Sticky Assessment

Classroom Strategies to Amplify Student Learning

Laura Greenstein

• Verlag: Routledge
• Jahr: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317248361
• Auflage: 1
• Thema: Education
• Thema: Education General

Sticky Assessment is a straightforward guide to assessment, designed to demystify assessment and to give teachers the tools they need become better assessors. Translating the latest research into a concise and practical volume, this book helps teachers to monitor student learning, make assessment engaging and meaningful for students, and to use assessment that improves rather than merely measures learning outcomes. With examples from classroom teachers and exercises designed to help teachers think through their processes, this book will be an invaluable and lasting resource for classroom teachers.

1
Purposeful Assessment

Objectives of this chapter

1. Construct purposeful and planned assessments.
2. Apply strategies for building aligned and progressive assessments.
3. Utilize sequenced and cyclical models of assessment.
4. Realize the value of reciprocal and responsive assessment.

Planned, Progressive, and Cyclical

Assessment has many purposes that range from minute by minute check-ins for understanding to high-stakes and large-scale tests. Warwick Mansell and Mary James (2009) explain that “the nature and impact of assessment depends on the uses to which the results of that assessment are put” (p. 5). Generating internal information that is instructionally useful for students and teachers is different from using high-stakes testing to judge a school, state, or country. Rarely can one type of assessment be suitable to this wide range of contexts.

I have a friend who is a professional planner and organizer. She started her business after 25 years as a classroom teacher and relies on those experiences to successfully build her practice. What people like is her ability to sort through the clutter and organize their materials and practices to facilitate the best long-term improvement.

Many of those same skills and outcomes are part of purposeful assessment at the local level. First is knowing where you and your students are now and where they are headed. Once you have determined this starting point and direction, you need a plan for getting there. It’s great to say I want all my students to focus on accuracy in writing informative texts that examine topics and convey ideas. But this requires sorting through the clutter and deconstructing the writing process to align with targeted planning and assessments in order to close gaps in knowledge and skills. It may be that Gregor is highly skilled in writing opening sentences and paragraph construction but doesn’t understand the difference between informative and persuasive writing. Perhaps Magrite needs guidance in finding accurate information or assistance in precisely sequencing steps.

It is only when we ask about what is important to measure, what are the consequences of the measure, and how will the data be used, that we can be purposeful in our selection, implementation, and analysis of assessment.

Planning for Assessment

Teaching is a constant cycle of planning, instructing, assessing, and responding. This cycle takes place throughout all the layers of the educational system. Nationally, there are comprehensive stand-dards that are measured with large-scale tests. Then, there are State and content area curricula. Locally, there are regional and school-based instructional maps, sequences, and plans. All of these, each in their own way, inform teachers in the preparation, delivery, and assessment of daily lessons.

At the same time, not all of the large-scale standards are assessed on national and state tests. For example, there are no questions asking a student to “analyze various accounts of a subject told in different mediums”. So how does a teacher go about measuring student achievement on these overlooked standards?

Local curriculum may include recommended assessments such as a common grade level test, or a rubric for a poster on alternative energy sources. But, in general, the scoring criteria are left to the teacher’s discretion. Units of instruction typically suggest assessment strategies. This may include a weekly quiz or an ongoing log of learning outcomes, but leave the actual evaluation of the student’s achievement to the classroom teacher.

There are literally thousands of standards, some measured by standardized tests but others within the jurisdiction of the classroom teacher. When hundreds of standards, with only some measured by traditional measures, are combined with nominal guidance on planning classroom assessment, it becomes the teacher’s responsibility for knowing what students know, understand, and can do.

The Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence and Educational Innovation at Carnegie Mellon explains that “Alignment increases the probability that we will provide students with the opportunities to learn, and practice the skills and knowledge required on the assessments. Alignment means that good grades translate into good learning.” Planning for assessment is just as, if not more important, as planning for teaching and learning. Both need to be done with purpose and precision.

Teaching as a Continual Act of Assessment

Planning a unit of instruction typically begins with the standards that the students are aiming towards. An important consideration in this is how well students have mastered previously learned standards and also where are they expected to be at the end of teaching and learning.

