Shawn - have a solid assessment -
Eric - pre-assessment
Holly - user friendly yet students can use them
Scott -
more story problems, etc. -
Nicole - new, creative formative assessments
Judy - curious
Katie - exciting testing vs. typical crap
Evan - new curricula, getting it going
Kiersten - many levels while being rigorous
Kathy - check to be on right path
Dusty - get some assessments! 10th grade
Mike - create multiple levels of ass. for quality, not punitive
Drew - possible standards-based grading
Sarah - new grade level, build on the current ones
Michael - project-based assessments
Cara - IB - expand the choice board concept for other units
Mary - Work on ones for writing skills
Bethany - flipped classroom assessments - quick check ones
Patterns:
- Differentiation between skill levels
- Creative ones that aren't necessarily traditional
- Instant feedback / information for students to be able to work with and observe
- Just getting new ones, for people that are switching between the grades / curriculum
- more rigorous ones
Critical Friend
Shawnsy
Group insights:
student assessment
pre/post ones - full package - rubrics, etc.
more meaningful, part of the unit, organically
more creative / nontraditional
differentiated ones
Expect and accept non-closure - I'm a "results" guy - I shall identify the problem, work toward a solution, and then move on to the assessment. It's not natural to me to let the problem just hang there and linger if I can do something about it, so that's going to be tough to accept. I expect that I'll engage in discussion and work moving toward a more "loose" perception of assessment and what it can be.
The most natural part, for me, will be the "suspension of belief" part, because it's something that I preach the gospel of in my classes. If students aren't able to suspend their own beliefs / perceptions of the world / experiences, then they can't truly understand authorial purpose, characterization, or even culture (both their own and others'). Thus, I'm used to doing this, and believe that I shall succeed!
Performance-based summative assessment
Definition:
It's many things: from short answers, to essays, to involved lab activities; it's not a traditional test, necessarily.
Congress says: any form of testing that requires a student to create an answer or a product that demonstrates his/her knowledge or skills.
Must demonstrate their ability to apply skills to situations that aren't in those formulaic modes.
Characteristics:
It does not work toward identifying a correct answer off of a list of those possible; instead, they display original, creative thought, and students are active participants in demonstrating said knowledge.
Meier says: "it requires schools to invest in seven interrelated components: active learning; formative and summative documentation; strategies for corrective action; multiple ways for students to express and exhibit learning; graduation-level performance tasks that are aligned with the school’s learning standards; external evaluators of student work; and a focus on professional development."
And all it requires is what the Japanese and Finns already provide: School time for serious professional work, not just classroom instruction, and deep investments in cultivating teacher capacity.
Examples:
constructed response, essays, performance tasks, hands-on learning, demonstrating evidence through citing sources, etc.
At Mission Hill, the school I helped found in Boston, we had a simple graph that charted each child’s reading progress from the time s/he entered the school until s/he graduated — and it was based upon an oral interview.
The interviewer scored samples of a student reading aloud and discussing the text with the interviewer twice a year, providing the student’s teachers with a valuable piece of hard evidence.
Non-Examples:
Wordbank / fill in the blank / multiple choice exams / quizzes
One-answer style situations
Checklist for Performance-based summative assessment
___ Objectives (tied to standards) for the assignment are stated clearly
___ Evidence of a(n) product/performance should be evident and clearly visible
___ Student demonstrated proficient, cumulative evidence of formative assessments ("checkmarks")
___ Students demonstrate autonomous engagement/ability throughout the learning process, as well as throughout the creation of the product / performance.
___ Students use creativity / problem solving skills to demonstrate their knowledge
Day 2
Blogged response to the metaphor of the Unit Plan:
The unit plan has multiple ways of achieving the same ends; Like Wild Bill said, the journey is often not linear, and that mirrors both the acquisition of knowledge and the process by which it's often presented. I think that knowledge seeps in over time, and must be acquired not at different points - that's why, especially when teaching writing and literature analysis, one must see it as, to borrow my group's metaphor, a rising tide. While it is slow and uneven at times, it will indeed rise...it's inevitable - students will acquire knowledge...we just have to keep reviewing what they need to know, insisting that they meet our high standards, etc. Teachers either take on the role of gravity or the moon in this metaphor, which can be seen as mostly good...although we shouldn't necessarily strive to be immovable objects / forces of nature in all aspects of teaching.
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