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This is an article that gives insight on creating meaningful grades and how to do it.

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This article describes the effect grades have on students and why they believe that grades should not be as prevalent in the education system.

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This article discusses qualities of report cards that are expected and beneficial for different age levels.

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Overview

The Ontario curriculum outlines what students are expected to know and be able to do in all subjects and courses. Each student is assessed and evaluated against the same provincial standards.

Our policy on how teachers should assess, evaluate and report on student achievement is outlined in Growing Success. This document also outlines best practices and techniques that teachers can use to collect and share information with parents and students.

Fundamental principles

Ontario's teachers use assessment and evaluation practices and procedures that:

are fair, transparent and equitable

support all students

are carefully planned

are clearly explained to students and parents at the beginning of the school year or course

are ongoing and varied, and provide multiple opportunities for students to demonstrate their learning

include descriptive feedback that is clear, meaningful and timely

help students to become independent learners who can assess their own learning

Report cards

Ontario report cards and fall progress report cards outline six learning skills and work habits throughout Grades 1 to 12:

responsibility

organization

independent work

collaboration

initiative

self-regulation

The emphasis on these skills and habits reflect that students need to learn more than just facts if they want to succeed in postsecondary education and the world of work. At school students are learning to take initiative, think critically, solve problems, work independently, be self-reliant and work in a team.

All report cards include space for teachers to add comments about what your child knows and can do. Teachers can describe strengths and next steps for improvement as well as add their own observations and personalized comments.

An "I" in a report card for a student from Grade 1 to 10 means the teacher did not have enough information to assign a grade or mark. This may happen, for example, if your child recently moved schools or has had an extended illness.

Elementary students

Elementary students in Grades 1 to 8 will bring home a fall progress report card and two provincial report cards, one in winter and one at the end of the school year.

The fall progress report card:

encourages early and ongoing communication between you and your child's teacher

tells you how well your child is developing the six learning skills and work habits

reports on all academic subjects - such as language, math, social studies, science and technology - but instead of assigning a grade or mark, it will tell you how well your child is progressing: "very well", "well" or "with difficulty"

highlights strengths and next steps in learning

includes comments from your child's teacher that are personalized, clear and meaningful

The elementary provincial report card will also:

emphasize and give examples of how your child is progressing in the six learning skills and work habits

include meaningful, clear and personalized comments

use letter grades for Grades 1 to 6 and percentage marks for Grades 7 to 8

provide suggestions on how you can support your child's learning at home

An "R" on your child's elementary report card means your child has not met the required skills and knowledge of the subject and extensive remediation is needed. It is important to work with your child's teacher to develop strategies to support your child in gaining the required knowledge and skills.

There are three formal and required reporting periods for elementary grades:

The fall progress report card is issued between October 20 and November 20.

The first provincial report card is issued between January 20 and February 20.

The second provincial report card is issued at the end of the school year, in June.

Please note that exact dates are set by individual school boards.

Secondary students

Secondary provincial report cards include:

an emphasis and examples on how the student is progressing in the six learning skills and work habits

information about different levels of achievement and how this corresponds to percentage marks

teachers' comments that are personalized, clear and meaningful

Schools with semesters

Secondary students in schools with semesters will receive report cards twice per semester.

Schools without semesters

Students who go to non-semestered schools will get a report card three times per year.

Exact dates are set by individual school boards, according to the reporting periods outlined within Growing Success.

How teachers assess students

Teachers look at many demonstrations of learning throughout the reporting period for evidence that your child is learning the curriculum. These may include:

This means that teachers assess students on more than just knowing facts. Students must show an understanding of what they are studying by communicating and applying what they have learned. They must also demonstrate critical thinking and problem-solving skills.

Teachers review all student work with special attention to the quality of work at the end of a unit of study, term or semester as they consider a student's most recent and most consistent demonstration of learning. Teachers do not simply calculate averages.

Teachers also talk with and observe your child in the classroom to gather as much information as possible before making a decision on the final grade.

Teachers might assign ongoing homework to help your child develop study and organizational skills, consolidate knowledge and prepare for the next class. It also may help to develop strong learning skills and work habits, which are reflected in the provincial report card. However homework is not part of the calculation of the grade or mark.

Cheating or plagiarizing

Students are responsible for their own work. There will be consequences, which could include receiving a mark of zero, for cheating, plagiarism and not completing work.

Ask your school board about its policy on cheating or plagiarizing.

Not completing work or submitting work late

Your child is responsible for showing what they have learned or accomplished in the time frame allowed by their teacher.

Teachers can use a variety of strategies to prevent and address late and missed assignments. Options range from peer tutoring and offering time-management lessons to school-wide planning of major assignments.

In all grades, if your child consistently misses assignments or hands in work late, this may be reflected in the learning skills and work habits section of their report card. Students in Grades 7 to 12 may also have marks deducted for submitting work late.

Ask your school about its policy on late or missed assignments.