If you had minimal experience making pizza and you wanted to make a tasty one for a child’s birthday party you might search for different recipes, ask friends for theirs, or watch a chef on the Food Network. Each of these sources may suggest a different type of leavening (fast vs. slow acting yeast), varied sauces from bottled ones to home-made versions, as well as selection of cheeses and toppings. You comply with the expert’s guidance as best you can but the pizza is mediocre. How can you tell why it didn’t turn out better? Was it the way you kneaded the dough, the time to let it rise, or the quality of the sauce? Each of these questions requires thoughtful analysis.

Teachers use a variety of instructional strategies from teacher-guided instruction, to student-directed learning, to a gradual release of responsibility to the student. Teachers must also use a variety of assessment strategies to determine how well students mastered the targets. As with the pizza, this requires multiple types of assessment throughout teaching and learning in order to produce the optimum results.

Deliberate Assessment

Teaching and assessing is also a continuous process of problem solving and adjusting practice. From large-scale standards through checking on progress minute-by minute, teachers need a toolbox of well-honed yet malleable strategies. The selection and fine-tuning of the strategies requires knowledge of students’ strengths as well as areas for growth. It also requires that a teacher be purposeful in their selection, be focused in their use, be precise in timing, and accurate in their interpretation. This means understanding why, when, what, and how to continuously monitor learning.

Seven Questions to Guide Deliberate Assessment Practice:

1. What are the most important standards and learning targets (a.k.a., goals and objectives)?
2. What are my students’ current knowledge and skills?
3. What are the desired student learning outcomes? Is this the same for all learners?
4. How will I assess progress towards goals?
5. How will I measure learning outcomes?
6. How will I respond to this information?
7. What modifications will I make along the way?

The Value of Blueprints

After building several homes I realized that without detailed blueprints the results might not be as expected. In one house where I wanted an open floor plan, it didn’t occur to me that the living, dining, and kitchen areas had no visible partitions. This was great in theory, but in practice made for a noisy, visually complex area, not the calming open space I imagined. After that, I learned to study the blueprints more carefully to not only see the floor level, but also to envision the 3-D perspective. Fortunately a few half walls and columns solved the problem.

An assessment blueprint can serve some of these same purposes. It provides the groundwork by providing a floor level view of assessment while guiding the alignment of learning outcomes with assessment strategies. Basically a blueprint identifies the learning goals, the depth of learning, and the strategies for assessing. It insures that the assessments are interconnected and purposeful. Figure 1.1 shows how this works to make certain that all elements of the assessment are in harmony with their purpose.

Figure 1.1 Basics of Alignment

It makes little sense to give a multiple choice test on students analysis and evaluation of primary source material. Nor is it reasonable to measure a big picture standard such as “Develop understanding of fractions as numbers” with an essay. Accurate alignment is an important early step in planning for assessment.

One of the most effective strategies for deliberately planning and assessing is through the use of a blueprint. There are many versions of this. Sometimes it is called a table of specifications. Regardless of the model you choose, a blueprint delineates the standards, content, types, and levels of assessment. It guides instructional processes and ensures alignment with learning outcomes and their assessment. A blank blueprint is shown in Table 1.1.

As a teacher starts to populate the blueprint, it begins to show the learning targets, the types of assessment strategies, and the levels of complexity. If desired the blueprint can also include point values and weighting of various assessments. Table 1.2 shows how the test blueprint looks in progress.

Now that you’ve seen the basic construction of a blueprint, Table 1.3 shows one created by a student teacher. When he arrived in this classroom there was a wealth of instructional resources, along with a large amount of teacher presented information but to his dismay only selected choice tests. When he explained the value of alternative types of assessment and the construction of a blueprint, his mentor teacher encouraged him to prepare one for this instructional unit. Note how he customized the blueprint by identifying two categories of multiple questions and combined fill-in with constructed response.

Below are a few examples of the test questions (see p. 19). They are numbered to match each learning outcome. Directions are included in the original test document.

Table 1.1 Test Blueprint Form...