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Lesson 6-6: Questions
Share your questions, comments, concerns, and thinking about the assessment strategies shared in this lesson.
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33 Replies
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I am really excited about assessment by learning goal. I have already created a table for my first unit, just to get it clear in my mind. As you know, I am a huge proponent of assessment for learning not labeling; I don’t have to give grades at my school, so all of my assessments are for information, to help me know what’s being understood and what isn’t. By keeping this detailed record, I’ll be able to give much better feedback to the students and parents. Thank you!
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The idea of cumulative assessments, although daunting because it is so new, definitely makes sense especially when students need to be prepared to assess on all the topics at the end of the year. I am working on the “timeliness” of returning my assessments, but feel fewer questions will definitely aid in that process. Does this mean removing all end of unit assessments or just to also include topics from earlier in the year? I feel this may make the assessment too long.
As much as I like the ideas from this video, I feel some of them are going to take me time to wrap my head around them. For example #3, our policy in my district was that the students could reassess one assessment in a marking period. Students completing quiz corrections, me grading to see if they understand and reteaching during study halls and after school, creating new review questions, and new quiz questions and grading them takes up a large amount of time. Do conversations with the student count as reassessing?
In Strategy 4 you discuss standards based learning, I’ve never done this before and I was overwhelmed when I tried to wrap my head around it. I believe this may take a while to figure out. Does anyone have any ideas on how to get started? When giving a test on the standards used in a previous quiz, do you enter an entire new grade with the same standard or do you adjust that mark based on the new assessment? If so, do you ever go down a mark if it seems they are totally confused still?
I’ve started implementing smaller, more frequent assessments and cumulative assessments, however my district requires review guides in IEPs and my supervisor feels you should always let the students know what to expect on their assessments. My review day’s have just become practice and learning material days.
This year has been particularly difficult in implementing new things since my students are relearning how to be students. Just the idea of studying for an assessment seems foreign to them and they are used to taking tests and quizzes online with the internet and photomath, they are disappointed every time I inform them their quiz is on paper.
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@Serina You were not alone in these concerns. That’s exactly why we built another course on Assessment: Assessment For Growth. We address many of your concerns and more in that course. Have a peek: https://makemathmoments.com/afg
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Thank you I will definitely check it out!
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While I found some of these affirming of my current practice and aligning well with the guidelines and pedagogies within which I have to work, others were definitely more of a challenge and some I can’t see getting past my teaching team and Head of Maths, at least not in the short term.
#1 – Not possible within current structure. We currently teach in units / chapters and do not revisit unless the concept is related to a later concept (eg fractions → probability). We also do not report on specific learning goals/ concepts within the Australian Curriculum – as an independent IB World School we are not required to and I have been instructed to remove the specific learning goals/ concepts with my “Got it / getting there/ not yet” columns from tests.
#2 – We do try to do this as much as possible, but I hadn’t heard the suggestion by Wiliams to remove any grades from the feedback
#3 – Currently some teachers allow more traditional retests but not under this model. We dont have a school wide policy on ‘resubs’ in the Middle School so it’s up to each teacher to decide their own policy. Something to think about.
#4 – I have certainly kept ‘running records’ of individual learning goals/ concepts in the past but as previously said we don’t report on these. We report/ assess each unit, which includes a number of learning goals.
#5 – I think this is the one I want to explore most as I don’t do enough of it at the moment but it will challenge my own lack of Maths knowledge/ ability to be able to try to get the best out of and move forward every student!
#6 – I feel like our current tests and assessments are too big! Definitely worth thinking about.
#7 – We don’t do any kind of ‘final’ report cards because we use ‘continuous reporting’ – every time a teacher gives written assessment the parents can see it straight away. It is still only the ‘bigger’ and ‘important’ summative assessments that get recorded though.
#8 – I’m nt sure what this means but it seems to conflict with points I already made about the way we ‘chunk’ concepts and units
#9 – This is a BIG challenge – we do use practice tests, ‘cheat sheets’ etc and we feel we are doing the students a favour by doing so! This needs a lot of thinking about
#10 – We do TRY to do this but when you only pay the idea lip service rather than a major pedagogical change students know it!
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So happy to read these reflections and while I know that often times protocols/rules/logistics that are beyond your control can be limiting factors. However, getting the conversation started with colleagues can certainly bring about a change of mindset and therefore a change in assessment and evaluation policy at the classroom level, then the school level and finally at the district and beyond level!
