Focusing assessment on concepts, not trivia A common “accommodation” is … Allowing students with cognitive disability to take “concept free” tests that focus on regurgitating facts What’s the point of memorizing a bunch of facts if you don’t understand the “why” behind them? What not make the accommodation focus on increasing the learn-ability of the concepts?

Critical decisions for designing appropriate assessment of content knowledge: 1.What knowledge do you expect students to know? 2.What are the dimensions of the kind of knowledge you expect of students? 3.How will students demonstrate that they have acquired that knowledge?

Critical decisions for designing appropriate assessment of content knowledge: 1. What knowledge do you expect students to know?

2. What are the dimensions of the kind of knowledge you expect of students? Gist & details? Examples & non-examples? Relationships to other ideas being learned? Relate to the real-world?

3. HOW will students demonstrate their knowledge? RecognitionProduction Discriminate correct from incorrect (true / false) Select from options (multiple choice)

3. HOW will students demonstrate their knowledge? RecognitionProduction Fill in blanks Oral explanation Written explanation Produce visual representation Performance / demonstration

FOCUS ASSESSMENT ON BIG IDEAS, NOT TRIVIA Know what you want students to know about the concept Gist Can the student summarize what the idea is about? Critical features What specific details are essential to know in order to understand the big idea? Contextual knowledge How does the idea show up? How does it affect things? What does society do to prevent or enhance its occurrence?

Implications … Need to explicitly teach and assess relational understandings of core ideas An example would be using think-sheets in lieu of traditional test questions