1. Aligning Unit Tests and Backwards Instruction Planning
Virginia Department of Education
Office of School Improvement
Aligning Unit Tests and Backwards Instruction Planning
Welcome to the Virginia Department of Education, Office of School Improvement webinar on Aligning Unit Tests and Planning using Backwards Design.

2. Why do we use summative assessment?
Is assessment something we do only after instruction has been completed in order to give a grade… Or a way to outline beforehand the goals for students to demonstrate mastery of essential knowledge and skills?
Think for a moment about why you use summative assessment.
Assessment can be just a way to give students a grade after instruction has been completed…
But the most powerful assessments are those where we have outlined beforehand the goals to assess students’ mastery of the essential knowledge and skills. The assessment, therefore, becomes our foundation for what we want students to know and be able to do from this particular unit, and we use it as a guide to plan all other experiences for the unit.
Wiggins, G. P., & McTighe, J. (1998). Understanding by design. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

3. Stages in the Backwards Design Plan
1. Identify desired results.
2. Determine acceptable evidence.
3. Plan learning experiences and instruction.
Thinking this way is called “Backwards Design;” instead of starting with the lesson planning and then designing the test right before we give it, we start with the desired results for the unit—what students will know and be able to do—then determine the acceptable evidence to demonstrate their competency, and only then do we plan the learning experiences and instruction.
Wiggins, G. P., & McTighe, J. (1998). Understanding by design. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

4. Benefits of Backwards Design
Clarifies learning goals for both students and teachers
Results in sharply defined teaching
Increases student performance
Why use backwards design instead of the more traditional method of planning teaching and then planning testing? Well, the authors of Understanding by Design, the foremost book on backwards design in educational planning, cite three key benefits they have found when working with divisions:
Backwards design clarifies the learning goals for both teachers and students
These learning goals help to choose the most effective teaching strategies
And this strong alignment between what is taught and the outcomes sought has been shown to increase student performance.
Wiggins, G. P., & McTighe, J. (1998). Understanding by design. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

5. Identify desired results for the unit.
Stage One
Identify desired results for the unit.
Let’s start with Stage One: Identifying desired results for the unit.

6. Why is this unit important?
“What you’re trying to do is make it more likely that by design, you’re more goal-focused, more effective. … What we see over and over again is that there’s a misalignment between short-term plans and actions and long-term goals.”
Having a goal statement for the unit is a key piece to planning and teaching. It helps to focus the teaching, makes it easier to choose from a wide array of effective instructional strategies, and can help determine what to assess and how to assess it.
Avenues Workshop Series. (2013, March). Understanding by Design with Grant Wiggins. Retrieved from

7. What are Enduring Understandings?
Worth being familiar with
Important to know and do
Enduring Understanding
One way to set goals is to determine the Enduring Understandings. Quite simply, there is a finite amount of time during a school day and a finite amount of resources; therefore, we ask ourselves: What about this unit is an enduring understanding— something that students will need to know or be able to do beyond K-12 education? Then: What is important for students to know and do, perhaps for a future grade level or later in this same course? And lastly: What from this unit is worth being familiar with? Those Enduring Understandings should be our goals for the unit, and the other knowledge and skills should help to support students attaining the Enduring Understandings.
Wiggins, G. & McTighe, J. (1998). Understanding by design. Alexandria, Virginia: Association for Supervision of Curriculum Development.

8. Essential Questions Get at matters of deep understanding
Provocative and multi-layered
Reveal richness and complexities of a subject
A goal for the unit may be for students to explore one or more Essential Questions. These Essential Questions are one way to get at the deep understanding of the knowledge and skills that we expect students to learn. The questions are meant to be provocative and multi-layered in order to reveal the richness and complexities of a subject. They are questions that should stay with a student, that do not necessarily have a right or wrong answer, and that can be looked at from multiple perspectives.
Wiggins, G. & McTighe, J. (1998). Understanding by design. Alexandria, Virginia: Association for Supervision of Curriculum Development.

9. Examples High School Virginia & US History Grade 5 Writing
Unit: Revolutionary Period
Grade 5 Writing
Unit: Written Expression
In a perfect world where we had an extended period of time, we would be able to show examples for many grade levels and subject areas. Unfortunately, however, our time today is limited, so we are going to use two example subject areas to show the process from start-to-finish. Let’s therefore look at goal statements for a high school Virginia & US History unit on the American Revolution, and a Grade 5 English unit on Written Expression.