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Trust between students and teachers is super important, and I’m glad you mentioned it here. A lot of students come to my class pretty damaged by their earlier experiences, so it often takes awhile to get them to believe that we all want the same thing: them to understand math better!
Re-addressing informally is great, but there’s a bit culture of “that’s not fair” at my current school. I feel like if I tried this, I would get complaints that all students didn’t receive exactly the same opportunities or problems as each other. Maybe I just need to do it and deal with whatever happens.
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You’re so right that some will bring up the “fair” discussion. I always ask “is it fair that some students are breakfast and others didn’t? That some have two caring, supportive parents at home and others don’t? That some have big houses and others rent poorly maintained properties? That some students pick up on the math the first time and others have to spend hours longer to comprehend?”
Some will need time and some conversation to realize that the world isn’t equal – and what isn’t fair is the fact that we are so rigid in our ways.
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#1 – Thankyou so much for the idea of getting students to talk me through their incorrect responses on an assessment. I was stressing about how many “retest” questions I was going to have to create and where I was going to find the time. Putting the responsibility on their shoulders is great. However, it is constantly a problem to get students to come in on their own time…
#2 – I never thought about seeing the grade affecting the effectiveness of descriptive feed back. This one I will definitely try. I assume I still record a level of understanding in my books.
4 – Assessing by learning strand is something I’ve been doing more of lately. It sure make reporting back to parent easier as I can look back and see exactly where a student is succeeding and struggling.
5 – I know Kyle described having a spreadsheet open in class so he could record things on teh fly…I find this incredibly difficult to manage, I can barely get my attendance done on time lol. I would love to get there some day though
6, 8,9 – Through the pandemic I have switched to test day Fridays. It was a great way to wrap things up before the class I was seeing left for a whole week. I didn’t have to worry about brain drain. I have continued that now that we are back to a more normal semester, I love the way I don’t need to take a review day, and the students have their weekends free. It also makes for a shorter assessment to mark. One thing I will add is a question or 2 from prior learning…
10 – Assessment for learning, that is going to take a hge cultural shift for me as a teacher and the students. I think eliminating grades will help. I may give this a try for teh rest of this semester.
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I am not sure how my district uses assessments to evaluate students for the regular school day. I am lucky to have the option to choose how to assess my students for credit recovery. Recently I have been teaching a topic 1 to 2 days, and then they have a short assessment. I would then have a short final assessment at the end of a unit. I may try using the standards based grading this quarter or next year. I have used some standards based grading in the past, and like it for the most part. I like that the students can retake or reassess just a part of a quiz or standard instead of retaking the entire test. I also like how standards based grading can show a growth perspective to students. I am not sure if I agree on the eliminating reviews or study guides. I feel as a student, when I would create my own study guide or cheat sheet it helped me immensely. Although, I was definitely a test crammer, but not for math. It is hard to cram for a math test. You really just need to practice each kind of problem or concept. I think giving Cumulative Tests would cause even more cramming unless you were given the opportunity to master standards you failed previously. I think review days could be eliminated by doing multiple representations of the content or giving an assessment that covers many concepts in like a small number of problems. I agree with shorter more frequent assessments with less concepts is the best practice. I try to be thoughtful about grading comments to help students learn from their mistakes. I also give them feedback, without out a grade to promote more learning.
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Great take aways here. Glad to hear that you are thinking about how standards based grading might work for your groups. As for reviews / cheat sheets, your point is valid. For us, we believe that everyday is a “review” for assessment and evaluation. Sometimes it is just shifting the mindset for how you assess that is most important.
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A lot of this makes sense and would be exciting to try, but is overwhelming. I struggle with the Time factor to revamp everything. I am in a small district with only 2 teachers per grade level. At 3rd grade we teach all subjects so I cannot focus on one subject. We need to stay on the same pace for Title One services with the other section. My teaching colleague has established firm boundaries about her time and okay is good enough. This does give me food for thought though about where I can begin to make small changes.
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The key is starting somewhere and applying the elements. You don’t have to recreate everything to get positive effects. What might you put in place that doesn’t require significant time or effort?
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I am in a district that requires us to give prewritten quizzes and end of unit tests within a certain testing window. How do you recommend that I be more effective with assessments within these parameters?