Standardized testing

The Education Quality and Accountability Office ( EQAO) runs assessment testing for:

reading, writing and mathematics in Grades 3 and 6

mathematics in Grade 9

Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test (OSSLT) in Grade 10

Contact with your child's teacher

Parents and guardians play an important part in your child's education. Children do better at school when their parents are involved.

Your child's teacher should contact you regularly throughout the school year. Besides report cards, other types of communication may include parent-teacher or parent-student-teacher conferences, interviews, phone calls, checklists and informal reports.

Related
Elementary and secondary report templates Growing success: assessment, evaluation, and reporting in Ontario's schools, first edition, covering grades 1 to 12 Growing success: the kindergarten addendum. Assessment, evaluation and reporting in Ontario schools 2016

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Student assessment, evaluations and report cards

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The Ontario curriculum outlines what students are expected to know and be able to do in all subjects and courses. Each student is assessed and evaluated against the same provincial standards. Our policy on how teachers should assess, evaluate and report on student achievement is outlined in Growing Success.

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This article gives different guidelines and tips to keep in mind when creating a variety of different tests.

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Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning

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This article gives an extensive list of guidelines and tips to consider when creating different types of tests.

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Designing tests is an important part of assessing students understanding of course content and their level of competency in applying what they are learning. Whether you use low-stakes and frequent evaluations-quizzes-or high-stakes and infrequent evaluations-midterm and final-careful design will help provide more calibrated results.

A few general guidelines to help you get started

Consider your reasons for testing.

Will this quiz monitor the students' progress so that you can adjust the pace of the course?

Will ongoing quizzes serve to motivate students?

Will this final provide data for a grade at the end of the quarter?

Will this mid-term challenge students to apply concepts learned so far?

The reason(s) for giving a test will help you determine features such as length, format, level of detail required in answers, and the time frame for returning results to the students.

Maintain consistency between goals for the course, methods of teaching, and the tests used to measure achievement of goals. If, for example, class time emphasizes review and recall of information, then so can the test; if class time emphasizes analysis and synthesis, then the test can also be designed to demonstrate how well students have learned these things.

Use testing methods that are appropriate to learning goals. For example, a multiple choice test might be useful for demonstrating memory and recall, for example, but it may require an essay or open-ended problem-solving for students to demonstrate more independent analysis or synthesis.

Help Students prepare. Most students will assume that the test is designed to measure what is most important for them to learn in the course. You can help students prepare for the test by clarifying course goals as well as reviewing material. This will allow the test to reinforce what you most want students to learn and retain.

Use consistent language (in stating goals, in talking in class, and in writing test questions) to describe expected outcomes. If you want to use words like explain or discuss, be sure that you use them consistently and that students know what you mean when you use them.

Design test items that allow students to show a range of learning. That is, students who have not fully mastered everything in the course should still be able to demonstrate how much they have learned.

Multiple choice exams

Multiple choice questions can be difficult to write, especially if you want students to go beyond recall of information, but the exams are easier to grade than essay or short-answer exams. On the other hand, multiple choice exams provide less opportunity than essay or short-answer exams for you to determine how well the students can think about the course content or use the language of the discipline in responding to questions.

If you decide you want to test mostly recall of information or facts and you need to do so in the most efficient way, then you should consider using multiple choice tests.
The following ideas may be helpful as you begin to plan for a multiple choice exam:

Since questions can result in misleading wording and misinterpretation, try to have a colleague answer your test questions before the students do.

Be sure that the question is clear within the stem so that students do not have to read the various options to know what the question is asking.

Avoid writing items that lead students to choose the right answer for the wrong reasons. For instance, avoid making the correct alternative the longest or most qualified one, or the only one that is grammatically appropriate to the stem.

Try to design items that tap students' overall understanding of the subject. Although you may want to include some items that only require recognition, avoid the temptation to write items that are difficult because they are taken from obscure passages (footnotes, for instance).

Consider a formal assessment of your multiple-choice questions with what is known as an "item analysis" of the test.
For example:

Which questions proved to be the most difficult?

Were there questions which most of the students with high grades missed?

This information can help you identify areas in which students need further work, and can also help you assess the test itself: Were the questions worded clearly? Was the level of difficulty appropriate? If scores are uniformly high, for example, you may be doing everything right, or have an unusually good class. On the other hand, your test may not have measured what you intended it to.

Essay questions

"Essay tests let students display their overall understanding of a topic and demonstrate their ability to think critically, organize their thoughts, and be creative and original. While essay and short-answer questions are easier to design than multiple-choice tests, they are more difficult and time-consuming to score. Moreover, essay tests can suffer from unreliable grading; that is, grades on the same response may vary from reader to reader or from time to time by the same reader. For this reason, some faculty prefer short-answer items to essay tests. On the other hand, essay tests are the best measure of students' skills in higher-order thinking and written expression."
(Barbara Gross Davis, Tools for Teaching, 1993, 272)

When are essay exams appropriate?

When you are measuring students' ability to analyze, synthesize, or evaluate

When you have been teaching at these levels (i.e. writing intensive courses, upper-division undergraduate seminars, graduate courses) or the content lends it self to more critical analysis as opposed to recalling information

How do you design essay exams?