10. Example: Revolutionary Period Unit
Essential Question
Enduring Understanding
The American Revolution was inspired by ideas concerning natural rights and political authority, and its successful completion affected people and governments throughout the world for many generations.
How do ideas about rights of people and their relationship to their rulers influence government?
Essential Questions and Enduring Understandings can be specific to the unit or general themes that recur across the curriculum. Units may have more than one Essential Question and Enduring Understanding; for the purposes of this webinar, we will only look at one of each for our example unit. For this Revolutionary Period unit, the Essential Question connects to a broad theme that can be revisited many times throughout history courses—in this case, people’s relationships to their rulers. It also holds relevance for our government today, and is a question students could ask about their own lives.
The Enduring Understanding, on the other hand, is more specific to the American Revolution. In this case, whereas the Essential Question connected the unit to history as a whole by using a common theme, the Enduring Understanding focuses specifically on why this particular period in American history matters, both as a catalyst for other historical events and for Americans today. This Enduring Understanding came specifically from the Virginia Standards of Learning Curriculum Framework, and the Essential Question was inspired by phrases from the Essential Knowledge and Skills.

11. Example: Written Expression
Essential Question
Enduring Understanding
Good writers use precise, descriptive vocabulary and vary sentence structure as they revise for clarity.
How do we develop a tone that supports the purpose of our writing?
Now let’s look at an example of an Essential Question and Enduring Understanding for the grade 5 writing unit on Written Expression. This Essential Question gets at the importance of written expression—we use it to create a tone that supports the purpose of our writing. The Enduring Understanding, on the other hand, explains HOW we develop that tone: through precise, descriptive vocabulary and varying sentence structure. Again, this Enduring Understanding came from the 5th grade Curriculum Framework.

12. Determine acceptable evidence.
Stage Two
Determine acceptable evidence.
Once we have determined our goals for the students, we move on to Stage Two: Determining acceptable evidence.

13. Alignment & Content Coverage
Our goal for this presentation is to demonstrate a process that you can use to create an assessment that is at the Full Implementation level.
Here we see the elements for the first basic component: Alignment & Content Coverage. With this Basic Component, we are looking to see whether the assessment aligns with the Standards of Learning and the Curriculum Framework, whether it aligns with the daily objectives from the classroom’s Taught Curriculum, and whether there are a sufficient number of items for each standard to make an inference about students’ mastery. Assessments that are at Full Implementation are going above and beyond by allowing the specific concepts and skills in the standards and objectives to drive the format of the assessment itself. (We’ll look at an example of this in later in the presentation). Moreover, they are using an actual plan in order to determine the item type and number of questions.
You will notice the Stop Sign at the bottom of Alignment & Content Coverage. Because this is our alignment piece, if we do not have basic alignment, we cannot continue evaluating quality of the overall assessment.

14. Basic Component: Consistency & Fairness
Let’s review our last Basic Component for assessments: Consistency & Fairness. The elements listed help to ensure that our assessments are as fair and consistent as possible.

15. Steps for Creating a Standards-Based Unit Assessment
Subtask 1
Determine which standards, knowledge, and skills will be assessed
Subtask 2
Unpack standards, knowledge, and skills for content and cognitive level.
Subtask 3
Determine how each standard, knowledge and/or skill be will assessed
Subtask 4
Design the assessment
We are going to divide the Determining Acceptable Evidence Stage into 4 subtasks.
Subtask 1: Determine which standards, knowledge, and skills will be assessed.
Subtask 2: Unpack standards, knowledge, and skills for content and cognitive level.
Subtask 3: Determine how each standard, knowledge, and/or skill will be assessed.
Subtask 4: Design the assessment.
In order to complete these subtasks, we will be using a plan called a Table of Specifications.
Table of Specifications

16. Tips for Success Do this BEFORE teaching the unit
Work in collaborative groups if possible
Use all relevant Standards of Learning documents (SOLs, Curriculum Framework, Blueprints, Released Test Items)
This process is most successful when:
It is done BEFORE the unit is taught; you’ll see how the Table of Specifications can be use to effectively plan lessons at the appropriate cognitive level.
Educators work together in collaborative groups. Creating a truly aligned, fair, and consistent assessment can take a lot of work and energy. Having more than one brain to bounce ideas off of, and more than one pair of eyes to review the assessment, can help tremendously.
Using all the relevant Standards of Learning documents will help to create assessments that are more tightly aligned with the written and taught curriculum.