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I tend to do #1-3 and #5 pretty regularly. #5 especially let’s me understand what students know, but can’t yet communicate concisely. For this reflection, i’ll focus on #8 & #9. I often dislike cumulative assessments because I find that we often give them without having taught students in a way that would allow them to remember previous material. We often teach a unit, test, then not mention the content. And at the end of the year or semester or year ask students to take a test that includes material we haven’t referenced in months. But, if spiraling, then cumulative tests are an excellent idea and allows students remain accountable for everything they’ve learned throughout the year, while also showing them that math topics don’t have to be taught as silos.
This also eliminates the need for study guides and review days. If we are constantly seeking to deepen understanding rather than just memorize, then we don’t need one off tools.
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Great reflections here and I like your plan to focus on how spiralling can help with retention!
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I want to say THANK YOU! Yes!!! All these are great strategies, not only for math, but for all assessments in the classroom. I will be sharing these with the Learning and Instruction department in our district with hopes to include them in our teacher trainings and embed them as common practices in the district.
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Great lesson. These are my take aways:
#1- I tend to give this idea lip service. I teach resource special education math. Unfortunately many of my students are just happy if they get a passing grade. Most students if I offer help or opportunities to relearn or improve, they’ll say “I’m good.” If they do come to learn it is often to bring up their grade. I guess I need to get away from the “grade” even though that is the measurement in our district and lean more into what learning did you do.
#2 I have provided descriptive feedback and it is typically with the grade. I believe it is right that there are no gains when there is a great unless the student cares about improving the grade. One year I just wrote the feedback and I’d tell mastery level was on our grading tool. The feedback didn’t seem to give them an action step. I like having a specific action step for the students. I’m interested more on how this is done and how to follow up on that?
#3 I do allow my students to re-address learning goals, usually at our intervention time or before or after school. Has anyone found ways during school or class for students to readdress goals? In the past retakes have been corrections on missed problems on tests. What are some ideas of how to help students who struggle with concepts, but don’t have the drive to ask questions or come in and get help? Many of my students don’t understand and need help to understand the material and we do that orally, if I see improvement in understanding orally I will change the previous “grade” or level of understanding.
#4/ #6 I want to do better and break down tests to standards. I have been giving unit tests with too much material. I think have frequent shorter tests are a great idea, especially for my students with IEP’s, it’s like progress monitoring.
#5 I do this somewhat, but I think I would like to have a spreadsheet that I can add to. Question is how to add it to a formal grading system when the same assignment or grade should be given to everyone? More ideas on how this is implemented would be helpful.
#7 I am guilty of this. I think weekly shorter tests are the answer to this one. This seems like it make take more time to create, though this would really be the only thing to asses or put in the gradebook each week?
#8 Such a fan of this of course. But the time to implement and create things is the concern.
#9 I have done reviews in the past, and they seem affective for just a few students. I also think study notes are not helpful because students are trying to bring back things they don’t really understand. I think formulas would be good to provide in situations, so they don’t have to memorize, but focus on how its used.
#10 Need to improve in this area. Any words, phrases and actions you use to emphasis this throughout the year?
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1. I am going to have to work on this and see if I can figure out a way to do this.
2. I am not good at this, as it is hard to find the time to give proper feedback for each student. I do try to do this, and do a lot of this verbally when I see a student making simple mistakes.
3. I do give students multiple opportunities to show their learning, however it is usually only done by students who are trying to go from a “B” to an “A.”
4. Just curious, would you set a learning goal for each topic? Each unit?
5. I do this quite a bit. I really enjoy talking with the students and seeing their eyes light up when they realize how close they were to getting something.
6. I try to give weekly assessments, but it doesn’t always work out. Also, are there times when you might give two assessments in one week?
7. I like this idea, as I really love to see student growth, even if it does not mean they are making good grades. I probably need to figure out a way to include growth more in their overall grade, but I must admit it is hard to give a kid who is showing great growth but is still way behind, a good grade.
8. I have tried this in the past, but it seemed like it caused grades to go even lower than normal. Perhaps I need to try to stick with it a little longer so that students will see that they are responsible for things we have already covered.
9. I love this, and I have pretty much stopped doing review days. My school “strongly suggests” giving study guides for semester exams, but this year my study guide was simply a list of things they needed to know, without any examples. Almost like the study guides I received way back yonder when, as the teacher would simply tell us what chapters the semester exam would cover.
