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- This resource helps teachers understand the real purposes behind assessments and how to effectively choose an assessment.

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Understanding the Role of Assessment in Learning

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Understanding the Role of Assessment in Learning

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- This resource discusses the importance of using assessments in education. The purpose of assessments is to measure student progress and learning, and not just to give a grade.
- The resource goes through the importance of assessment, picking out the right type of assessment for your students, and the types of perspectives that teachers should have about assessments.

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Assessment and Learning

Assessment plays an important role in the process of learning and motivation. The types of assessment tasks that we ask our students to do determine how students will approach the learning task and what study behaviours they will use. In the words of higher education scholar John Biggs, "What and how students learn depends to a major extent on how they think they will be assessed." (1999, p. 141).

Given the importance of assessment for student learning, it is important to consider how to best measure the learning that you want your students to achieve. Assessment should integrate grading, learning, and motivation for your students. Well-designed assessment methods provide valuable information about student learning. They tell us what students learned, how well they learned it, and where they struggled. Good assessments allow you to answer the question,

What was it that my students learned in my course?

Assessment then becomes a lens for understanding student learning, identifying invisible barriers, and helping us to improve our teaching approaches.

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Understanding the Role of Assessment in Learning

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Assessment plays an important role in the process of learning and motivation. The types of assessment tasks that we ask our students to do determine how students will approach the learning task and what study behaviours they will use.

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- Assessment is important because it is a way for students to demonstrate that they understand and can utilize the material that they have learned.
- Assessments can inform teachers if a change needs to be made to the teaching and learning style of the classroom, and draw the attention of the teacher to students who need extra help.

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Asking students to demonstrate their understanding of the subject matter is critical to the learning process; it is essential to evaluate whether the educational goals and standards of the lessons are being met. From Edutopia.org’s Assessment Professional Development Guide.

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Seven Things that Educators Should Know about Assessment and Evaluation

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Seven Things that Educators Should Know about Assessment and Evaluation

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- This resource helps teachers to get started on how assessment will be run in their classroom as well as teach them about critical aspects of assessment and why it is important.
- This resource specifically points out that assessment should be using throughout the entire learning process, because it helps inform teachers and students of their learning progress.

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7 Things That Educators Should Know About Assessment and Evaluation - The Edvocate

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Spread the loveAssessment refers to judging a student’s rate of academic achievement by analyzing the available evidence, such as quizzes, tests or written tasks. Assessments take different forms, and each one of them is created for a particular reason. Teachers’ practice formative assessment by obs…

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7 Things That Educators Should Know About Assessment and Evaluation

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Do Standardized Tests Improve Education in America?

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Do Standardized Tests Improve Education in America?

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- This resource details some of the biggest pro's and con's to using standardized tests in schools. Overall, there isn't one right answer because standardized tests give valuable information but they aren't created perfectly, so many problems arise.

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Standardized tests have been a part of American education since the mid-1800s. Their use skyrocketed after 2002's No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) mandated annual testing in all 50 states. US students slipped from being ranked 18th in the world in math in 2000 to 40th in 2015, and from 14th to 25th in science and from 15th to 24th in reading. Failures in the education system have been blamed on rising poverty levels, teacher quality, tenure policies, and, increasingly, on the pervasive use of standardized tests.

Proponents argue that standardized tests offer an objective measurement of education and a good metric to gauge areas for improvement, as well as offer meaningful data to help students in marginalized groups, and that the scores are good indicators of college and job success. They argue standardized tests are useful metrics for teacher evaluations.

Opponents argue that standardized tests only determine which students are good at taking tests, offer no meaningful measure of progress, and have not improved student performance, and that the tests are racist, classist, and sexist, with scores that are not predictors of future success. They argue standardized tests are useful metrics for teacher evaluations.
Read more background...
Pro & Con Arguments

Pro 1

Standardized tests offer an objective measurement of education and a good metric to gauge areas for improvement.

Teachers' grading practices are naturally uneven and subjective. An A in one class may be a C in another. Teachers also have conscious and unconscious biases for a favorite student or against a rowdy student, for example. Standardized tests offer students across the country a unified measure of their knowledge.

Aaron Churchill, Ohio Research Director for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, stated, "At their core, standardized exams are designed to be objective measures. They assess students based on a similar set of questions, are given under nearly identical testing conditions, and are graded by a machine or blind reviewer. They are intended to provide an accurate, unfiltered measure of what a student knows."

