Understanding the Process and the Product Professional Development Spring, 2012

Today’s Focus: Assessment Your professional development today focuses on a portion of Task 1 (planning for assessment) and on Task 3 (assessing student learning). We are approaching it this way because the backward design approach requires that we plan for learning and assessment before we engage the students in learning. It is important to remember that assessment is clearly essential to all 4 TPA tasks. Therefore, we will begin by looking at how assessment is an integral to each part of the TPA.

Task 1: Planning Focused, Sequenced, Instruction What does this have to do with assessment? You are going to begin with a big picture idea, not a unit of instruction, but a part of that unit, something you can teach in 3-5 sequential lessons/hours. Your first task for today: Identify a topic you know well and anticipate you may teach in the next 6 weeks.

Task 1 cont’d What is your big picture idea? Share it with someone else in your content area. Does it seem too big or too small? Discussion

Pre-Assessment Now that you have your big idea, what do you think you will need to pre-assess? How will you pre-assess? That pre-assessment must guide your planning. Share your idea of pre-assessment with someone else. Discussion. Comments/questions.

Writing Learning Objectives Based on your “big picture” idea that will be referred to as the “learning segment”, write 5-8 objectives. Make sure your objectives are specific and include a situation, task, and criterion. Consider the various levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy. Work with someone else if you would like. Or, work on your own and share your objectives. Discussion. Questions/comments.

Task 1: Planning for Assessment What types of formative assessments could you use to monitor student learning (formal or informal)? What types of information will the assessments give you regarding student learning? Are your assessments directly related to your “big idea”? Are you assessments directly related to your learning objectives? Do the verbs match? Brainstorm with others. Discussion. Questions/comments.

What are embedded assessments? Embedded assessments are normally formative assessments used during the learning process and designed to provide students with feedback about areas in which they need to achieve additional learning so that they have an opportunity to correct or improve their final product. Selected response assessments Enter or exit slips Choral responses Performance assessments Personal communication as assessment Share your ideas of possible formative assessments you could use for the learning objectives you just wrote.

Determining Assessment Criteria: What is considered mastery? Look at your standards/benchmarks. What level of accomplishment should a student achieve during the 3-5 lessons on the embedded assessments to ensure learning is occurring? If students don’t meet criterion level performance what remediation do you have planned? Think about these during the planning process.

What could this plan look like? Day 1: Pre-test, content, exit slip. Day 2: Content, informal questioning, exit slip. Day 3: Content, choral responding, exit slip. Day 4: Content, concept map, homework. Day 5: Content, exam. Or: Day 1: Quiz, content, explain project. Day 2: Entry slip, content, part 1 of project. Day 3: Content, part 2 of project. Day 4: Content, finish project. Day 5: Present project to class.

Task 2: Engaging Students & Supporting Learning As with TPA Task 1, you will get more in-depth professional development in the weeks to come. However, you need to understand how assessment fits in this task as well. Your assessments (both informal and formal) are embedded within your learning segment. At times it may (and should) be hard to distinguish between engaging and assessing because it is so much a part of the teaching/learning process. During engagement, formative (formal and informal) assessments are used to monitor student learning and modify instruction as necessary to guide learning.

Task 3: Assessing Student Learning This task asks you to assess student achievement, diagnose student learning strengths and needs, and inform further instruction. You must provide evidence of your ability to: Develop evaluation criteria that are aligned with the learning segment, standards, and objectives. Analyze student performance on an assessment in relation to student needs and the identified learning objectives. Provide feedback to students. Use the analysis of student performance to identify next steps in instruction. How do you document and make sense of what students have learned?

Develop evaluation criteria aligned with the big idea: Criteria are well-defined and reflect the depth of understanding of the stated standards/objectives for the learning segment. What does this mean? The evaluation criteria are performance indicators that you use to assess student learning. They can be represented in various ways (a rubric, a rating scale, a list of how and why points will be awarded within a project). What is “A” work, what is “mastery”, what is “proficient”? Share your ideas. Comments/questions?

Assess Student Learning: Select an assessment from the learning segment that you will use to evaluate your students’ developing knowledge and skills. The assessment should reflect the work of individuals, not groups. The assessment should give both you and the students a sense of how well they are progressing toward learning the stated objectives. State the evaluation criteria. Collect student work.

Analyze Student Learning: Analyze student performance to identify patterns in understanding within the class. Go back to your contextual factors (pretest), and your identified learning objectives. Analyze student performance based on each of these. You must cite the specific standards/objectives from the learning segment plans that are measured by your assessment. You will analyze the class, and then a “sample” of individuals (specific to your TPA). Review specifics of TPA’s here. Discussion. Questions/comments.

Providing Feedback to Guide Further Learning: Provide feedback to students. What does this mean? You must document the feedback you give to students (written feedback on a written assessment, verbal feedback on an auditory assessment). Feedback should address individual student needs related to the learning objectives. You must also show what opportunities students had to apply the feedback to improve their understanding of the content (within the learning segment or at a later time). Share how you might do this with a partner. Discussion. Comments/questions?

Using Assessment to Inform Instruction: Use the analysis to identify next steps in instruction for the whole class and for individual students. What does this mean? You must describe where you will go now with these students. Consider what you know about your students and the effectiveness of your instruction when designing next steps. These next steps may include a specific instructional activity or other strategies to support or extend continued learning of the objectives. These may be individualized based on your analysis. Share what this might look like with your partner. Discussion. Comments/questions?

Evidence of Academic Language: You may be asked to provide evidence for academic language in Task 2 through your video clip, or through student work samples analyzed in this task. Recommendation: address evidence of academic language in this section if your evidence of the key language demand is well represented in the student work samples.

What do you need to DO for Task 3: Look at your TPA. What do I need to do. Read this section. Ask questions.

Representing Student Data: Analyze the student work from the assessment to identify patterns in understanding across the class. How can you do this? TPA states that it can be presented in narrative or visually. (My preference as an assessor is to see data represented visually). Brainstorm ideas of how assessment data could be represented. Discussion. Questions/comments.

Data Representation Exercise: Students have been asked to complete a project that they will present to the class as a culminating assessment to this learning segment. You have designed a rubric that has 5 characteristics you will use (based on your learning objectives) to assess the students. You have 4 categories on your rubric (1=needs improvement, 2=satisfactory progress, 3=proficient, 4=outstanding. You have 12 students in the class. Give them a hypothetical grade for each characteristic then represent it visually. Example: student 1 received a 3, 3, 4, 3, and 4.

What do you need to SUBMIT for Task 3: Look at your TPA. What do I need to submit? Read this section. Share your ideas. Discussion. Comments/Questions?

Assessing your TPA: Review of Assessment Rubrics