10. I think this will take time to convince the students that this is what is actually happening.
Also, I was wondering if you can share your learning goal spreadsheet?
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#1 – I do quizzes, partner quizzes, and tests throughout a chapter so that students get multiple points of feedback. I do need to switch up the tests to be cumulative though.
#2 – On quizzes I purposely do NOT give feedback because I want the students to have the opportunity to find their errors when they do corrections. I will have a conversation with students if they are unable to correct the problem. The quiz becomes more of a “finding the errors” practice after I grade it. For tests, I need to give more descriptive feedback!
#3 – I do corrections on quizzes and retakes on tests that are under 80%. This follows my department but maybe we should be allowing students to go passed that 80% mark if we want to push their learning forward.
#4 – We had partial standard based grading going at my school but with Covid it got left behind. I need to work with my PLC to bring back the concept and mold our assessments to follow it.
#5- I find this one the most challenging because I have 30-36 students in a Geometry class for 50 minutes a day. I do all I can to walk around and listen to conversations but it doesn’t seem possible to give conversation based retakes, even if they are 5 minutes, to every student that wants it. I am going to have to talk with my colleagues in this class and see what we can come up with!
#6- I am all on board for this! Like you said grading long tests is not fun so smaller chunks make it more manageable. I do wonder, do you use multiple choice problems at all? With all the multiple choice testing they have to do for State test and National tests (ACT/SAT), is it beneficial to give them the opportunity to practice with that type of question?
#7- Our gradebook does not set us up for observation grades very well! I have no problem reporting on progress even if a unit hasn’t been completed though.
#8- This is an easy change for me and one that I think will be super beneficial for all the levels I teach!
#9- I am GUILTY of these days. By eliminating these I now have more time to spend on activities and making math moments which will balance out my anxiety of “covering everything.”
#10 – I do try to do this already and tell students that the test is easier than the practice they have been doing. It is a chance to show me what we have been doing. Not all buy in but I am trying.
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We changed to assessing each learning target. We give the students unlimited attempts, we really stress showing us how they came to their answer. Having to prove their understanding becomes very challenging for them.
Moving to Evidence Ticket Wednesdays has been a great change for us because students can come back to a topic when they have mastered it later in the year.
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Thanks for sharing Jared. What have you noticed anecdotally from your students? How do they like/dislike this process?
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My biggest concern is how I can implement learning based assessment in my classroom with current district policies. Currently we are required to group all assignments into 3 categories: weekly soft skills like bringing materials to class (25 points each week weighted 10% of the 9-weeks-grading-period), classwork and homework (six of these per 9-weeks period, 30% weight) and tests/projects (three per 9-weeks, 60% weight). While there is not a prescription for how I am to test, I am required to give true marks that are weighted which doesn’t necessarily show understanding. I am able to adjust grades as much as needed within a 9-weeks, but outside of the current 9-weeks I have to get permission. I like the idea of making assessments cumulative and also of not giving study guides. I have always felt that gives an unfair advantage to students who can memorize, and I’ve found that even when I give a study guide so that students can self-assess and ask for feedback/help, they NEVER do. They just ask me to give them the answers.
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I am lucky to work in an elementary school with standards based grading. The challenge is that the assessments are built unit by unit and it is up to the teachers to try to spiral back and give students opportunities to show new learning. I have found that it is difficult to be organized well to do this and it is something that I want to work on. I know in the video you mentioned that you always had your book open to be able to quickly jot down evidence of new learning. When there are so many standards to track, how do you do this? I would love to have a book with all the standards and be able to easily track each students’ progress and I have not yet figured out an organized way to achieve this. Thank you for sharing what works well for your tracking as this is an area I hope to grow in.
Other big takeaways for me are shorter, more frequent assessments that are cumulative. The problem with this is that the district has a common assessment so I am not sure how to get around this challenge. I sometimes do a review day and I agree that it is not something to do in the future based on my new learning.
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I will have to consider the no “grade” when giving feedback, considering I use and like the red, yellow, green for exit tickets, just to get a sense of how the class did, and do I proceed or pivot. The rest of my thoughts I had to organize in a doc, that is attached here.
This also brings up the question of documenting student work. Do you suggest they summarize what they did in a notebook (journal), or take pictures? Thinking of notes for them and documentation & grades for me.
