Assessing Middle and High School Social Studies & English

Differentiating Formative Assessment

Sheryn Spencer-Waterman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781317924524
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

For middle and high school teachers teachers of social studies and English, this book is filled with examples of instructional strategies that address students' readiness levels, interests, and learning preferences. It shows teachers how to formatively assess their students by addressing differentiated learning targets.

Included are detailed examples of differentiated formative assessment schedules plus tips on how to collaborate with others to improve assessment processes. Teachers will learn how to adjust instruction for the whole class, for small groups, and for individuals. They will also uncover step-by-step procedures for creating their own lessons infused with opportunities to formatively assess students who participate in differentiated learning activities.

1

Differentiating Formative Assessment

What is Differentiation?

Differentiation is the process of tailoring instruction to meet the needs of all students. Teachers who choose to practice differentiated instruction (DI) do the following:

♦ Learn about their students in terms of the following: their readiness to learn content, their interests in conjunction with that content, and their learning or thinking styles that might allow them greater access to that content;

♦ Gather content resources that match students’ readiness, interests, and learning styles;

♦ Choose a process, such as flexible grouping, individualized instruction, or lesson tiering to address students’ readiness, interests, and learning styles; and

♦ Plan assessments that address students’ readiness, interests, and learning styles.

This book focuses on embedding formative assessment within a procedure that addresses the overall process of differentiating instruction, including providing suggestions for three levels of readiness: struggling learners, typical learners, and gifted or highly advanced learners.^*

Why Differentiate Assessment?

Differentiating assessment is the only fair way to evaluate students’ learning. According to Rick Wormeli (2006), “What is fair isn't always equal, and our goal as teachers is to be fair and developmentally appropriate, not one-size-fits all equal” (p. 6). If we give every child the same assessment, we are not paying attention to students’ different learning styles and academic readiness. This book is based on the idea that teachers make a curriculum plan that aims different kinds of learners toward a target learning focus. Then as the lesson proceeds, these teachers constantly check to determine how those students are progressing in order to adjust that plan. Those adjustments hopefully work to help students eventually hit that target. This book provides examples of what I call the Assessment Target, which I connect with the differentiation framework proposed by Silver, Strong, and Perini (2007). This framework which they base on the work of Jung (1923), suggests that students fall into one or more of four learning styles: mastery, understanding, self-expressive, and interpersonal. I show how to base an Assessment Target on one or more of these styles and also include learning styles from the Multiple Intelligences (Gardner, 1993) and from Dunn and Dunn (1993).

How Can We Link Assessment That Teachers Differentiate with Theories of Learning?

It is important to connect differentiated assessment with theories of learning. What follows shows how specific researchers suggest choosing assessment processes based on theory (adapted from Herman, Ashbacher, & Winters, 1992, pp. 18–20). I have added how that theory applies specifically to assessments teachers differentiate.

♦ Theory: We construct knowledge from our interactions with the world. We learn when we use our prior knowledge in combination with our experiences from which we create meaning.

Applying theory to differentiated assessment suggests teachers should:

• Assess students’ discussions and conversations.

• Assess opportunities to show divergent thinking (multiple paths to answers that vary).

• Assess various ways of demonstrating learning.

• Assess critical thinking skills such as the highest levels of “New Bloom” (Anderson, Krathwohl, Airasian, Cruikshank, Mayer, Pintrich, Raths, & Wittrock, 2001).

• Assess students’ connections to their own experiences and prior knowledge.

♦ Theory: Learning occurs at all ages and stages and it does not occur in a linear and sequential manner.

Applying theory to differentiated assessment suggests teachers should:

• Assess students at all ages and stages of development in problem solving.

• Not require mastery of basic skills prior to assessing students’ abilities to have high-level discussions, solve complex problems, or demonstrate critical thinking.

♦ Theory: Students exhibit many and varied intelligences, learning styles, attention spans, ability to remember, aptitude, and developmental stages.

Applying theory to differentiated assessment suggests teachers should:

• Assess using a wide variety of tasks (not just reading and writing).

• Evaluate assessment products students choose.

• Allow enough time for complex assessment products.

• Allow time for students to think about their responses to assessments (do not use timed tests too often).