Frequently states or local jurisdictions employ psychometricians to ensure tests are fair across populations of students. Mark Moulon, PhD, Chief Executive Officer at Pythias Consulting and psychometrician, offered an example: "If you find that your question on skateboarding is one that boys find to be an easy question, but girls find to be a hard question, that'll pop up as a statistic. Differential item functioning will flag that question as problematic."

Moulon continued, explaining, "What's cool about psychometrics is that it will flag stuff that a human would never be able to notice. I remember a science test that had been developed in California and it asked about earthquakes. But the question was later used in a test that was administered in New England. When you try to analyze the New England kids with the California kids, you would get a differential item functioning flag because the California kids were all over the subject of earthquakes, and the kids in Vermont had no idea about earthquakes."

With problematic questions removed, or adapted for different populations of students, standardized tests offer the best objective measure of what students have learned. Taking that information, schools can determine areas for improvement. As Bryan Nixon, former Head of School at private school Whitby, noted, "When we receive standardized test data at Whitby, we use it to evaluate the effectiveness of our education program. We view standardized testing data as not only another set of data points to assess student performance, but also as a means to help us reflect on our curriculum. When we look at Whitby's assessment data, we can compare our students to their peers at other schools to determine what we're doing well within our educational continuum and where we need to invest more time and resources."
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Pro 2

Standardized tests offer meaningful data to help students in marginalized groups.

Keri Rodrigues, Co-founder of the National Parents Union, explained, "If I don't have testing data to make sure my child's on the right track, I'm not able to intervene and say there is a problem and my child needs more. And the community can't say this school is doing well, this teacher needs help to improve, or this system needs new leadership... It's really important to have a statewide test because of the income disparity that exists in our society. Black and Brown excellence is real, but just because a kid lives in Dorchester [Massachusetts] does not make his or her life is less valuable than a child that lives in Wellesley [Massachusetts]. And it is unfair to say that just by luck of birth that a child born in Wellesley is somehow entitled to a higher-quality education... Testing is a tool for us to hold the system accountable to make sure our kids have what they need. "

Sheryl Lazarus, PhD, Director of the National Center on Educational Outcomes at the University of Minnesota, stated, "a real plus of these assessments is that they've really shone a light on the differences across sub-groups. And they have led to improvements in access to instruction for students with disabilities and English learners... Inclusion of students with disabilities and English learners in summative tests used for accountability allows us to measure how well the system is doing for these students, and then it is possible to fill in gaps in instructional opportunity."

Advocates for marginalized groups of students, whether by race, learning disability, or other difference, can use testing data to prove a problem exists and to help solve the problem via more funding, development of programs, or other solutions. Civil rights education lawsuits wherein a group is suing a local or state government for better education almost always use testing data.

Chris Stewart, CEO of brightbeam, summarizes, "We only know that there's a difference between White students and Black students and other students of color because we have the data. We only know about that because we have assessments."

A letter signed by 12 civil rights organizations including the NAACP and the American Association of University Women, explained, "Data obtained through some standardized tests are particularly important to the civil rights community because they are the only available, consistent, and objective source of data about disparities in educational outcomes, even while vigilance is always required to ensure tests are not misused. These data are used to advocate for greater resource equity in schools and more fair treatment for students of color, low-income students, students with disabilities, and English learners... [W]e cannot fix what we cannot measure. And abolishing the tests or sabotaging the validity of their results only makes it harder to identify and fix the deep-seated problems in our schools."
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Pro 3

Standardized tests are useful metrics for teacher evaluations.

While grades and other measures are useful for teacher evaluations, standardized tests provide a consistent measure across classrooms and schools. Individual school administrators, school districts, and the state can compare teachers using test scores to show how each teacher has helped students master core concepts.

Timothy Hilton, a high school social studies teacher in South Central Los Angeles, stated, "No self-respecting teacher would use a single student grade on a single assignment as a final grade for the entirety of a course, so why would we rely on one source of information in the determination of a teacher's overall quality? The more data that can be provided, the more accurate the teacher evaluation decisions will end up being. Teacher evaluations should incorporate as many pieces of data as possible. Administration observation, student surveys, student test scores, professional portfolios, and on and on. The more data that is used, the more accurate the picture it will paint."
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Pro 4

Standardized tests scores are good indicators of college and job success.

