Goal Understand the impact on student achievement from effective use of formative assessment, and the role of principals, teachers, and students in that process

How do you define assessment? What is the purpose? What are characteristics of good assessments? How are you using assessment to improve teaching and learning in your classroom?

3 3 Read classroom vignettes individually and fill out assessment chart. Discuss your answers with your table mates.

Think about the classroom vignettes and your conversations with your table mates: How do we define formative assessment? What characteristics help us decide if assessment is formative or summative? Who participates in the formative assessment process?

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6 Inside the Black Box Raising Standards Through Classroom Assessment Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam King’s College London School of Education This article looks at education from a systems engineering perspective. This study examines 250 educational articles or chapters and concludes that standards of achievement can be raised through ongoing formative assessment. What is the research behind Formative Assessment?

7 7 Students make significant learning gains – especially lower achieving students Teachers tend to be more reflective about their practice and more in touch with their students’ learning The process can improve student achievement more than other learning interventions including one-on-one tutoring, reduced class size or cooperative learning Black and Wiliam (1998) and others (e.g., Shepard et al., 2005)

8 8 “...across a range of different school subjects, in different countries, and for learners of different ages, the use of formative assessment appears to be associated with considerable improvements in the rate of learning.” “… it seems reasonable to conclude that use of formative assessment can increase the rate of student learning by somewhere between 50 and 100 percent.” “This suggests that formative assessment is likely to be one of the most effective ways—and perhaps the most effective way—of increasing student achievement.”

Practice in a classroom is formative to the extent that evidence about student achievement is elicited, interpreted, and used by teachers, learners, or their peers, to make decisions about the next steps in instruction that are likely to be better, or better founded, than the decisions they would have taken in the absence of the evidence that was elicited. ~Black and Wiliam (2009)

Three Fundamental Changes to Practice to Increase Student Achievement Increased descriptive feedback, reduced evaluative feedback Increased student self-assessment Increased opportunities for students to communicate their evolving learning during the teaching Source: Adapted with permission from R. Stiggins, J. Arter, J. Chappuis, and S. Chappuis, Classroom Assessment for Student Learning: Doing It Right—Using It Well (Portland, OR: ETS Assessment Training Institute, 2004), p. 13. (Black & Wiliam, 1998)

Where are we now? Where are we going? How do we close the gap?

Assessment for Learning Five Key Strategies

Read part of Content then Process- a chapter from Ahead of the Curve. Begin at page 189 and read through page 195. Brainstorm techniques for each Key Strategy Record the techniques you brainstorm for each strategy and share with the rest of the group

14 Formative Assessment Overview five-key-elements-theory-and-practice/ five-key-elements-theory-and-practice/

Teacher clarity and explanation of intention ranked as the 8th (of 138) most important contributor to learning. Hattie (2009) Clarifying Learning Intentions Sharing Criteria for Success

Criteria is what is important or what counts in an activity or task. Students of all ages need a clear understanding of the criteria by which, AND the level to which, their work will be assessed. Students can understand the differences in four levels of performance, not 100 (which is what giving a percentage is). Clarifying Learning Intentions Sharing Criteria for Success

Using previously collected samples of a task (models at each level of performance), lead the class in creating a rubric, this process will build ownership and clarity of expectation. Build a rubric for tasks that the students will do repeatedly, that way you can use the same rubric each time and students will know from the previous assessment what they need to do to improve the next time. Clarifying Learning Intentions Sharing Criteria for Success

Questions can be used to find out what students know (so you know what you have to do to help them) or to help them think Involve students more in asking their own questions. Engineering Effective Discussions, Questions, and Learning Tasks that Elicit Evidence of Learning

19 Give learners a brief time to think or talk with a peer before inviting responses. If a student says “I don’t know”, say you’ll go back to them after two more people; if they say they still don’t know, ask them to state their favorite response from the others and tell why. 20 Engineering Effective Discussions, Questions, and Learning Tasks that Elicit Evidence of Learning

20 Good teaching is more a giving of right questions than a giving of right answers. Josef Albers 21

Feedback should provide information to the learner regarding where they are, where they are going, and how to close the gap. /expertspeakers/feedbackonlearningdylanwilia m.asp /expertspeakers/feedbackonlearningdylanwilia m.asp 22 Providing Feedback That Moves The Learner Forward

Makes students active players Is strongly connected to motivation and engagement One way students demonstrate ownership is when they show and talk about their own learning with others Develops students’ communication and interpersonal skills, critical thinking skills, and metacognitive skills Peer and Self Assessment

Peer and Self Assessment Teach students to use language (criteria and descriptors) directly from the rubric Language students use should be descriptive rather than evaluative Talk with learners about the importance of receiving feedback from themselves and from their peers to support learning Establish a pattern for peer feedback such as, “identify 2 or 3 strengths before giving one suggestion for improvement”