17. Choosing Where to Start
Review SOL assessment data to determine the areas of greatest need for the largest number of students
Use the Table of Specifications process with those units first
Expand to other units as time and personnel resources allow
Before we jump in, it’s important to note that while using a Table of Specifications typically has great effects on aligning the taught and assessed curriculum and therefore increases in student achievement, it can be a process that takes time and energy, especially the first time it is completed. Divisions and schools might not have time, especially in the beginning, to do this process for every unit assessment. We therefore suggest that divisions and schools:
Review SOL assessment data to determine the areas of greatest need for the largest number of students
Use the Table of Specifications process with those units first
Expand to other units as time and personnel resources allow

18. Subtask 1: Determine which standards will be assessed
Now let’s take a look at Subtask 1.

19. The Shift in Choosing Content and Skills for Assessments
Assessing what is IMPORTANT for them as students
Assessing what is EASY for us as teachers
In order to effectively implement backwards design, we need to shift the way that we think about assessments. In the past, we have often chosen WHAT to assess in terms of content and skills by what is easy for us as teachers to assess. We have used textbook-provided materials, which may or may not be properly aligned, or a test that has been passed down throughout the years, or only included those standards that are easy to test.
The shift, however, is that while feasibility and utility are important, they cannot be all that is considered when choosing or creating assessments for students. Instead, we need to start assessing what is important for our students to know and be able to do. We can then use the data from these assessments to not only provide students with substantial feedback that will be useful to them in future learning, but determine where we need to remediate so that students are successful on the standardized assessments, in future courses, and in life.

20. Materials Needed Use division written curriculum (when available)
Standards of Learning documents
Standards of Learning (required)
Curriculum Framework (required)
Blueprints (recommended)
Before creating the unit assessment, you will need to gather the following materials:
The division’s written curriculum, if available
The Standards of Learning documents available for your grade level and subject area to include the Standards of Learning themselves, the Curriculum Framework, and the Blueprints
It’s important to point out here that the point of this presentation is not to tell divisions and teachers WHAT they must put on the unit assessments, but give them a process for making that purposeful determination themselves.

21. Table of Specifications
PLACEHOLDER FOR VIDEO OF WORD DOCUMENT
One of the best tools that a teacher can use to both unpack the standards and build an assessment is called a Table of Specifications. It’s like an architectural blueprint that we will use to strategically build our assessment and then plan instruction around it.
We have provided templates for Tables of Specifications for English, Mathematics, Science, and Social Studies to accompany this video. The formats and terms for the curriculum framework for each subject area differ slightly, and each template has been built to reflect the set-up of the curriculum framework.
For this presentation, we’re going to look specifically at a Table of Specifications for our high school social studies Revolutionary period unit and our English writing unit. As you can see, here we have the blank social studies table of specifications template. At the top, it has the key for the different types of items, a place to put the each standard that will be covered on the assessment, and a table underneath the standard to include the Essential Understandings, Knowledge, and the Essential Skills for that standard. For the last column, we will determine the item type based on the cognitive level, the item number on the test, and the point value for each item.
We will fill out all of these columns over the various Subtasks. In this particular step, we start simply with the standards themselves. We’re going to go to the Standards of Learning document, and copy and paste the relevant standards for the unit into the Table of Specifications in the standards boxes. Determining which standards we should include in the unit for a content like social studies is typically not too difficult; the standards tend to be written in the same way and order that they are taught.
In order to fill out the Table of Specifications for this task, we simply copy and paste the standards into the standards box. We put each bullet in its own box, because for Social Studies, each bullet comes with its own Essential Understandings, Knowledge, and Skills.
Now let’s look at an already started Table of Specifications for a fifth grade English assessment. The standards have already been chosen for this particular subject. Unlike social studies, English units do not always focus on all the bullets in one standard in a discrete unit, but rather spiral back through various standards and bullets throughout the year. For this particular unit, we’ve chosen to focus on standards 5.7f, g, and h, which all have to do with the written expression in a piece of writing. You can see that for English, the Essential Understandings, Knowledge, Skills, and Processes are not separated out. Only the social studies have been separated that way; we’ll talk about why in Subtask 2.

22. Subtask 2: Unpack standards, knowledge, and skills for content and cognitive level.
Now let’s move on to Subtask 2: Unpacking standards, knowledge, and skills for content and cognitive level.

23. Unpacking Process
Understanding how to use a taxonomy to unpack a standard, knowledge, skill, or process:
Review the overarching standard in order to determine the CONTEXT.
Determine the CONTENT (what students must know)
Determine the COGNITIVE LEVEL. (Bloom’s Taxonomy, Revised): What students must be able to do with what they know.
Unpacking standards, knowledge, skills, or processes should take place at both the division and the school level. This process involves three steps. First, we must review the overarching standard in order to determine the context in which students are learning the essential knowledge and skills. Second, we will determine the content students must learn. Lastly, we will determine the cognitive level using Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy.

