Standard 11 Reflection: Utilize formative and summative assessment in a standards based environment

Standard 11  Reflection: Utilize formative and summative assessment in a standards based environment

Background

I came into this program with a good understanding of learning targets, success criteria,   as well as use of formative assessments and summative assessments as a result of professional development opportunities that I have participated in with my current school district.

As a district we spent several years working on learning targets and success criteria.  To make sure these are keep this in the forefront while we work on other instructional practices, ouradministrators come through our classrooms at least once a year to see if our learning targets are written on the board, if we revisited them throughout the lesson and our exit slip connects to them.  We also submit a lesson in the spring which is looked at by our teaching and learning department to see how we are doing in this area. Using these data points, they decide what our professional development will be focused on for the following year. We only get individual feedback from these submissions  if we ask for it. Even though most teachers have learning targets and success criteria written on the board and are able to submit a complete lesson plans, we still have several teachers who only do it out of compliance and not to move students forward in their learning or ownership of their learning.

Since most teachers are competent in using learning targets and success criteria we changed our focus to formative assessments the last two years in our school district.   As a teacher leader I led the 6th grade social studies teachers through our protocol a total of four times. In this protocol we first identified a standard that we would like to work on.  Our next step was to create a diagnostic formative assessment. Then we worked through the assessment in order to be able to identify possible misconceptions as well as to decide it truly did assess the standard we choose.  After, we modified the assessment as needed, we then gave it to our students. Within a couple of weeks, we came back with scored assessments to discuss what patterns and misconceptions we noticed. The final step was then to come up with some ideas to move our students toward meeting the standard.  As a district, we have also been working toward increasing the tools in our formative assessment tool belt, so we can use a variety of formative assessments in our teaching. This has happened in a variety of ways. We have been

given placemats with a list of formative assessments and brief descriptions, seen them modeled by our coaches in their presentations, and through optional book studies.

Learning and Applied Practice

While in the Standards Based Assessment class, I created a learning progression  in which I applied my learning about standard-based assessments.  To begin this learning progression we broke down the standards into learning targets that would help our students get to the standard.    Our next step was to learn about different types of formative assessments and then think about which type of formative assessment would work best to check for understanding by our students.  Wiliam is his book Embedded Formative Assessment provided a lot of examples for us to use in his chapter entitled “Eliciting Evidence of Learners’ Achievement” as well as in his list of techniques on pages 163 and 164.  I appreciated that Wiliam stressed that when you are giving formative assessments you are not only looking for the students comprehension of the material, but also checking for any misconceptions by students that need to be addressed. Your questions also need to be higher-level questions in order for you to truly know what your students know and how they are applying their knowledge.  Lastly, I was reminded that it is necessary to use a variety of assessments

to get a clear picture of your students knowledge of the material.

Throughout this project not only did we work on creating our learning progression, but we also experienced standard-based assessment strategies from the student side.

 It started by being a given a clear shared learning expectation when we were given a model of what a learning progression would look like. Then we provided evidence our

knowledge of the formative assessments by deciding what type of formative assessments could be used to meet our standard, coming up with sample rubric and plans of how we would move out students forward, and  explaining the misconceptions our students may have. Throughout the development of our learning progression we were given peer-feedback as well as feedback from our professor. By given our feedback to others we were able to see what they had done and we were then able to self-assess and modify our learning progression as necessary.

Issues Encountered/Problems of Practice Addressed

When I first completed my learning progression I originally used learning targets from our district’s framework.   After looking at it closer, getting peer feedback and feedback from my professor I realized that my final destination was to answer a prompt instead of a standard. Also some of our success criteria takes us on side-trip and doesn’t actually get us to the standard we are assessing at the end of our unit.  So I modified my success criteria building blocks as needed to in order to get students to the learning target that was based on standards.