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Both are ideas that can work. I’ve tried both and I enjoy having students reflecting in a journal or by submitting these reflections in a digital portfolio like Freshgrade.
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Thanks! I’ll have to check out FreshGrade.
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This set of assessment strategies truly tests some of the practices in my district and school.
#1 – Thankfully this is strongly encouraged but I feel that my administration thinks of it differently. They want us to offer different options for students to show their understanding versus having multiple opportunities throughout the year to show their knowledge.
#2 – I do this quite a bit with student reflection journals where I have them respond to prompts about their present confidence with a topic, feelings/thoughts about math and themselves as mathematicians, among other prompts. On assessments I do tend to highlight areas of concern so that they know where to focus their attention to try and fix the error. I don’t write too much as I am looking to see if they can “figure it out” on their own first.
#3 – Students should always have an opportunity to show their understanding even if it well past the assessed time. I have students re-do and explain their errors and if they can’t figure out what exactly went wrong, they tell me how they know what they did this time is correct.
#4 – I wish that our school graded this way in middle school. Unfortunately only K-4 are presently grading on a standards based scale. I am not sure how I could possibly record data for standards and learning goals as well as the traditional grading and not spend tons of time on this. I would like to reflect more on this one.
#5 – I feel like with using a lot of the BTC practices in my classroom that I presently do this a lot. I enjoy listening to students explain their thinking and express their learning verbally.
#6 – This is something I had started a few years ago but I see now how I can improve it by making it a weekly “check in” and limiting the quantity of questions. I have found that in the past it took some students the entire class to complete and now I have an idea of why. It relates to #9.
#7 – I have struggled at times to get units completed and have recreated assessments to address only those topics that we had actually gotten to in the unit rather than rush to squeeze it all in with very likely minimal student learning and understanding.
#8 – I absolutely love this one and intend to make sure that any assessments I give be cumulative. My weekly check-ins will address information from prior weeks and before as I am hoping to do a lagged practice/HW set up with my content. I definitely want to add more problems from previous units of study to keep students thinking about those prior topics over and over.
#9 – As a former special education teacher and a co-teacher of special education students this one is tough to swallow as many student IEPs require the student to have study guides and review before assessments. They are expected to be informed of all that the assessment will address. So many of today’s students expect to be prepared fully for assessments through the use of review days/games, study aides, notes, etc. I am not sure how this would be received in my building. I do understand the principle behind it for sure and now see that my thought of having students use their notes on assessments to help them complete the concepts accurately with reminders if necessary is not actually helping my students to develop permanence of their learning. I believe that this year I will definitely allow students access to their notes for practice but that in order to assess their understanding in a more accurate manner I need to have those notes, hints, and help not be acceptable. I can now understand how the mini check in #6 can only take half the class as it is only 4-6 questions that if they know they can complete and if they don’t understand still, they will leave blank or just make something up without a reference to look back to. I will need to foster the understanding that it is completely 100% okay to not know something YET and that we will keep working on it so that they can get it eventually.
#10 – I love the way that this is worded and presented. I am going to strongly consider adjusting the wording on my syllabus before the year starts to identify assessments as tools for learning and that my expectation is that they will work to improve their learning through additional work with the concepts.
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#1Multiple Opportunities To Assess Learning
This have been one that I have been striving for for a bit now, as I will say, I have experienced an education system which replies on one “be all to end all” assessment and it definitely rubbed me the wrong way. I do struggle though still trying to work out a system that is both effective and efficient for documenting these multiple ways of assessing a student’s skills and knowledge.
#2 Provide Descriptive Feedback
Again I find it hard not to see this as an important part of your commitment as an educator to student learning. However, I will fully admit that this is one I have struggled with. Being very overwhelmed with the endless list of to dos as a homeroom teacher, teaching 7 to 9 different subjects and still being able to uphold this commitment is a challenge I have yet to figure out how to overcome. I actually am trying not to be too hard on myself when I don’t give students feedback within an appropriate time even though I know they deserve it. I will say this is hard though as I completely see the impact timely and effective feedback has on student success. To compensate for my shortcomings in this, I have tried to come up with different strategies such as not making the whole feedback process so formal and maybe even assessing and giving kids oral feedback right there on the spot. Or using tech tools that allow a recording of my oral feedback. I find sometimes I want to write a book, but then takes way too much time to assess.