24. Bloom’s Taxonomy (Revised)
Remember
Recalling previously learned information
Understand
Demonstrating an understanding of the facts; explaining ideas or concepts
Apply
Applying knowledge to actual situations
Analyze
Breaking information into parts to explore understandings and relationships
Evaluate
Justifying a decision or course of action
Create
Generating new ideas, products, or ways of viewing things
There are six cognitive levels in Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy. In order from lowest order of thinking to highest order of thinking, they are:
Remember, in which the learner recalls previously learned information.
Understand, in which the learner demonstrates an understanding of the facts, such as explaining ideas or concepts
Apply, in which the learner uses knowledge in actual situations
Analyze, in which the learner breaks information into parts to explore understandings and relationships
Evaluate, in which the learner justifies a decision or a course of action
And Create, in which a learner generates new ideas, products, or ways of viewing things.

25. Bloom’s Taxonomy (Revised-1)
Remember
arrange, define, describe, duplicate, identify, label, list, match, memorize, name, order, recall, relate, recognize, repeat, select, state
Understand
classify, convert, defend, describe, discuss, distinguish, estimate, explain, give examples, indicate, locate, paraphrase, predict, summarize
Apply
change, choose, compute, demonstrate, employ, illustrate, interpret, manipulate, modify, practice, prepare, show, sketch, solve, use
Analyze
appraise, breakdown, calculate, categorize, compare, contrast, diagram, differentiate, distinguish, examine, infer, model, question, test
Evaluate
appraise, argue, assess, attach, choose, conclude, defend, discriminate, estimate, judge, justify, interpret, rate, support, value
Create
assemble, combine, compose, construct, design, develop, devise, formulate, generate, plan, set up, synthesize, tell, write
Here is a list of common verbs that are associated with the various cognitive levels. Note that this list is not exhaustive, and that sometimes a standard will contain multiple cognitive levels. Also, higher cognitive levels can imply that a lower cognitive level has been mastered. For instance, a student might be expected to compare and contrast various documents in American history, which is at the Analyze level—but in order to do this, the student will first have to Remember and Understand facts about each document and the time period.

26. Example: Unpacking a Standard
For the learning objective, underline the content, circle the word(s) that provide information regarding cognitive level, and finally, classify the word into one of Bloom’s six cognitive levels.
VUS.1h
Interpret the significance of excerpts from famous speeches and other documents.
Standard = Context
Let’s look more closely at just one of the standards that will be on our Virginia and US History assessment.
The Social Studies frameworks work slightly differently from other frameworks, in that all the skills for the year are incorporated into the standards for VUS.1, what we see here is both the standard, or context, and the Essential Knowledge, Skill, and Process. The rest of the Social Studies standards hold the content (or what students must KNOW), and students are meant to complete skills like the one we see here in VUS.1h while learning the content. In a few slides, we’ll look at how to synthesize both the content and the skill onto the final assessment and build it into the learning experiences during the unit.
Take a moment to unpack this standard on your own. First, underline the content—what students must know for this. Then circle the verb, and use it to determine the cognitive level (using Bloom’s taxonomy) for this standard.
Essential Knowledge, Skills, and Processes

27. Example: Unpacking a Standard-2
For the learning objective, underline the content, circle the word(s) that provide information regarding cognitive level, and finally, classify the word into one of Bloom’s six cognitive levels.
VUS.1h
Interpret the significance of excerpts from famous speeches and other documents.
Apply
What students must know in this particular case is the significance of excerpts from famous speeches and other documents. What they must do with the information is to interpret that significance, so we circle “interpret.”
Our definition of “Apply” was to “apply information to an actual situation.” That’s what students are doing in this case; they are using those excerpts and applying what they know about historical time periods in order to interpret the significance. Therefore, this standard is written at the Apply level.