Be specific

Use words and phrases that alert students to the kind of thinking you expect; for example, identify, compare, or critique

Indicate with points (or time limits) the approximate amount of time students should spend on each question and the level of detail expected in their responses

Be aware of time; practice taking the exam yourself or ask a colleague to look at the questions

How do you grade essay exams?

Develop criteria for appropriate responses to each essay question

Develop a scoring guide that tell what you are looking for in each response and how much credit you intend to give for each part of the response

Read all of the responses to question 1, then all of the responses to question 2, and on through the exam. This will provide a more holistic view of how the class answered the individual questions

How do you help students succeed on essay exams?

Use study questions that ask for the same kind of thinking you expect on exams

During lecture or discussion emphasize examples of thinking that would be appropriate on essay exams

Provide practice exams or sample test questions

Show examples of successful exam answers

Assessing your test

Regardless of the kind of exams you use, you can assess their effectiveness by asking yourself some basic questions:

Did I test for what I thought I was testing for?
If you wanted to know whether students could apply a concept to a new situation, but mostly asked questions determining whether they could label parts or define terms, then you tested for recall rather than application.

Did I test what I taught?
For example, your questions may have tested the students' understanding of surface features or procedures, while you had been lecturing on causation or relation-not so much what the names of the bones of the foot are, but how they work together when we walk.

Did I test for what I emphasized in class?
Make sure that you have asked most of the questions about the material you feel is the most important, especially if you have emphasized it in class. Avoid questions on obscure material that are weighted the same as questions on crucial material.

Is the material I tested for really what I wanted students to learn?
For example, if you wanted students to use analytical skills such as the ability to recognize patterns or draw inferences, but only used true-false questions requiring non-inferential recall, you might try writing more complex true-false or multiple-choice questions.

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Designing tests is an important part of assessing students understanding of course content and their level of competency in applying what they are learning. Whether you use low-stakes and frequent evaluations-quizzes-or high-stakes and infrequent evaluations-midterm and final-careful design will help provide more calibrated results. Consider your reasons for testing.

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This article describes what performance assessment is and how to construct it for the classroom.

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This article describes how to use performance assessment as an engagement technique for students.

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Do you remember the feeling of dread right before taking a test in school? I certainly can. Although this is a common experience among students, feelings of anxiety or ambivalence toward assessment do not have to be the norm. One alternative to traditional assessment is performance assessment-a method of assessment where students demonstrate their knowledge by constructing an answer, producing a product, or performing an activity.

Performance assessment allows students to play an active role in the assessment process, which experts have found increases their engagement and, in turn, enhances their learning. Assessments can be designed so that students choose their topic or select the best way to demonstrate their understanding. Many students find performance assessment appealing because it allows them to take ownership of their learning.

Not only can students engage in the actual assessment, they can collaborate with teachers to:

Co-establish success criteria

Co-develop rubrics

Choose the topic

Choose a way to demonstrate their learning

Provide feedback to peers

Reflect on their experience

Self-assess and/or peer-assess

When students collaborate on developing a performance assessment, they deepen their knowledge of the standards and performance outcomes being taught and assessed.

Performance assessments-such as essays, projects, demonstrations, and portfolios-are all adaptable for use with distance learning. For example, an in-person science project that requires students to investigate characteristics of the ocean environment by creating a 3-D diorama can be completed remotely with some adaptations. Students could use materials in their homes or from nature to make a diorama or use technology to draw a model.

If you're interested in learning more about performance assessments, explore this free, self-paced online course from REL Northeast & Islands at EDC. Comprising five 30-minute modules, the course teaches practitioners, instructional leaders, and administrators the foundational concepts of assessment literacy and how to develop, score, and use performance assessments. The course also provides several tools to help users develop performance assessments appropriate to their needs.

We hope this course will help you get your students excited about assessment activities-both for distance and in-person learning. Good luck!

Jessica Bailey is a research scientist at EDC who conducts applied research studies on teacher and student outcomes, evaluations of small- and large-scale interventions, and provides technical assistance on topics such as data use and accountability systems. Bailey's background is in educational research, measurement, assessment, and evaluation.

¹ Wang, M. T., & Eccles, J. S. (2012). Adolescent behavioral, emotional, and cognitive engagement trajectories in school and their differential relations to educational success. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 22(1), 31-39.

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Engaging Students through Performance Assessment

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Do you remember the feeling of dread right before taking a test in school? I certainly can. Although this is a common experience among students, feelings of anxiety or ambivalence toward assessment do not have to be the norm.

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This article discusses the importance of effective performance assessment and it's benefits for students.

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This is an article that discusses the method of using feedback as formative assessment for students.

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Giving feedback that is non-evaluative, specific, timely, and goal-related will provide students with opportunities to revise and improve their work and deepen their understanding.

Providing students with feedback on written work can, at times, feel like a burden. Dozens (perhaps even hundreds) of papers clutter your desk, and commenting on each is nearly impossible.