• Allow students to revise their work based on teacher and peer feedback.

• Address all learning styles when assessing learning.

♦ Theory: Students will be more likely to succeed on an assessment if they understand its goals, see representative models, and can compare their response to an excellent example.

Applying theory to differentiated assessment suggests teachers should:

• Discuss the goals of an assessment with students.

• Allow students to have input into what might represent standard and excellent responses to an assessment.

• Show students a variety of examples of responses to an assessment and discuss these examples with them.

• Allow time for self and peer evaluation of assessments.

• Make assessment criteria clear.

♦ Theory: Students’ motivation, self-esteem, and the effort they exert affect their performance on and learning from any assessment.

Applying theory to differentiated assessment suggests teachers should:

• Relate assessment to students’ real world interests and concerns.

• Encourage students to see the connection between the effort they make and the results of their performance on an assessment.

♦ Theory: Students learn well in social activities, such as in collaborative group work.

Applying theory to Differentiated Assessment suggests teachers should:

• Assess students as they work in groups.

• Assess using group products.

• Assess students as they perform different roles within the group.

♦ Theory: Determining how students are learning material while they are learning allows teachers to adjust instruction to meet students’ needs.

Applying theory to differentiated assessment suggests teachers should:

• Assess students often and in many ways while they are learning (i.e., formative assessment).

• Provide prompt feedback on formative assessments so that students know how well they are learning.

• Adjust instruction based on results of formative assessments.

• Use summative assessment based on evidence from formative assessments.

What is Formative Assessment?

Formative assessment is any sampling of student ability during the learning process. This sampling is formative if it allows teachers to address the evidence of students’ ability or lack of ability by adjusting instruction. Formative assessment, evaluation, and feedback work closely together. For instance, assessment is collecting or sampling students’ work, evaluation is judging that work based on criteria, and feedback is letting students know specifically and accurately how well they did in comparison to that criteria. The criterion can be a “right” answer, a rubric, or a product guide, and students should have access to those criteria on which teachers plan to evaluate their work. This method of formative assessment is called criterion-referenced testing (or assessment). It is not to be confused with norm-based testing (or assessment), which measures students against the performance of other students.

Prompt and accurate feedback is highly important to the learning process, especially for the process of differentiated formative assessment. Research tells us that the closer the sampling is to the adjustment of instruction, the more effective it is in terms of student achievement. For example, Wiliam and Leahy (2007) suggest three time scale cycles for feedback on assessments: short, medium, and long. They define short as being any time between five seconds and one hour, medium as being between one day and two weeks, and long as being between four weeks and one year.

Short Time Scale Feedback Examples

When teachers check for understanding relatively soon after presenting a new idea, they are formatively assessing based on a short time scale. For example, teachers might explain a process (e.g., how to proceed with a lab, how to form groups) and immediately take an informal formative assessment from the class by asking for a thumbs up or thumbs down regarding whether students are ready to proceed. If any students put thumbs down, the teacher might call on a student with a thumb up to explain the process again. Immediate feedback from students is crucial for moving forward; however, the success of this kind of formative assessment requires that teachers develop the kind of classroom culture in which students feel comfortable expressing their lack of understanding. For example, if any student thinks he or she might be ridiculed for not “getting it,” this kind of formative assessment will not work well. Another short time scale for feedback is asking students to answer a few questions about the lesson at the end of the class. Their answers to these questions could serve as their “ticket out the door.” Teachers can see from these responses if all students understood the lesson, if some students did not understand it, or if there are whole-class misconceptions. With this information, teachers can address learning problems during the next lesson or take aside certain students for additional help.

Medium Time Scale Examples

A medium time scale formative assessment could include next class pop or announced quizzes on the material covered in the previous class. For example, the “5 Question Quiz” (Waterman, 2009) is a great tool for measuring stud...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Meet the Author
• Free Downloads
• Preface
• 1 Differentiating Formative Assessment
• 2 Mastery-Based Differentiated Formative Assessments
• 3 Understanding-Based Differentiated Formative Assessments
• 4 Self-Expressive-Based Differentiated Formative Assessments
• 5 Interpersonal-Based Differentiated Formative Assessments
• 6 Four Style Differentiated Formative Assessments
• References