Standardized tests can offer evidence of and promote academic rigor, which is invaluable in college as well as in students' careers. Matthew Pietrafetta, PhD, Founder of Academic Approach, argues that the "tests create gravitational pull toward higher achievement."

Elaine Riordan, senior communications professional at Actively Learn, stated, "[C]onsiderable research suggests that interventions that help students improve test scores are linked to better adult outcomes such as college attendance, higher incomes, and the avoidance of risky behaviors... In other words, creating learning environments that lead to higher test scores is also likely to improve students' long-term success in college and beyond... Recent research suggests that the competencies that the SAT, ACT, and other standardized tests are now evaluating are essential not just for students who will attend four-year colleges but also for those who participate in CTE programs or choose to seek employment requiring associate degrees and certificates. The researchers argue that all of these students require the same level of academic mastery to be successful after high school graduation."

Standardized test scores have long been correlated with better college and life outcomes. As Dan Goldhaber, PhD, Director of the Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research, and Umut Özek, PhD, senior researcher at the American Institutes for Research, summarize, "students who score one standard deviation higher on math tests at the end of high school have been shown to earn 12% more annually, or $3,600 for each year of work life in 2001... Similarly... test scores are significantly correlated not only with educational attainment and labor market outcomes (employment, work experience, choice of occupation), but also with risky behavior (teenage pregnancy, smoking, participation in illegal activities)."
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Con 1

Standardized tests only determine which students are good at taking tests, offer no meaningful measure of progress, and have not improved student performance.

Standardized test scores are easily influenced by outside factors: stress, hunger, tiredness, and prior teacher or parent comments about the difficulty of the test, among other factors. In short, the tests only show which students are best at preparing for and taking the tests, not what knowledge students might exhibit if their stomachs weren't empty. External stereotypes also play a part in scores: "research indicates that being targeted by well-known stereotypes ('blacks are unintelligent,' 'Latinos perform poorly on tests,' 'girls can't do math' and so on) can be threatening to students in profound ways, a predicament they call 'stereotype threat.'"

Students are tested on grade-appropriate material, but they are not re-tested to determine if they have learned information they tested poorly on the year before. Instead, as Steve Martinez, EdD, Superintendent of Twin Rivers Unified in California, and Rick Miller, Executive Director of CORE Districts, note, each "state currently reports yearly change, by comparing the scores of this year's students against the scores of last year's students who were in the same grade. Even though educators, parents and policymakers might think change signals impact, it says much more about the change in who the students are because it is not measuring the growth of the same student from one year to the next."

Further, because each state develops its own tests, standardized tests are not necessarily comparable across state lines, leaving nationwide statistics shaky at best.

Brandon Busteed, Executive Director, Education & Workforce Development at the time of the quote, stated, "Despite an increased focus on standardized testing, U.S. results in international comparisons show we have made no significant improvement over the past 20 years, according to the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). The U.S. most recently ranked 23rd, 39th and 25th in reading, math and science, respectively. The last time Americans celebrated being 23rd, 39th and 25th in anything was ... well, never. Our focus on standardized testing hasn't helped us improve our results!"

Busteed asks, "What if our overreliance on standardized testing has actually inhibited our ability to help students succeed and achieve in a multitude of other dimensions? For example, how effective are schools at identifying and educating students with high entrepreneurial talent? Or at training students to apply creative thinking to solve messy and complex issues with no easy answers?"
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Con 2

Standardized tests are racist, classist, and sexist.

The origin of American standardized tests are those created by psychologist Carl Brigham, PhD, for the Army during World War I, which was later adapted to become the SAT. The Army tests were created specifically to segregate soldiers by race, because at the time science inaccurately linked intelligence and race.

Racial bias has not been stripped from standardized tests. W. James Popham, PhD, Professor Emeritus at the University of California at Los Angeles and former test maker, explains how discrimination is purposefully built in to standardized tests, "Traditionally constructed standardized achievements, the kinds that we've used in this country for a long while, are intended chiefly to discriminate among students ... to say that someone was in the 83rd percentile and someone is at 43rd percentile. And the reason you do that is so you can make judgments among these kids. But in order to do so, you have to make sure that the test has in fact a spread of scores. One of the ways to have that test create a spread of scores is to limit items in the test to socioeconomic variables, because socioeconomic status is a nicely spread out distribution, and that distribution does in fact spread kids' scores out on a test."