Still, we know, both from our experiences and from research, that feedback is essential. John Hattie, Professor of Education and Director of the Melbourne Education Research Institute at the University of Melbourne, Australia, believes that feedback must be timely, relevant, and action-oriented. The good news, according to Hattie, is that "students want feedback just for them, just in time, and just helping nudge forward." To that end, he encourages us to "worry more about how students are receiving your feedback . . . than increasing how much you give."

So how can we provide this kind of feedback -- the kind that students actually listen to, understand, and use -- in a timely manner? Before looking at specific technologies that can assist us in the process, let's first explore how other experts describe feedback as a key tool in the formative assessment process.

Feedback as Formative Assessment

Anyone involved in standardized testing knows two things: the results take entirely too long to get back and are completely impersonal, making that kind of feedback essentially irrelevant. In short, feedback needs to be personal, and it needs to be fast. To that end, educators are beginning to refocus their attention on relevant, practical feedback for students during lessons or very soon after, rather than relying only on summative assessments.

For instance, Margaret Heritage of UCLA's National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing, describes it this way (PDF, 396KB):

[F]eedback that the teacher provides to students is also an essential resource so the students can take active steps to advance their own learning. In reality, the feedback to students can be understood as instructional action.

Additionally, NCTE's Assessment Task Force, in their report Formative Assessment That Truly Informs Instruction, makes the case that good formative assessment, among other key factors, "includes feedback that is non-evaluative, specific, timely, and related to the learning goals, and that provides opportunities for the student to revise and improve work products and deepen understandings."

One last idea that I have encountered in the past few months -- and that I hope can help shift your thinking on how and why to give feedback -- is the RISE feedback model. Introduced by Emily Wray, the RISE model encourages us to provide feedback that is not simply informative, but moves students toward improvement.

Thus, seeing feedback as a teaching opportunity can help us shift our perspective from correction to collaboration, from merely fixing students' work to moving students forward in their learning. Here, there are many technologies that can help us in the process of providing feedback.

Feedback in Action

The tools available for providing feedback continue to multiply. I've heard how, back in the day, college professors would record their comments on audiotape, trading cassettes with students when handing back papers. We've moved forward a bit since then.

First, there are a number of tech tools that enable timely, relevant, and action-oriented feedback. Many of them -- from Microsoft Word to Google Docs to Wikispaces -- allow us to insert comments directly in the margins of students' writing. And while voice-to-text tools like Dictanote (Chrome Extension) and Dragon Dictation (App) can help speed this process up a bit, some colleagues may be looking for other methods.

For those of us interested in providing audio feedback, MS Word allows audio comments to be embedded within a document. And the web, of course, has provided us with new tools to provide voice comments, such as Kaizena, which allows us to embed audio comments in a Google Doc, and Voxer, which is described as a tool that combines a walkie-talkie with voice mail so that "you can hear messages as people speak, or listen later if you are unavailable."

There are visual tools for providing feedback, too. Skitch (by Evernote) and Snagit (by TechSmith) allow users to easily capture and annotate screenshots. This ability can work for students -- as they can capture images of their work and reflect on it -- as well as for teachers providing feedback. For instance, when using a visual tool such as Glogster, it is impossible to embed comments like we could in a Google Doc. Therefore, as shown in this screencapture I made with Skitch, we can provide students with focused feedback on visual texts that do not innately support annotation. Taking it up a notch, we can offer dynamic feedback via screencasting using tools like Jing or Explain Everything.

Feedforward

I have often told my students, "You are only as good a writer as you are a responder." That is, you learn how to write by providing feedback to other writers. Given this perspective, my hope is that you are willing to share your feedback with students generously, all the while modeling for them the kinds of feedback that you would want them to give one another.

In so doing, we can create a culture of feedback that, ultimately, feeds our students' interests and "nudges" passions forward, making those piles of papers on our desks feel a bit more manageable as we engage students through authentic response.

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Make It Count: Providing Feedback as Formative Assessment

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Giving feedback that is non-evaluative, specific, timely, and goal-related will provide students with opportunities to revise and improve their work and deepen their understanding. Providing students with feedback on written work can, at times, feel like a burden. Dozens (perhaps even hundreds) of papers clutter your desk, and commenting on each is nearly impossible.

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This textbook chapter outlines the importance of using grades and report cards as a form of communication.

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This article talks about the "exceeding" label on rubrics and why it should not be used. This gives a different perspective that needs to be taken into consideration when making rubrics.

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Why the Label 'Exceeds Standard' Doesn't Work

Today's guest post is written by Thomas Guskey, Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Kentucky.

Educators implementing standards-based approaches to grading and reporting often struggle with how to label different levels of students' performance. Four levels of performance is the most common number identified. Most educators in the U.S. and Canada consider three levels to be insufficient in discriminating important differences in students' performance. When the number of levels climbs to five or six, however, the consistency of teachers' rating diminishes rapidly.