#3 Provide Opportunities To Re-Address Struggles
I am going to make an oath to this one. “I solemnly swear to never use the work re-test again” I never liked this practice and almost stopped doing it but then had a group of students ask to do re-tests and going to be honest it was an easy way out. I think though it is not the re-testing of knowledge practice that is the problem but how it is marketed. I like this wording of re-addressing struggles…or re-address skills. I would like to make it more of an open situation for my students if they want another opportunity to show what they got. I feel like I would say to them “pick a learning goal of your choice and then let’s re-address it and play around a bit, see if we can uncover the skill you have in there.” This would then be a conference-like one-to-one session where were go through a few skills.
#4 Assess by Standard-Based or Learning Goal
Whole-heartedly taking this one on this year, as I am hopeful to really get students involved in their own self-check ins using these standards. I will be using for my Grade 8s but may have to play around a bit for my grade4/5 class
#5 Use Conversation, Observations & Products
I am excited to really focus on conversation this year. I will be using a strategy where students are engaged in more of a passion project, while I engage in Math Conversations (small groups or one-to-one) to really bring out the knowledge and skill, that maybe hasn’t been brought out in other Check Ins, or Tasks.
#6 Use Shorter, More Frequent Assessment
With an overhaul of my model of teaching math this year, allowing for more collaborative group tasks using VNSs, I am hoping to even get in more assessment as students engage in conversations with other students.
#7 Evaluate & Report on Progress of Student Learning
I think this strategy has been what has gotten me through the crazy stress of report card season. Being told by my admin one day that I can comment on the progress rather than having to comment on the summative achievement definitely lightened the weight on my shoulders.
#8 Use Cumulative Assessments
I love this idea. I almost want to call it Flashback Section on an assessment, where there are questions from previous topics on recent assessments. Love this idea as it is simple and easy to implement!
#9 Eliminate Review Days & Study Guides
I actually somehow never really got into review guides or study days. I don’t know why. Being honest it was most likely because I didn’t have the time in my schedule, struggling to get through content as it is. Therefore, I have no plan of brining it back.
#10 Brand Assessment For Learning
YES! YES! YES! I love this idea! I personally think this is the key holder to really setting a different environment in your classroom and further instilling a joy for Mathematics.
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So many great take aways here and ideas. I love that you’re excited to reframe what “re-takes” look and sound like for your students!
Let us know how these ideas progress!
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#1 – I feel like I have many ideas and opportunities that I collect and look at where I can see student’s learning, BUT I am NOT good at keeping records of it. I have started charts like you have shown, but have lost track of them as well.
#2 – This one, I have been trying to do better about this year. I have definitely been more timely and I have written more on their errors, but not a lot. Something to work on.
#3 – I really want more information on this one. As I listened to what was typical, I was shouting, yes, yes and yes! The “retake” is much more work! BUT – if I give descriptive feedback aren’t I then telling them what they did wrong and then they are to tell me how to do it? But – I just gave them the answer to that conversation. Please help.
#4 – Again, in the past, I have tried something similar with the chart I referenced above. Another good goal
#5 – Exit Tickets and Check-ins. A good goal for me. Have to be better about this.
#6 – YES! I have said this for several years. I then switched grades and in learning the new content, I lost a lot of what I want to do. AND – it has been difficult to be on my own planning when I am still learning the content. So – I rely on my partner to help with the workload. It is time to do what I believe in.
#7 – I think this easy to do when you have more frequent shorter assessments and multiple forms of evidence of learning. No need to wait until the unit test.
#8 – Again, something that I started doing and got lost when I switched grade levels. I always did 2 “review” questions as part of my unit assessment. We also do “Flashback Fridays” which is a homework assessment that is cumulative.
#9 – Eliminate Review Days and Study Guides – The parents would bawk, but possible and I would have to reflect on this. I would have to admit that since COVID hit, I have been doing more review days and study guides than before. My form of “hand-holding”.
#10 – I already think this way and in my report cards, I refer to skills that the students have learned well or need more time with. We don’t do standards based report cards, but this is my way of addressing this. I think it is important that parents know which areas their children are working on and how it is going.
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#1 I definitely try to provide students multiple opportunities… sometimes these are in different forms, whether in a conversation, quiz or observation. My challenge is to figure out how to do this while attempting to spiral the curriculum.. I suppose that leads to the idea of a cumulative assessment.