28. Placeholder for video
Now let’s look at how we actually unpack the standards using a Table of Specifications. Previously, we used the Standards of Learning document to fill in the standards, but now we need to use the Curriculum Framework. With our Virginia and US History example, we first go to the VUS.4 standards. In the interest of time, for this presentation we are only going to look at an example for VUS.4a, though obviously for the actual Table of Specifications and assessment, you would want to go through all the standards and bullets associated with this unit.
Let’s look at how the social studies curriculum framework is set-up. We see the Essential Understandings, Essential Questions (remember, we chose earlier in this presentation to use a broader Essential Question for this particular unit), and the Essential Knowledge. Students are responsible for knowing both the general Essential Understandings and the Essential Knowledge for the standardized assessment. We also see the Essential Skills in this last column. These all come from VUS.1, but you will notice that only certain bullets from the standard are associated with VUS.4a. That means that we are to make sure that students practice using these skills while acquiring the content knowledge and understandings.
What we do then, is cut and paste each Essential Understanding or Essential Knowledge that the students must know from our curriculum framework into the first column of our Table of Specifications. (SHOW EXAMPLE). Once we have transferred all the Essential Understandings and Knowledge, we then go back and decide: which pieces of content would be MOST APPROPRIATE for using the various Essential Skills? For instance, we might decide that this particular piece of Essential Knowledge (LOCKE’S QUOTE) works well with VUS.1h, which is to interpret the significance of excerpts from famous speeches and other documents. We therefore cut and paste VUS.1h into the table in the Essential Skill column. We bold the verb (circling is difficult in digital documents), then determine the cognitive level. We said earlier that “interpret” signifies that this is an Apply level skill, so we put an X under Apply for this row.
We go through all the Essential Understandings and Essential Knowledge in this way until we have made sure that we 1) have all the Essential Understandings and Essential Knowledge in the table, and 2) we have opportunities for students to work with all the Essential Skills associated with VUS.4a. Note that for some Essential Understandings or Knowledge, we decided not to emphasize an Essential Skill; because there is no skill involved, we default to the lowest skill; in other words, students are just supposed to remember this information. In order to ensure a rigorous curriculum, try to use the “Remember” column sparingly. Go through and unpack each row so that you have an X under at least one cognitive level. This will become the basis both for the assessment item and the instructional delivery method.
Note that this is not the definitive way to interpret these standards; teachers can obviously choose to pair the Essential Understandings and Knowledge with Essential Skills in any way they choose, as long as it is compatible with the curriculum framework. This is simply an example in order to demonstrate the process.
Now let’s look at how we construct an English table of specifications for writing. We’ll start with the English curriculum framework for our Standard We are specifically looking at bullets f, g, and h, but you can see that unlike the social studies that separated out the Essential Understandings, Knowledge, and Skills by bullet, for English all the Essential Understandings and Essential Knowledge, Skills, and Processes are under the complete standard. We will therefore have to pick out the ones that we are going to assess in this particular unit.
Note that this is not to say that students will not be using the other Essential Knowledge, Skills, and Processes outlined under this standard. In writing, they WILL be doing most everything we see for this standard in order to create a written product; what we are doing is choosing the emphases for this unit and the assessment so that we can be particularly strategic in our planning and data analysis. Remember that the purpose of this presentation is not to tell divisions or teachers WHAT they must put on the assessment, but instead give them a purposeful process to use in making that determination for themselves.
We then create the table of specifications in much the same way that we did the social studies. We cut and paste the information from the Essential Understandings and the Essential Knowledge, Skills, and Processes. In this case, we had to make choices about which Essential Knowledge, Skills, and Processes to put in this particular unit. Here you can see the Essential Understandings, Knowledge, Skills, or Processes filled into the Table of Specifications for this unit. We have also unpacked all these Essential Knowledge, Skills, and Processes so that we know the cognitive level of each; because students are developing a piece of writing, they are all at the Create level.

29. Subtask 3: Determine how each standard, knowledge and/or skill be will assessed.
Now let’s move on to Subtask 3, in which we determine how each standard, knowledge, and/or skill will be assessed.

30. Assessing Knowledge and Skills
Selected Response
Constructed Response
Performance Tasks
There are several ways to classify assessment item types, but we’re going to look today at three: selected response, constructed response, and performance tasks. Because a performance task is usually separate from the traditional end-of-unit assessment (and sometimes even takes place DURING instruction), we are only going to go over this type of assessment very briefly. It’s important to mention it in this presentation, however, as some standards (such as those that require students to design and conduct experiments) are best assessed through a performance task.

31. Item Type: Selected Response
Objective—right or wrong answers
Examples
Multiple choice
True/false
Matching
The first type of assessment items we’re going to look at are selected response items. These types of items usually yield more objective results; they usually have right or wrong answers. Examples are multiple choice, true/false, and matching.
The benefits of this type of item is that they are easily graded and typically have only one correct answer. A drawback is that students may choose a correct answer through guessing.
These types of items often work very well with standards written at the Remember, Understand, or Apply level. They can occasionally be written at the Analyze level, but it is difficult to write a selected response item well at the Analyze level.