In choosing labels for these levels, many begin by describing level 3 as "Proficient." This level of performance means the student has achieved the learning target and mastered the standard. Level 2 is typically considered "Progressing" or "Approaching" mastery of the standard, and level 1 is deemed "Struggling" or "Needs Improvement." The challenge comes in labeling the highest, level 4. 2

Some educators believe that level 4 should designate a truly exceptional level of achievement - the student whose performance "knocks your socks off." They use this level to recognize students who do something special related to the standard or demonstrate genuinely outstanding performance regarding the standard.

Others believe level 4 should describe performance at a more complex or more advanced level with regard to the standard. They use the label "Exceeds Standard" to indicate the student has gone beyond or above what was expected. In other words, these students have achieved at a higher and more sophisticated level. But while seeming reasonable, serious communication problems often arise when educators try to clarify the meaning of "Exceeds Standard" to students, parents, and fellow educators.

Evidence gathered from parents and families shows that many find the label "Exceeds Standard" to be vague and difficult to interpret. The message it implies to them from educators is: "More than we expect, but we cannot tell you precisely what that is until we see it!" Such imprecision troubles parents, especially those who encourage their child to strive for the highest grade possible in every subject.

From a practical perspective, "Exceeds Standard" presents additional difficulties. In most standards-based environments, mastering a standard means hitting the target. It signifies achieving the goal and learning what was expected. Olympic archers who place their arrows in the center of the bulls-eye from a distance of 70 meters, for example, have "hit the target." They have achieved the goal and accomplished precisely what was expected.

How then could an Olympic archer ever "exceed" the standard? How would the archer achieve at a more advanced or higher level? Maybe we could make the bulls-eye smaller or move the target further away from the archer, making it more difficult to hit the bulls-eye.

The problem with that, however, is it changes the standard. As soon as you make the task more difficult or move the learning expectation to a higher and more advanced level, you have changed the standard and altered the goal. Students who achieve at that level have not really "exceeded the standard." More accurately, they have mastered a different standard. If you want archers to hit smaller bulls-eyes from a greater distance, then that becomes the new standard for archers.

Some argue that "Proficient" can imply placing arrows near the bulls-eye while "Exceeds Standard" means actually hitting the bulls-eye directly. But does "Proficient" then mean "almost" hitting the target? Is "getting close" sufficient? And if it is, then how close is good enough? Who makes that decision?

This interpretation problem also affects educators' who want to equate these distinctions to percent correct on assessments. On an assessment designed to measure students' ability to solve single-digit addition problems, for example, they might designate students who get 80% correct to be "Proficient," while those students who answer correctly 90% or more are rated, "Exceeds Standard." But have students who get 90% correct truly "exceeded" the standard? 3

Others counter that the assessment for this standard should include double-digit addition problems as well. Students who answer the double-digit problems correctly can then accurately be rated as "Exceeds Standard." But again, this miscommunicates what is measured. With the inclusion of double-digit addition problems, the assessment clearly measures a different standard. The same holds true if "Proficient" requires students to "apply" what they have learned, while "Exceeds Standard" involves the higher level skills of "analyzing" or "synthesizing." The point is that you are now measuring a different standard.

The nature of specific standards makes things even more complicated. If the standard relates to students' ability to safely cross a busy street, for example, would anyone consider 80% to be "Proficient"? Or even 90%? What about being honest or telling the truth? And in these examples, how could students ever reach "Exceeds Standard"?

This does not imply that exceptional performance should go unrecognized. Not at all. A grade that denotes truly distinguished performance can be useful in many instances. But if such a grade is included in the grading system, then it must be associated with clear criteria that identify precisely how such a grade can be attained. Those criteria must be clearly communicated to students and parents alike, accompanied by illustrative examples of students' performance or samples of students' work, and agreed upon by fellow teachers.

With these criteria articulated and openly communicated to all stakeholders, labels such as "Distinguished," "Exceptional," or "Exemplary" generally serve intended communication purposes far better than "Exceeds Standard."

Connect with Tom Guskey on Twitter at @tguskey.

Check it out here:

Why the Label 'Exceeds Standard' Doesn't Work | Education Week

PostedOctober 17, 2014 7:30 A M by Peter DeWitt

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Why the label "Exceeds Standard" doesn't work | Thomas R. Guskey & Associates

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Educators implementing standards-based approaches to grading and reporting often struggle with how to label different levels of students' performance. Four levels of performance is the most common number identified. Most educators in the U.S. and Canada consider three levels to be insufficient in discriminating important differences in students' performance.

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This book gives an in-depth look into performative assessment and how to implement it in the classroom.

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This volume explores the recent national trend toward adoption of performance assessments. Embraced at all levels of educational decision-making--state, district, school, and teacher--the shapes these assessments take and the affects they have at the classroom level can differ significantly from one…

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This article talks about the grading process and the ineffectiveness of assigning a zero grade. There are example scenarios accompanied by positive responses to motivate students more than a zero grade.

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Dueck - Grading smarter not harder- Ch 1 Grading

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This article discusses why standardized tests are problematic to find ways to help students if they do need to take these tests.