As Young Whan Choi, Manager of Performance Assessments Oakland Unified School District in Oakland, California, explains, "Too often, test designers rely on questions which assume background knowledge more often held by White, middle-class students. It's not just that the designers have unconscious racial bias; the standardized testing industry depends on these kinds of biased questions in order to create a wide range of scores." Choi offers an example from his own 10th grade class, "a student called me over with a question. With a puzzled look, she pointed to the prompt asking students to write about the qualities of someone who would deserve a "key to the city." Many of my students, nearly all of whom qualified for free and reduced lunch, were not familiar with the idea of a 'key to the city.'"

Wealthy kids, who would be more familiar with a "key to the city," tend to have higher standardized test scores due to differences in brain development caused by factors such as "access to enriching educational resources, and... exposure to spoken language and vocabulary early in life." Plus, as Eloy Ortiz Oakley, MBA, Chancellor of California Community Colleges, points out, "Many well-resourced students have far greater access to test preparation, tutoring and taking the test multiple times, opportunities not afforded the less affluent... [T]hese admissions tests are a better measure of students' family background and economic status than of their ability to succeed"

Journalist and teacher Carly Berwick explains, "All students do not do equally well on multiple choice tests, however. Girls tend to do less well than boys and perform better on questions with open-ended answers, according to a 2018 study by Stanford University's Sean Reardon, which found that test format alone accounts for 25 percent of the gender difference in performance in both reading and math. Researchers hypothesize that one explanation for the gender difference on high-stakes tests is risk aversion, meaning girls tend to guess less."
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Con 3

Standardized tests are unfair metrics for teacher evaluations.

16 states and DC have stopped using standardized tests in teacher evaluations. [79] [80] As W. James Popham, PhD, noted, "standardized achievement tests should not be used to determine the effectiveness of a state, a district, a school, or a teacher. There's almost certain to be a significant mismatch between what's taught and what's tested."

Margaret Pastor, PhD, Principal of Stedwick Elementary School in Maryland, stated: "[A]n assistant superintendent... pointed out that in one of my four kindergarten classes, the student scores were noticeably lower, while in another, the students were outperforming the other three classes. He recommended that I have the teacher whose class had scored much lower work directly with the teacher who seemed to know how to get higher scores from her students. Seems reasonable, right? But here was the problem: The "underperforming" kindergarten teacher and the "high-performing" teacher were one and the same person."
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Con 4

Standardized tests scores are not predictors of future success.

Standardized tests can only, at best, evaluate rote knowledge of math, science, and English. The tests do not evaluate creativity, problem solving, critical thinking, artistic ability, or other knowledge areas that cannot be judged by scoring a sheet of bubbles filled in with a pencil.

Grade point averages (GPA) are a 5 times stronger indicator of college success than standardized tests, according to a study of 55,084 Chicago public school students. One of the authors, Elaine M. Allensworth, PhD, Lewis-Sebring Director of the University of Chicago Consortium, stated, "GPAs measure a very wide variety of skills and behaviors that are needed for success in college, where students will encounter widely varying content and expectations. In contrast, standardized tests measure only a small set of the skills that students need to succeed in college, and students can prepare for these tests in narrow ways that may not translate into better preparation to succeed in college."

Matthew M. Chingos, PhD, Vice President of Education Data and Policy at the Urban Institute, explained, "earning good grades requires consistent behaviors over time-showing up to class and participating, turning in assignments, taking quizzes, etc.-whereas students could in theory do well on a test even if they do not have the motivation and perseverance needed to achieve good grades. It seems likely that the kinds of habits high school grades capture are more relevant for success in college than a score from a single test."
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Did You Know?

1. The earliest known standardized tests were administered to government job applicants in 7th Century Imperial China.

2. The Kansas Silent Reading Test (1914-1915) is the earliest known published multiple-choice test, developed by Frederick J. Kelly, a Kansas school director.

3. In 1934, International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) hired a teacher and inventor named Reynold B. Johnson (best known for creating the world's first commercial computer disk drive) to create a production model of his prototype test scoring machine.

4. The current use of No. 2 pencils on standardized tests is a holdover from the 1930s through the 1960s, when scanning machines scored answer sheets by detecting the electrical conductivity of graphite pencil marks.