#2 Feedback is ongoing, but I struggle to document it in an anecdotal way that I can recall what I offered in our last conversation. I don’t like to write on student work, which is why I tend to provide oral feedback or use a whiteboard to review where they are going in the wrong direction. I also need to be more concise and descriptive.
#3 This is ongoing… having opportunities to support students who struggle is a constant challenge to balance setting up learning for others and then finding a chance to re-address a particular misconception.
#4 Luckily, I have had the chance to assess by learning goals for most of my career. I’m currently trying to follow a similar structure in a system that boils learning down to a quantitative value, rather than a continuum of learning on particular standards.
#5 Triangulation is exactly the model that I adhere to. Being new in my school, I’ve had to help students adjust to the idea by continually referring them back to the three ways that I assess… observation (try to use anecdotal notes), conversations (either with me or others that I listen to) and documentation (in their notebook or whiteboard).
#6 Ideally, I would like to shift to a weekly short assessment of learning, but admit that I have struggled to implement this. It’s a culture adjustment in my current role to shift assessment to promote learning not labeling, so I’m taking small steps towards making this happen next semester.
#7 While I’m not 100% pleased with our reporting procedures, I am trying to make time to meet with families in person to have conversations about learning. Building this culture of communication is a journey… but we’re taking one step at a time.
#8 I admit that I was surprised to hear this one from Kyle. But it does make sense. Especially with the idea of spiraling the curriculum. I’ll have to reflect and consider how to build this into my assessments next semester.
#9 This I can agree with. Learning should continue throughout the semester. The culture of a review day or review week promotes the idea that learning is “over” rather than ongoing. While I want students to have responsibility for their learning, I’m still open to providing them with an opportunity to reflect on what concepts we explored in order to refresh their memory prior to an end of semester assessment.
#10 Yes. As I mentioned, shifting culture to assessment for learning not labeling is a slow process and one that requires shifts across a school and community. We can control how assessment is framed in our room, but need to push that conversation further to bring more like minded educators together to affect real change over time.
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#1 Multiple Opportunities-I do give students this by the work we do in class, exit tickets and entrance tickets to give me a quick view of who knows it and who needs help. I also look at quizzes as ways to assess students’ learning and who I need to help more as we move through a unit of study. However, I don’t do this by allowing a retake. I kind of think the test is the retake from the quiz. I will have to think about this one.
#2 Descriptive Feedback-I do this on the quizzes and tests and keep a list of students I need to target for specific concepts and work with them on these leading up to quizzes and tests. Yet, I am not at the point of retakes yet.
#3 Re-Address Struggle-Retakes-I would have a really hard time with this. I would have to have buy-in from my colleagues. Does this mean everyone gets an A? I understand what you are saying in theory for this but what this looks like when it comes time to sending students on to the next grade and a certain level of math gets complicated if retakes are allowed for one classroom but not another.
#4 Assess by learning Goal/Standard-Again, I think this is hard if a
the school system does not grade in this way. I can do it in theory but how do I present this on an electric report card that is by number grades?
#5 –Use conversations, Observations & Product Isn’t this what we do as teachers? This is something I do on a daily basis while I have conversations with students, listen to their conversations with their peers and watch what they do on paper or white boards.
#6 –Shorter/More Frequent Assessments: I consider doing this allows for a less weighted assessment so when it comes test time, students know the material and the test is really the retake.
#7 – Evaluate & Report on Progress of Student Learning: Again, isn’t evaluating what we are always supposed to be doing? As far as reporting on progress, who do we report this to? The student? I often have conversations with students who seem to be struggling with a concept to see if I can clear up any areas of confusion.
#8 –Use Cumulative Assessment: we do this with “Throwback Questions” but probably should do more of this. We do use Skill Drills every few weeks to continually assess previously learned skills.
#9 – Eliminate Review Days and Study Guides – I would have a hard time doing this. This is considered good teaching in our school system. I’d have to think about this one longer. I don’t think parents, students, administration and Special Education would go along with this.
#10 –Brand Assessment for Learning as a tool to push forward, not labeling-I do look at each student as a work in progress. Some may take longer to learn a concept by seeing all the parts, practicing it in different ways, and connecting the big ideas in different ways. However at some point each year, I need to place them in the appropriate class the next year. I do continue to evaluate them until the last month of school to see if anything may change.