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15 Reasons Why Standardized Tests are Problematic

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It’s wonderful to see all the protests around the country against standardized testing. At Garfield High School in Seattle, Washington, teachers are refusing to administer the Measures of Academic Pro

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This provides 3 helpful strategies for giving tests to students in order to help them succeed.

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Here are three basic test-taking strategies that elementary students should review prior to testing. Plus, download 10 free printable test-taking strategies resources that can be shared with students or hung in the elementary classroom.

Strategy 1: Review the Different Question Formats

To be successful on exams students must be familiar with the different question formats and feel comfortable moving between a scantron and their test packet.

A week or so before a high-stakes test, use specific test preparation strategies and handouts to review the different questions students will see on the exam.

It's always a good idea to review and practice multiple-choice (selected-response) strategies before an assessment. On multiple-choice tests, the vocabulary and layout of the answers can confuse students.

These are my six tips to help students feel like they Multiple-Choice Champions before a big test:

1. Reread the question. Make sure you understand what is being asked.

2. Come up with an answer to the question before looking at the list of choices.

3. Read ALL of the answers and cross out the choices that don't make sense.

4. Underline the section in the text or question that supports your reasoning.

5. Look carefully at similar-sounding answers. Find the more precise answer.

6. Select "All of the above" if two or three answers seem correct.

Download the Be A Multiple-Choice Champion Tip Sheet and hang it up in your classroom on the day of an exam. I guarantee your students will look at the poster sometime during the testing period to boost their confidence and recall strategies for answering multiple-choice questions.

Most schools have an acronym they use school-wide to help their students with open-ended responses. If your school has not adopted an acronym that is used throughout the school, I highly recommend you do. It promotes consistency as the students move from grade level to grade level. The acronym we use at my school is ACE:

Answer the question:

Turn the question into your answer and answer it

Cite an example:

Give a specific example from the text to support your answer

Extend your thinking

Give another example OR state another thought about the text that supports your answer

Help students remember how to answer open-ended responses with the ACE Open-Ended Responses Tip Sheet.

Finally, I review simple strategies that students can use to attack any question.

For older students, I have a list of suggestions for answering the various types of questions from multiple-choice to essay prompts.

For younger grades, I use a fabulous handout that delves into some of the strategies I discuss when reviewing multiple-choice questions and gives students concrete examples to look over.

This resource will show students the following strategies to puzzle out questions they may find confusing. It highlights the following strategies:

1. Substitute each answer in the blank

2. Justify answers my underlining information from the passage

3. Cross out answers that don't make sense

Strategy 2: Strengthen Student Vocabulary

Unfamiliar vocabulary in a literary text or a standardized test can confuse and/or discourage students.

Make sure your students are armed with the vocabulary strategies they need to come out victorious rather than feeling defeated after taking a test. Below are word strategy resources to ensure students come out on top!

Here are 10 terms students should know heading into a standardized test (words may vary depending on your state test). Download the 10 ELA Test Terms To Know Reference Sheet and review the words with students until you're confident they understand their meaning.

A similar download you may find useful is the 10 High-Stakes Test Terms to Know Poster. Teachers should incorporate these terms into classroom activities and should clarify how best to answer each question stem while the stakes are low.

For example, a teacher could ask an introductory question such as

"Infer from the reading on page 3 how Jimmy felt about his friends."

"Compare the reading we did for homework with the passage on the board."

"Analyze how Martha came to make the decision she did."

The last strategy/handout teaches students how to break down individual words and puzzle out their meanings. Here's an example using the word submersible:

STEP 1: BREAK THE WORD INTO SMALLER PARTS. LOOK FOR THE PARTS OF THE WORD YOU KNOW.

Submersible → sub mersible

What does the word sub make you think of?

You can investigate even further by asking, "Do subways and submarines have anything in common?"

Both are used for transportation and traveling from one point to another

Both are underground

STEP 2: LOOK FOR THE CONTEXT CLUES. WHAT DO THEY TELL YOU?

" Explorer, the submersible watercraft, sank deeper into the ocean."

From the passage clues, we know that:

Submersible is describing a feature of the watercraft.

The watercraft can travel deep into the ocean.

STEP 3: USE YOUR BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE.

I know a sub or submarine travels underwater.

The passage says, "...sank deeper into the ocean."
You can conclude that submersible means a vessel or vehicle that is capable of traveling and operating underwater.
This example is a great resource to share with students as a handout or you can hang up the poster on the classroom wall. Once students have reviewed this strategy, assign them words to break down using these three steps.

Strategy 3: Use Practice Prompts

As a literacy specialist, there are a few "key literary elements" that I make sure to emphasize in my teaching because I know they will help my students perform well.

Fortunately, these "key literary elements" support strong reading comprehension and should be focused on even if there were no standardized tests to be taken.

Available for download are reading practice prompts for fiction, nonfiction, and poetry texts. Download Sample Reading Prompts for Standardized Test Preparation for grades 3-5 now.

