Deb Bannon, Education Consultant Mike Rush, Executive Director The Curriculum Institute June 27, 2011

 To understand the critical links between report cards, grades, assessment, and instruction  To look at each individual links and assess their purpose and meaning  To analyze the effectiveness of each of these and understand where students are in the learning process

How confident are you that the grades students are receiving in your school/district are:  Consistent  Accurate  Meaningful  Supportive of learning

 What should it be? (purpose)  What should it include?  What should it not be?

 Align to standards  Based on rubric, not percentages  Broken down by specific skills

 Grades averaged  Zeros  Behavior, citizenship, or anything not directly related to the Standards

12345 Quality Traditional Grade Card Has very few characteristics of a Standards- based Report Card Incorporates some of the basic tenants of a Standards- based Report Card Contains most of the qualities expected in a Standards- based Report Card Exemplary Standards- based Report Card

Research shows that when curriculum is well articulated and aligned to standards, and the extent to which it is actually covered is monitored, the measurable impact—or effect size—of such strategies is 31 percentile points in student achievement. (Robert Marzano) The alignment between operational curriculum taught by teachers and assessment explains more than 50% of variance in student scores. (National Science Foundation)

 Identify and explain techniques of direct and indirect characterization in fiction. characterization  Explain how an author's voice and/or choice of a narrator affect the characterization and the point of view, tone, plot, mood and credibility of a text.characterization  Determine characters’ traits by what the characters say and think about themselves.

 Is the grade book aligned to the Standards?  What can we say about the student’s ability to hit the target of that Standard?  What don’t we know from looking at this?

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 Do the skills directly relate to the standards?  Have we collected accurate and reliable data for each learning target?

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 Identify and explain techniques of direct and indirect characterization in fiction.  Explain how an author's voice and/or choice of a narrator affect the characterization and the point of view, tone, plot, mood and credibility of a text.  Determine characters’ traits by what the characters say and think about themselves.

 Are the questions aligned to the skills that were taught – and should they be?  How accurately do the questions assess student understanding of characterization?  Does the assessment match the expectation of the standards?

 Analyze each link for the following:  Alignment to the standards  Their ability to provide accurate data  Their connectedness to each other

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12345 Quality Tradition al Grade Card Has very few characteristics of a Standards- based Report Card Incorporate s some of the basic tenants of a Standards- based Report Card Contains most of the qualities Expected in a Standards- based Report Card Exemplary Standards- based Report Card

12345 Quality Tradition al Grade Card Has very few characteristics of a Standards- based Report Card Incorporate s some of the basic tenants of a Standards- based Report Card Contains most of the qualities Expected in a Standards- based Report Card Exemplary Standards- based Report Card Accuracy Alignment is incomplete Complete alignment of Grades, Assessments, Standards, Teaching

 What happens when the content and skills are not a true reflection of the expectation of the standards?  We need to know if all of these pieces are accurate and linked?  We need to know where those students are in the learning continuum. (within and across grade levels)

The creation of the image of imaginary persons in drama, narrative poetry, the novel, and the short story. Characterization generates plot and is revealed by actions, speech, thoughts, physical appearance, and the other characters’ thoughts or words about him.