32. Select Response: Multiple Choice
Approximate amount of time to answer per item: seconds (depending on level of cognitive demand) Cognitive level it best evaluates: Remember, Understand, Apply, Analyze
Multiple choice assessments are often used because they don’t take that long to answer, so it’s easy to assess a broad swath of knowledge quickly. Multiple choice questions are most typically written at the Remember or Understand levels, but if well-written, can also be at the Apply level or even the Analyze level.
Gareis, C.R., & Grant, L.W. (2008). Teacher-made assessments: How to connect curriculum, instruction, & student learning. Larchmont, NY: Eye on Education.

33. Selected Response: True/False
Approximate amount of time to answer per item: 15 seconds Cognitive level it best evaluates: Remember, Understand
True/False items are probably the least recommended assessment item type, because it is simply too easy for students to guess correctly and appear to have mastered information that they have not. Moreover, they typically only can assess at the Remember or Understand level. If True/False must be used, it’s typically recommended that students not only have to mark whether the item is true or false, but also fix anything that is false.
Gareis, C.R., & Grant, L.W. (2008). Teacher-made assessments: How to connect curriculum, instruction, & student learning. Larchmont, NY: Eye on Education.

34. Selected Response: Matching
Approximate amount of time to answer per item: seconds (depending on number of matching items) Cognitive level it best evaluates: Remember, Understand
Matching is another type of selected response item. Similarly to True/False, these typically do not take long to answer and can generally only get at Remember or Understand levels. If using Matching, it’s recommended that you do not have an equal number of choices in each column, or that students are allowed to reuse choices when matching; this helps to cut down on guessing.
Gareis, C.R., & Grant, L.W. (2008). Teacher-made assessments: How to connect curriculum, instruction, & student learning. Larchmont, NY: Eye on Education.

35. Item Type: Constructed Response
Written or oral
React to and use information
Generally graded with a rubric
Examples
Fill-in-the-Blank/ Diagram
Short Answer
Essay
The next type of assessment item is Constructed response. These can be written or oral, and they generally require students to react to and use some information. Therefore, they are not generally graded as “right” or “wrong” but instead on a scale of how well the question is answered, which means using a rubric. Examples are generally fill-in-the-blank, diagrams, short answers, or essays.
One of the major benefits of these types of items is that it is less likely that students can guess the correct answers; the drawback is that grading can be more subjective and the items are time-intensive to both answer and grade.
These items are often more appropriate for the higher-order thinking standards, such as those written at the Analyze, Evaluate, or Create level.
Gareis, C.R., & Grant, L.W. (2008). Teacher-made assessments: How to connect curriculum, instruction, & student learning. Larchmont, NY: Eye on Education.

36. Constructed Response: Fill-in-the-Blank/ Diagram
Approximate amount of time to answer per item: 30 seconds Cognitive level it best evaluates: Remember, Understand, Apply, Analyze
Fill-in-the-Blank and diagram items generally don’t take students very long, but this can depend on how much students have to fill in. This type of item can get at a wide range of cognitive levels, from Remember, Understand, and Apply all the way through Analyze (for instance, if students are filling in a Venn Diagram). Fill-in-the-Blank or diagrams may have objective right or wrong answers, or in the case of something like a Venn Diagram, may have a range of answers that are considered acceptable.
Gareis, C.R., & Grant, L.W. (2008). Teacher-made assessments: How to connect curriculum, instruction, & student learning. Larchmont, NY: Eye on Education.

37. Constructed Response: Short Answer
Approximate amount of time to answer per item: seconds Cognitive level it best evaluates: Remember, Understand, Apply, Analyze, Evaluate, Create
Short answer questions generally do not take students long to answer; they typically only require a sentence or two (or perhaps bulleted points) to complete. They are versatile in that they can assess the Remember through the Create level. They may have objective right or wrong answers, but if they are assessing the Apply through Create levels, they typically will be graded on how well the item is answered and require some type of rubric.
Gareis, C.R., & Grant, L.W. (2008). Teacher-made assessments: How to connect curriculum, instruction, & student learning. Larchmont, NY: Eye on Education.

38. Constructed Response: Essay
Approximate amount of time to answer per item: At least 60 seconds for each individual point; significant additional time may be needed Cognitive level it best evaluates: Remember, Understand, Apply, Analyze, Evaluate, Create
Lastly, we have the essay. The essay can take a considerable amount of time for students to answer and for teachers to grade, but it is useful in that this item type can get at all the levels, Remember through Create.
Gareis, C.R., & Grant, L.W. (2008). Teacher-made assessments: How to connect curriculum, instruction, & student learning. Larchmont, NY: Eye on Education.