In Conclusion

Standardized tests can be stressful for students and teachers. Hopefully, these test-taking strategies for elementary students and accompanying resources will relieve some of the anxiety.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Vocab Gal's Favorite
Test Prep Resources

Strategies for Answering
Math Questions

Test-Taking Strategies Poster

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3 Test-Taking Strategies for Elementary Students (Includes 10+ Printables)

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Here are three basic test-taking strategies that elementary students should review prior to testing. Plus, download 10 free printable test-taking strategies resources that can be shared with students or hung in the elementary classroom. To be successful on exams students must be familiar with the different question formats and feel comfortable moving between a scantron and their test packet.

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This article gives different advantages and disadvantages of using rubrics to take into consideration when planning assessments.

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Advantages and Disadvantages of Rubrics

Do teachers in your school feel like students misunderstand assignments?

Are you worried that some students are graded differently than others?

Do your students (and their parents) often debate grades?

Do your teachers complain about spending way too much time grading?

If you checked "yes" for any (or all) of these questions, your current rubrics might be working against you rather than for you. Let's find out how to make rubrics more effective!

What are Rubrics?

A rubric, at its most basic, is a tool to define the expectations of a particular assignment with ways to indicate different levels of effectiveness in meeting those expectations. It is this last aspect, the gradations of quality, that differentiates a rubric from its simpler counterpart, the checklist. Even within the category of a rubric, there is lots of variety.

General rubrics describe expectations for a skill that can be generalized across assignments. Task-specific rubrics are, as their name suggests, geared toward a particular assignment.

The biggest distinction within rubrics, however, is between holistic and analytic rubrics. Holistic rubrics provide a single score to summarize a student's performance on a given task, whereas analytic rubrics provide several scores for the task, one for each different category being evaluated. See examples of each kind here.

Anatomy of the Rubric

There are four main components of a rubric:

To illustrate, for an assignment from a high school literature classroom:

The task description is a ten-page research paper

The dimensions of the assignment include:

The descriptions outline what a student needs to do to get a certain score for a certain dimension

It is with these components themselves that we already start to see how a rubric could be clear and helpful or murky and frustrating.
SAMPLE RUBRIC

Benefits of Rubrics

What good can rubrics really do? A rubric, after all, is a sheet of paper that is all too easy for students to glance at once and then shove to the bottom of an overstuffed backpack. However, rubrics are more important than they seem.

Every time you make a rubric, you articulate your educational philosophy; you indicate where students are, where they can go, and how they will get there. As English Professor Emeritus Peter Elbow explains, by offering your students a rubric, you're telling them:

"You deserve to know more about my values as a particular reader: Here are the aspects of writing that I believe are most central to my idea of excellence."

- Peter Elbow, Writing Assessment in the 21st Century: Essays in Honor of Edward M. White
HOW DO RUBRICS HELP STUDENTS?
Rubrics have so much potential that even minimal engagement with them can yield great benefits.

As educator Heidi Goodrich Andrade explains, "If I were to simply circle boxes on a rubric and give it back with an assignment, I would still be providing more feedback about the strengths and weaknesses of the work than if I had just assigned a letter grade, and it would not have taken me any longer."

The importance of feedback for student learning can not be overstated. In a 2015 study, rubrics that included individual advice on how to improve led to students with "significantly better performance in planning scientific experiments"; these students "perceived themselves as being more competent and were also more accurate in their self-evaluative performance judgments." That's exactly what Marco Learning hopes to achieve by pairing rubric-based scores with personalized, qualitative feedback about each student's areas of strength and areas for growth.

As educator and author Carol Jago points out, "feedback cools quickly." So anything you can do to speed up the availability of feedback for students matters.
METACOGNITION DEVELOPMENT
At their best, rubrics can encourage students to think critically about their own work and scores. It's a fairly common sentiment among students that teachers "give" certain grades rather than students "earning" them. These word choices reveal that students often don't feel involved in the assessing process; they feel as if it is being done to them rather than with them or by them. Having a clear rubric lets students in on the decision making process. Students better understand the criteria of each assignment, so they can begin to look at their assignments with the critical eye of a teacher, allowing them to understand their past mistakes and fix their current ones. One teacher found that students who assessed themselves with a rubric as they worked on a reading comprehension assignment scored higher on a content knowledge quiz afterward than students who did not use a rubric. The metacognition, or awareness of one's own learning strategies, that can result from familiarity with rubrics produces both more insightful learners in the long-term and less frustrated students when report cards come around.

TEACHERS MAKE BETTER DECISIONS
As Professor Timothy Brophy explains, rubrics are also helpful tools for teachers because they encourage "criterion-referenced rather than norm-referenced" scoring. In essence, criterion-referenced scoring means that while grading, teachers ask themselves whether a paper meets the criteria of a certain score rather than consciously or unconsciously assigning grades based on the quality relative to the other papers in that class. In a vacuum, norm-referenced scoring might not seem that bad, but it seriously hinders teachers' ability to meaningfully compare scores across their own classes and across classes taught by several teachers. In addition, consistently comparing each paper to a fixed set of standards decreases the chance that a teacher will grade papers differently based on student preference, number of coffees consumed, decision fatigue, or any other factor that shouldn't affect student grades. Lastly, important nationwide tests like the AP English Language and Literature exams use criterion-referenced scoring systems, which should encourage teachers to grade similarly.
STUDENTS ARE TREATED MORE FAIRLY
Rubrics create a common language to speak about academic work, make the learning goal clear, and level the educational playing field. In this era of increasing diversity, this last point is an important one.