5. In 2020, states were allowed to cancel standardized testing due to the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic.

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Standardized Testing Pros and Cons - Does It Improve Education?

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Proponents say the tests offer objective measurements of education. Opponents say tests only show which students are good at taking tests.

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5 Advantages and Disadvantages of Problem-Based Learning

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5 Advantages and Disadvantages of Problem-Based Learning

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- This resource discusses the advantages and disadvantages of Problem-Based Learning in the classroom and how to remedy some of the disadvantages. I like that this resource gave ideas of how to combat the disadvantages instead of just simply listing them out.

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All Posts

Used since the 1960s, many teachers express concerns about the effectiveness of problem-based learning (PBL) in certain classroom settings.

Whether you introduce the student-centred pedagogy as a one-time activity or mainstay exercise, grouping students together to solve open-ended problems can present pros and cons.
Below are five advantages and disadvantages of problem-based learning to help you determine if it can work in your classroom.
If you decide to introduce an activity, there are also design creation steps and a downloadable guide to keep at your desk for easy reference.

Advantages of Problem-Based Learning

1. Development of Long-Term Knowledge Retention

Students who participate in problem-based learning activities can improve their abilities to retain and recall information, according to a literature review of studies about the pedagogy.

The literature review states "elaboration of knowledge at the time of learning" -- by sharing facts and ideas through discussion and answering questions -- "enhances subsequent retrieval." This form of elaborating reinforces understanding of subject matter, making it easier to remember.

Small-group discussion can be especially beneficial -- ideally, each student will get chances to participate.

But regardless of group size, problem-based learning promotes long-term knowledge retention by encouraging students to discuss -- and answer questions about -- new concepts as they're learning them.

2. Use of Diverse Instruction Types

You can use problem-based learning activities to the meet the diverse learning needs and styles of your students, effectively engaging a diverse classroom in the process. In general, grouping students together for problem-based learning will allow them to:

Address real-life issues that require real-life solutions, appealing to students who struggle to grasp abstract concepts

Participate in small-group and large-group learning, helping students who don't excel during solo work grasp new material

Talk about their ideas and challenge each other in a constructive manner, giving participatory learners an avenue to excel

Tackle a problem using a range of content you provide -- such as videos, audio recordings, news articles and other applicable material -- allowing the lesson to appeal to distinct learning styles

Since running a problem-based learning scenario will give you a way to use these differentiated instruction approaches, it can be especially worthwhile if your students don't have similar learning preferences.

3. Continuous Engagement

Providing a problem-based learning challenge can engage students by acting as a break from normal lessons and common exercises.

It's not hard to see the potential for engagement, as kids collaborate to solve real-world problems that directly affect or heavily interest them.

Although conducted with post-secondary students, a study published by the Association for the Study of Medical Education reported increased student attendance to -- and better attitudes towards -- courses that feature problem-based learning.

These activities may lose some inherent engagement if you repeat them too often, but can certainly inject excitement into class.

4. Development of Transferable Skills

Problem-based learning can help students develop skills they can transfer to real-world scenarios, according to a 2015 book that outlines theories and characteristics of the pedagogy.

The tangible contexts and consequences presented in a problem-based learning activity "allow learning to become more profound and durable." As you present lessons through these real-life scenarios, students should be able to apply learnings if they eventually face similar issues.

For example, if they work together to address a dispute within the school, they may develop lifelong skills related to negotiation and communicating their thoughts with others.

As long as the problem's context applies to out-of-class scenarios, students should be able to build skills they can use again.

5. Improvement of Teamwork and Interpersonal Skills

Successful completion of a problem-based learning challenge hinges on interaction and communication, meaning students should also build transferable skills based on teamwork and collaboration. Instead of memorizing facts, they get chances to present their ideas to a group, defending and revising them when needed.

What's more, this should help them understand a group dynamic. Depending on a given student, this can involve developing listening skills and a sense of responsibility when completing one's tasks. Such skills and knowledge should serve your students well when they enter higher education levels and, eventually, the working world.

Disadvantages of Problem-Based Learning

1. Potentially Poorer Performance on Tests

Devoting too much time to problem-based learning can cause issues when students take standardized tests, as they may not have the breadth of knowledge needed to achieve high scores. Whereas problem-based learners develop skills related to collaboration and justifying their reasoning, many tests reward fact-based learning with multiple choice and short answer questions. Despite offering many advantages, you could spot this problem develop if you run problem-based learning activities too regularly.