39. Item Type: Performance Task
Apply knowledge
Usually “real life” situations
Generally graded with a rubric
Examples:
Role-play (debates, skits)
Model/Simulation
Performance/Product
Labs
The last type of assessment we will look at today is the performance task. In these types of assessments, the students are generally asked to actually apply their knowledge to a real-life situation. Again, because students are often graded on the quality of their response, the assessment is graded with a rubric. Examples include (but are not limited to): Role-plays (such as debates or skits), models or simulations, some sort of student performance or product, or labs designed and conducted by the student.
Similar to the constructed response assessment items, performance tasks work well for higher-order thinking standards, such as those written at the Analyze, Evaluate, or Create levels. They work especially well for any standard in which students are expected to create a product, participate in a simulation or role-play, or conduct a lab.
Gareis, C.R., & Grant, L.W. (2008). Teacher-made assessments: How to connect curriculum, instruction, & student learning. Larchmont, NY: Eye on Education.

40. Choosing the Assessment Item
How much emphasis do we place on the standard, knowledge, or skill in the unit?
Remember the goals for the unit!
What cognitive level is the standard, knowledge, or skill?
Now comes the time when we actually choose the assessment item for each row on our Table of Specifications. The first thing we need to do is remember our goals for the unit—which standards, knowledge, and skills do we specifically want to emphasize? We want to include a limited number of constructed response items because they take students a long time to answer and teachers longer to grade, so it makes more sense to use these on the standards, knowledge, or skills on which we place the most emphasis. Moreover, constructed response items are typically worth more than Selected Response items, so both teachers and students should therefore put more emphasis on the knowledge and skills assessed in these types of items.
For the other standards, we have to ask ourselves: What is the cognitive level of the standard, knowledge, or skill? For instance, if the knowledge or skill is at the Remember or Understand level, we probably want to assess it in a way that’s quick and easy for both the students to answer and the teacher to grade, so a Selected Response works well. If the standard is written at the Apply, Analyze, or Create level, however, we might have to consider a Constructed Response item in order to truly assess the standard.

41. Placeholder for Video-1
Let’s look at how we might determine item types based on the standards, knowledge, and skills that we have for our History and English assessments.
Let’s return for a moment to our Social Studies major goals. We can see that we have an Essential Question on people’s relationships with their rulers, and an Enduring Understanding about how the American Revolution affected other historical events. Therefore, if we want to have a constructed response question, it would make the most sense for it to be on an Essential Understanding or Knowledge that targets either the Essential Question or the Enduring Understanding.
There are, of course, a variety of things that we could choose, but let’s say that we choose this particular Essential Knowledge regarding Locke’s ideas about sovereignty and rights and how they challenged the centuries-old practices. This definitely gets at the Essential Question, and we can see that we’ve also paired it with an Essential Skill written at the Create level, so an Essay is a perfect way to assess this.
Let’s now look at the row right above this one. We have a quote from Locke and we’ve paired it with a skill at the Apply level. This would work especially well in a Multiple Choice question, in which we give students the quote and ask them to choose the best interpretation from a selection. We would then go through the rest of the rows in this way, determining which type of item we will use. After we’ve finished and we see how many items we will have in total and what types they will be, we can determine how many points each will be worth.
Now let’s go through our English example. Obviously, for a unit on writing we are going to have students write an essay, and it will be the main source of assessment for a number of our Essential Understandings, Knowledge, Skills, and Processes. Because this is fifth grade, we will only have them write one essay, but we know from the fifth grade writing test Blueprints that we can also include some multiple choice questions. You will see, therefore, that some of our Essential Understandings, Knowledge, Skills, and Processes have both Multiple Choice and Essay next to them.

42. Subtask 4: Design the assessment.
Let’s move on to the last subtask: designing the assessment.

43. Sources for Items Virginia Department of Education released test items
Textbooks
Online item banks
Previously-given assessments
Your brain
When choosing items to assess the standards, knowledge, and skills, there are many places that we can look. It’s always worthwhile to check out the Virginia Department of Education released test items to see if there is anything available; remember when going through archives that sometimes standards have changed slightly in terms of content or cognitive level since those tests have been given.
Some textbook series also come with tests or test items; remember to make sure these are aligned in terms of both content and cognitive level, and that you can modify if necessary.
Many divisions also purchase or have online item test banks; again, just remember to check the alignment for both the content and the cognitive level.
If you have assessments from previous years, they may have some items that can be used or modified.
And lastly, you can always write items if you have none that are appropriate for the content, cognitive level, and item type that you need.