How Teaching and Collaborative Practices ares Supported by Research

In addition to our learning progression we were asked to learn more about one of following strategies -  Sharing Learning Expectations, Elicit Evidence of Student Learning, Providing Quality Feedback and Peer and Self Assessment.  I choose to learn more about Sharing Learning Expectations for my assessment into action paper.   While I was doing my research I found several  resources, but the following two stood out and I plan on referring to them as I am designing lesson plans as well as leading optional professional development sessions   The first is from the second chapter of the book Advancing Formative Assessment in Every Classroom by Connie M. Moss and Susan M. Brookhart entitled “Leveling the Playing Field: Sharing Learning Targets and Criteria for Success”    What I liked about this chapter was that it provided several strategies to share with other teachers how to share learning targets and success criteria with others.  It also provided some example evaluation forms that could be used if you are asked to evaluate teachers in this area. The second source I found was an article entitled “ A Map for Meaningful Learning: Kids need a clear destination, success criteria, and frequent feedback” by Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey.  I thought this article did a nice job of explaining why we need clear expectations and how formative assessments guide us and our students to that end point by comparing it to the GPS system we have on our phone or in our car.

Overall Impact

As a result of this class I have realized that I need to have learning targets and success

criteria that are based on standards for learning vs. being based on a prompt or activity when I am working on creating curriculum for  our STRETCH (Students Reaching for new Challenges) classes.  Those learning targets also need to be clearly communicated to students throughout the lesson/unit through the formative assessments and feedback.   Some of the ways to communicate our learning targets clearly are by modeling, providing examples, having students make a plan of how to get to the target, and questioning.     I also picked up a few more formative assessment techniques such as questioning shells (Wiliam, pg. 86) to provide evidence of students’ progress toward a given learning target as well as to identify their misconceptions.  In my new role as Future Librarian I will encourage others to use peer feedback in their classrooms and to share the video about peer conferencing.  I will also encourage others to try giving more feedback through one-on-one conferences and then have their students video tape their plan so that they know that they have heard feedback and comprehend how to move forward.   Based on study by Maria Elawar and Lyn Corno (Wiliam, pg. 107) I will also encourage others to continue to give my students feedback, but not giving them a score at that point, but wait until they have had a chance to make adjustments to their work as needed before scoring it.  Lastly, I will encourage others to provide an opportunity for their students to move up their score after they have received feedback from the teacher and their peers. I hope to present these ideas in future professional development opportunities.

As a teacher leader I hope to share my learning from this class with others and advocate instructional practices that help our students to move forward and meet the standards for learning.  Additionally, I will be looking at our frameworks more closely and making sure that our formative assessments align with the unit learning target better. Also, as we look at our grading systems, I will be able to provide evidence for it to be based on the summative assessments vs. the combination of summative and formative assessments since the purpose of formative assessments is to evaluate the our students’ progress toward the learning target.  Overall, I believe that through the readings, discussions, and assignments we have had in in my Standards Based Assessment course, I have been given a wealth of resources that helped me have a better understanding of standard-based assessments.

Earlier this year  also had the opportunity to support a long-term guest teacher with our seventh grade social studies curriculum and I created learning progressions or unit sequences as my district calls them for him and others to use.   I have also had the opportunity to work on learning progressions for ELA standards and Future Ready skills.  This has helped us to really look at what is expected of students at different grade levels instead of just looking at what we expect at the end of 8th grade or high school.

References

(2018, June 27). Retrieved August 14, 2018, from https://www.teachingchannel.org/ video/peer-conferencing

Fisher, D. & Frey, N. (2018). A map for meaningful learning: Kids need a clear destination, success criteria, and frequent feedback. Educational Leadership, 75(5), 82-83.

Moss, C. M., & Brookhart, S. M. (2009). Leveling the Playing Field:  Shared Learning Targets and Criteria for Success.  Advancing Formative Assessment in Every Classroom: A Guide for Instructional Leaders. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Wiliam, D. (2011). Embedded formative assessment. Bloomington: Solution Tree Press.

Wiliam, D., & Leahy, S. (2015). Embedding formative assessment: Practical techniques for K-12
classrooms. West Palm Beach, Fl.: Learning Sciences International.