2. Student Unpreparedness

Problem-based learning exercises can engage many of your kids, but others may feel disengaged as a result of not being ready to handle this type of exercise for a number of reasons. On a class-by-class and activity-by-activity basis, participation may be hindered due to:

Immaturity -- Some students may not display enough maturity to effectively work in a group, not fulfilling expectations and distracting other students.

Unfamiliarity -- Some kids may struggle to grasp the concept of an open problem, since they can't rely on you for answers.

Lack of Prerequisite Knowledge -- Although the activity should address a relevant and tangible problem, students may require new or abstract information to create an effective solution.

You can partially mitigate these issues by actively monitoring the classroom and distributing helpful resources, such as guiding questions and articles to read. This should keep students focused and help them overcome knowledge gaps. But if you foresee facing these challenges too frequently, you may decide to avoid or seldom introduce problem-based learning exercises.

3. Teacher Unpreparedness

If supervising a problem-based learning activity is a new experience, you may have to prepare to adjust some teaching habits. For example, overtly correcting students who make flawed assumptions or statements can prevent them from thinking through difficult concepts and questions. Similarly, you shouldn't teach to promote the fast recall of facts. Instead, you should concentrate on:

Giving hints to help fix improper reasoning

Questioning student logic and ideas in a constructive manner

Distributing content for research and to reinforce new concepts

Asking targeted questions to a group or the class, focusing their attention on a specific aspect of the problem

Depending on your teaching style, it may take time to prepare yourself to successfully run a problem-based learning lesson.

4. Time-Consuming Assessment

If you choose to give marks, assessing a student's performance throughout a problem-based learning exercise demands constant monitoring and note-taking. You must take factors into account such as:

Completed tasks

The quality of those tasks

The group's overall work and solution

Communication among team members

Anything you outlined on the activity's rubric

Monitoring these criteria is required for each student, making it time-consuming to give and justify a mark for everyone.

5. Varying Degrees of Relevancy and Applicability

It can be difficult to identify a tangible problem that students can solve with content they're studying and skills they're mastering. This introduces two clear issues. First, if it is easy for students to divert from the challenge's objectives, they may miss pertinent information. Second, you could veer off the problem's focus and purpose as students run into unanticipated obstacles. Overcoming obstacles has benefits, but may compromise the planning you did. It can also make it hard to get back on track once the activity is complete. Because of the difficulty associated with keeping activities relevant and applicable, you may see problem-based learning as too taxing.

Steps to Designing Problem-Based Learning Activities

If the advantages outweigh the disadvantages -- or you just want to give problem-based learning a shot -- follow these steps:

1. Identify an Applicable Real-Life Problem

Find a tangible problem that's relevant to your students, allowing them to easily contextualize it and hopefully apply it to future challenges. To identify an appropriate real-world problem, look at issues related to your:

School

Community

Students' shared interests

You must also ensure that students understand the problem and the information around it. So, not all problems are appropriate for all grade levels.

2. Determine the Overarching Purpose of the Activity

Depending on the problem you choose, determine what you want to accomplish by running the challenge. For example, you may intend to help your students improve skills related to:

A more precise example, you may prioritize collaboration skills by assigning specific tasks to pairs of students within each team. In doing so, students will continuously develop communication and collaboration abilities by working as a couple and part of a small group. By defining a clear purpose, you'll also have an easier time following the next step.

3. Create and Distribute Helpful Material

Handouts and other content not only act as a set of resources, but help students stay focused on the activity and its purpose. For example, if you want them to improve a certain math skill, you should make material that highlights the mathematical aspects of the problem. You may decide to provide items such as:

Data that helps quantify and add context to the problem

Videos, presentations and other audio-visual material

A list of preliminary questions to investigate

Providing a range of resources can be especially important for elementary students and struggling students in higher grades, who may not have self-direction skills to work without them.

4. Set Goals and Expectations for Your Students

Along with the aforementioned materials, give students a guide or rubric that details goals and expectations. It will allow you to further highlight the purpose of the problem-based learning exercise, as you can explain what you're looking for in terms of collaboration, the final product and anything else. It should also help students stay on track by acting as a reference throughout the activity.

