroom assessment is not to grade student, but rather to improve the quality of both teacher instruction and student learning.

Levels of Formative Assessment: Level 4: Schoolwide Implementation In this level of implementation, the expanded use of formative assessment is promoted at the school or district level – through professional development and professional learning communities. Level 4 assessment can be employed to encourage teachers’ use of the other three levels of formative assessment.

Levels of Formative Assessment: 1 Level One: Teacher Instructional Adjustments: Select assessments; make instructional adjustment. 2 Level Two: Student Learning Tactic Adjustments: Consider assessments; adjust learning tactics. 3 Level Three: Classroom Climate Shift: Responsibility for learning shifts. 4 Level Four: Schoolwide Implementation: PLC’s; Professional Development.

Formative Assessment and Teaching: Formative Assessment is not the same thing as teaching. It is an assessment-rooted process capable of making teaching / student learning better. Classroom-Based process. Different for each teacher, classroom, and discipline. Focus on ‘adjustment decisions’ – how should instruction be adjusted to better meet the needs of specific learners?

How Do We Do This? Base teaching on thoughtful learning progressions. Use best teacher decision-making. Process will be specific to your discipline. Bench-mark Testing: works well for concept-based teaching disciplines: math, sciences, etc. On-going Performance Measures: works well for performance-based teaching disciplines: arts, music, technology, English, Foreign Language, FCS, etc. Teacher Designed. Not easy to do well.