44. Consistent and Fair Assessments
Have we considered and tried to avoid:
Culturally biased language and expressions
Developmentally inappropriate reading level
Mechanical or grammatical mistakes in assessment items
Insufficient or unclear directions
Poor layout, causing uncertainty or mistakes in reading the assessment
Insufficient number of assessment items
Subjective scoring
When putting the test together, in order to ensure that it is as consistent and fair as possible, we need to consider and try to avoid the following:
Culturally biased language and expressions
Developmentally inappropriate reading level
Mechanical or grammatical mistakes in assessment items
Insufficient or unclear directions
Poor layout, causing uncertainty or mistakes in reading the assessment
Insufficient number of assessment items
Subjective scoring
Gareis, C.R., & Grant, L.W. (2008). Teacher-made assessments: How to connect curriculum, instruction, & student learning. Larchmont, NY: Eye on Education.

45. Increasing Fairness: Hints for Overall Test Construction
Make sure one item does not give away the answer to another item (cluing).
Provide clear directions to each portion of the test.
Do not split items across pages.
Make sure the test is neat and error-free.
Provide clear and adequate response spaces.
Provide point values for older students.
Furthermore, we can increase the fairness by doing the following when constructing the test:
Make sure one item does not give away the answer to another item (also called cluing).
Provide clear directions to each portion of the test.
Do not split items across pages.
Make sure the test is neat and error-free
Provide clear and adequate response spaces
Provide point values for older students: This often helps them know how to pace themselves on the assessment.
It is often helpful to have multiple people check the assessment before giving it to students in order to decrease any errors.
Gareis, C.R., & Grant, L.W. (2008). Teacher-made assessments: How to connect curriculum, instruction, & student learning. Larchmont, NY: Eye on Education.

46. Main Types of Rubrics Checklist Holistic Rubric Analytical Rubric
Remember that creating the rubric for your assessment is considered part of designing the assessment itself. The main types of rubrics are checklists, in which students are typically awarded points based on how many of the criteria they include.
Holistic rubrics use performance levels and assign point values to each level, but grade the response as a whole.
Analytical rubrics use performance levels, but break the item into critical elements, and assign points for each element based on the level at which the student completes it.
Gareis, C.R., & Grant, L.W. (2008). Teacher-made assessments: How to connect curriculum, instruction, & student learning. Larchmont, NY: Eye on Education.

47. Placeholder for Video-2
The last thing that we do to fill in our Table of Specification is add the number of the item in which we are assessing each Essential Understanding, Knowledge, Skill, or Process. This helps us when we want to go back later and analyze our data more effectively and efficiently. The point items you see here do not add up to 100, because remember that this is only the portion of our Table of Specifications that deals with VUS.4a; the rest of the points would be contained in other standards.

48. Plan learning experiences and instruction.
Stage Three
Plan learning experiences and instruction.
Finally we come to Stage Three: Planning the Learning Experiences and Instruction.

49. Placeholder for Video-3
Here you can see that we have transformed our Table of Specifications into a Learning Plan that provides an at-a-glance view of the experiences that we will do with students. Instead of the last column featuring the Assessment Type, Number, and Point Value, has now become the “Plan for Learning Experiences.” Note that this is not an extensive lesson plan, but it can help the teacher determine what types of learning experiences are needed in order to teach not only the content for the unit, but to ensure that it is taught at the appropriate level.
For instance, where we see that students will be interpreting the significance of excerpts, we know that we will have to actually include an excerpt from the works of Locke in that particular lesson, and that we need students to be working at the Apply level. A word of caution here, however: if we give students this Locke quote in class and have them interpret it, and then give them the SAME quote on the assessment and ask them to interpret it in a short answer, then they are no longer working at the Apply level; they are simply Remembering what they did before. Therefore, we could either use the same quote but assess the interpretation in a different format than what they did in class, or use a different, but similar, Locke quote in either the class or on the assessment. Alternatively, we could choose to make this a Remember-level question, as long as we ensure that we get at the Essential Skill of interpreting the significance of excerpts somewhere else within the unit.

50. Aligning Unit Tests and Backwards Instruction Planning-1
Virginia Department of Education
Office of School Improvement
Aligning Unit Tests and Backwards Instruction Planning-1
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We thank you for viewing this Virginia Department of Education presentation on Aligning Unit Tests and Backwards Instruction Planning. We hope that you have found this session to be useful and informative, and one more tool on your path to increasing your student achievement through aligning the Written, Taught, and Tested curriculum.