5. Participate

Although explicitly correcting students may be discouraged, you can still help them and ask questions to dig into their thought processes. When you see an opportunity, consider if it's worthwhile to:

Fill gaps in knowledge

Provide hints, not answers

Question a student's conclusion or logic regarding a certain point, helping them think through tough spots

By participating in these ways, you can provide insight when students need it most, encouraging them to effectively analyze the problem.

6. Have Students Present Ideas and Findings

If you divided them into small groups, requiring students to present their thoughts and results in front the class adds a large-group learning component to the lesson. Encourage other students to ask questions, allowing the presenting group to elaborate and provide evidence for their thoughts. This wraps up the activity and gives your class a final chance to find solutions to the problem.

Wrapping Up

The effectiveness of problem-based learning may differ between classrooms and individual students, depending on how significant specific advantages and disadvantages are to you. Evaluative research consistently shows value in giving students a question and letting them take control of their learning. But the extent of this value can depend on the difficulties you face.It may be wise to try a problem-based learning activity, and go forward based on results.

Create or log into your teacher account on Prodigy -- an adaptive math game that adjusts content to accommodate player trouble spots and learning speeds. Aligned to US and Canadian curricula, it's used by more than 350,000 teachers and 10 million students.It may be wise to try a problem-based learning activity, and go forward based on results.

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5 Advantages and Disadvantages of Problem-Based Learning [+ Activity Design Steps]

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All Posts Used since the 1960s, many teachers express concerns about the effectiveness of problem-based learning (PBL) in certain classroom settings. Whether you introduce the student-centred pedagogy as a one-time activity or mainstay exercise, grouping students together to solve open-ended problems can present pros and cons.

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National Center for Learning Disabilities 

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National Center for Learning Disabilities 

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- This is a great resource for every teacher because every teacher will have a student with a disability in their classroom at some point. Every teacher should do their best to stay up to date on the most effective methods and strategies for helping students with disabilities to read their full potential.

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National Center for Learning Disabilities

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The National Center for Learning Disabilities is excited to announce the opening of its 2024 Anne Ford and Allegra Ford Thomas scholars. Both scholarships are for students with specific learning disabilities, such as dyslexia, dyscalculia, dysgraphia, etc. However, students with both a learning disability and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)...

The National Center for Learning Disabilities is excited to announce the opening of its 2024...

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National Center for Learning Disabilities

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Working to improve the lives of the 1 in 5 children and adults nationwide with learning and attention issues.

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20 Differentiated Instruction Strategies and Examples

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20 Differentiated Instruction Strategies and Examples

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- This resource offers examples of differentiated instruction strategies for the classroom. This can help teachers jump-start the process of ensuring that their lessons include everyone.

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20 Differentiated Instruction Strategies and Examples [+ Downloadable List]

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As students with diverse learning styles fill the classroom, many teachers don't always have the time, or spend additional hours to plan lessons that use differentiated instruction (DI) to suit students' unique aptitudes.

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This is a popular resource for teachers to teach problem solving skills, and while the resource is geared towards math the steps can work for almost any subject.
The steps include:

Understanding the Problem — Students should rewrite it in their own words, noting helpful information it reveals and indicates a need for.

Devising a Plan — Students should use information they gleaned to make notes, tables, diagrams, equations and anything else that creates a path to solving the problem.

Carrying out the Plan — Students should follow this path, reviewing each step along the way and making changes as needed.

Looking Back — Students should double-check each step after reaching their answers. Then, it’s best to look at the “big picture.” Does the solution make sense when applied to the original problem? Is there a different, logical way of reaching the same solution? If not, they should re-visit their approaches.

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- This resource allows teachers to click on common problems that students might deal with in the classroom, and gives suggestions on how to help the student. This is a great resource for teachers to look at when starting to implement strategies to modify problem behaviors or help students with struggles like anxiety and depression.

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PBIS World | A Complete Tier 1 Through Tier 3 Positive Behavior Interventions & Supports System

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PBIS World is in no way affiliated, associated, or connected with any other website, entity, organization, or federal, state, local, or other government agency, department, program, policy, organization, or initiative.

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Utah MTSS 3-Tier Critical Components Definition

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Utah MTSS 3-Tier Critical Components Definition

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- This resource goes through the different Tiers in instruction. It is helpful for teachers trying to understand the different tiers and how they fit into aspects of teaching and learning.

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- This video describes the difference between validity and reliability. Both are essential in assessments.

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Assessments for Gifted and Talented Students

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Assessments for Gifted and Talented Students

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- A resource that takes teachers through the types of assessments for gifted and talented students as well as talks about why, when, how, and who to test. It also has a helpful section at the end about how to interpret results as well as where to go from there.

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Tests should be aligned within the characteristics of gifted and talented students within a specific domain area. The variety of characteristics within the federal definition-intellectual, creative, artistic, leadership, and specific academic fields-require more than one assessment to identify. Quantitative instruments such as those listed below use scores to describe the student's performance in relation to others or the degree to which a student possesses a particular characteristic in relation to a standard level of performance.

Achievement Tests

Achievement tests determine what the students already have learned and if they are more advanced than their grade level peers. They may be academic specific (i.e. Math or Language Arts) or standardized tests (such as SATs, ITBS, SRA, and MATs). These assessments should not have a ceiling so students are able to show all of what they know. Tests specifically designed for the gifted population include Test of Mathematical Abilities for Gifted Students or Screening Assessment for Gifted Elementary Students (SAGES).

Ability Tests

Intelligence quotient (IQ) or cognitive abilities test scores are also used to identify gifted and talented students. While these tests provide information for the intellectual domain, these tests are not as helpful in identifying someone with creative, leadership, or other abilities. Typical ability tests include:
Individual
Nonverbal tests, such as the Naglieri Nonverbal Ability Test or the Test of Nonverbal Intelligence, may be more effective for students from culturally and linguistically different or low-income backgrounds to eliminate barriers.
Group

CogAT

Otis-Lennon

Hemmon-Nelson

Ravens Progressive Matrices

Matrix Analogies Test

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Tests are common assessment tools for identification, but should not serve as the sole source of identification. Tests often exclude underserved gifted students who are English Language Learners (ELLs), disabled, or from minority or low-income backgrounds.

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- A video explaining the principles of Universal Design for Learning and how to implement those principles in the classroom.

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National Center on Universal Design for Learning

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- A beginners guide to understanding and implementing Universal Design for Learning.

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The Pro's and Con's of Teacher-Designed Assessments

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The Pro's and Con's of Teacher-Designed Assessments

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- An article discussing the pro's and con's of teacher made assessments being used in the classroom. Overall, a combination of teacher-designed assessments as well as standardized or general assessments should be used to get the best understanding of a student's progress.

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The Pro’s and Cons of Teacher-Designed Tests - The Edvocate

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Spread the loveClassroom assessments are a big responsibility on educators’ plates. There are plenty of possible formats out there: summative, formative, essay, multiple choice – the list goes on and on. Rather than settling for a form response, many teachers design their own assessments. Whether pre-made or not, when developing classroom assessment tools, teachers should take the following criteria into account:  Purpose: How will it be used?  Impact: How will it impact instruction? Will it shrink the curriculum?  Validity: Is it designed to measure what it was supposed to measure?  Fairness: Will all the students have […]

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- A guide for creating and understanding graphs using Excel. This can be a valuable resource for teachers tracking progress monitoring. I like that you can have multiple sheets in one file, that would make it easy to keep all of the students' charts in an organized area.

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How to Make a Line Graph in Excel - From Simple to Scientific

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- This video gives examples of and explains 14 of the highest rated and most commonly used types of assessments. This is a great guide for beginners.

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Assessment in Education: Top 14 Examples

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- This is a great example video for teachers learning to administer assessments such as IRI.

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How to Administer an Informal Reading Inventory

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"Authentic" Assessment at School of the Future

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Unlike traditional assessments, authentic assessments foster disciplinary behaviours and ways of thinking and problem solving used by professionals in the field. For example, authentic assessments in engineering would demonstrate students' increasing ability to think and problem-solve in ways that resembles how experts in the engineering field think and act.

Assignments are and can only be authentic when they meaningfully connect with students beyond the assigned grade at the end of their obligatory participation in the project (Frey, Schmitt & Allen, 2012). Finding and celebrating that value for students, past the grade appearing on their transcripts, is vital to authentic education.

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Unlike traditional assessments, authentic assessments foster disciplinary behaviours and ways of thinking and problem solving used by professionals in the field. For example, authentic assessments in engineering would demonstrate students' increasing ability to think and problem-solve in ways that resembles how experts in the engineering field think and act.