Researchers Kenneth Wolf and Ellen Stevens point out that first-generation students, as well as immigrant students and students from minority backgrounds, often don't come into school with the same academic assumptions as their peers. The clearer the learning target for these students, the more likely they are to meet it.

Since unconscious bias can also work against students most dissimilar to their teachers, comprehensive rubrics can also encourage fairness for all students.

Disadvantages of Rubrics

Although rubrics have many potential benefits for both students and teachers, a poorly constructed rubric can do more harm than good. Luckily, there are a number of predictable pitfalls that can be easily avoided if you know what to look out for.
EXTREME SCALES
Although the scale may seem like a fairly straightforward decision to make, there are many different options.

One teacher might use a scale of A-F, another might use the scale 1 through 5, and yet another might choose to use the words excellent, competent, and needs work as the scale. There is no right answer when it comes to using letters, numbers, or words for your scale, but there are a few choices that could lead to unproductive rubrics.

Scales quickly become ineffective when there are too many or too few options. For example, except for very basic assignments, using just a pass/fail scale will not provide you or your students with very much helpful information.

On the other hand, using a scale of 1 to 20 will make it harder to justify small differences, such as giving a student 13 rather than 14. Having three to five possible options on a scale is often effective and four is sometimes considered ideal.

That being said, one of the largest working scales in effect right now is the College Board AP English essay holistic grading scale from 1 to 9. Even so, this scale is still essentially a 5-point scale broken down into pairs: 9/8, 7/6, 5, 4/3, 2/1.

INCONSISTENT LANGUAGE
There are a number of considerations as well when it comes to descriptions of each dimension; parallelism and consistency are your friends here. For instance, let's say that your current rubric breaks down the dimension of citation in the following way:

level 1 describes a paper with incorrect citations

level 2 is a paper with sometimes accurate citations

level 3 is a paper with many correct citations

level 4 is a paper with complete citations

These levels have obvious differences, but the language isn't as clear as it could be. Choosing to describe either amount, frequency, or intensity across all parts of your scale will help to keep the language consistent automatically.

A revised version of the same rubric might look like this:

level 1 is a paper with few correct citations

level 2 is a paper with some correct citations

level 3 is a paper with many correct citations

level 4 is a paper with all correct citations

The parallel language (using "correct") of each description shows how all the levels relate to each other, easing comprehension for anyone who encounters the rubric.
NEGATIVE LANGUAGE
Another consideration when writing descriptions is valence. As researchers Tierney and Simon explain, using purely negative terms to describe lower levels on the scale can discourage students, particularly younger ones. Using words like "little," "slightly," or "seldom" will be less discouraging (and likely more accurate) than words like "none" and "never."
VAGUE LANGUAGE
Lastly, the criteria for each level should be observable and measurable in some way.

If I claim that students are supposed to "know" something, it is important to indicate what precisely that knowledge will look like. For example, I could specify in the rubric description that a paper with an argument that falls under Level 4 (always strong) must have a thesis that is defendable, specific, and evidence-supported. A paper that falls under Level 3 for argument (usually strong) will have a thesis that is only defendable and evidence-supported.

Without this kind of specificity, it would be easy for a student to argue that their paper meets Level 4 requirements rather than Level 3 requirements since "always" and "usually" can be vague and subjective terms.

How to Write a Rubric

Good rubrics are hard to write. Here are two simple strategies to make sure your rubrics are working well:
1) CALIBRATE WITH COLLEAGUES
An effort to construct effective rubrics is clearly important, but it can be difficult to tell how effective a new rubric is without discussing and revising it with colleagues. As Professor Timothy Brophy suggests, these sessions can be used to establish minimum scores for passing and develop benchmark papers for the rubric's scale.

Selecting six pieces-two high scores, two medium scores, and two low scores-is often a helpful way to show the students what papers look like on each part of your scale. College Board provides three anchor pieces (high, medium, and low) for all previously released AP essays as an example of what this might look like.

If you pass out the benchmark pieces to your department without scores and have the other teachers score them blindly, this meeting can turn into a productive discussion about how to increase grading reliability across classes.

A similar brainstorming and revision session can be helpful if you are trying to adapt previously existing rubrics-whether from another teacher or from the Marco Learning's rubric creator - for a new project.
2) REVIEW ACTUAL SCORES
Discussing rubrics after their implementation can also help teachers analyze grade breakdown.

If 75% of your students are receiving a two on a four-point scale for organization, that might be an indication that you are grading too harshly and/or the students need a review on how to arrange their thoughts. Marco Learning provides lots of this data automatically for teachers along with our qualitative feedback.

Having this quantitative data makes it significantly easier to see class-wide patterns; without a rubric, you might not realize that you are writing comments about organization on 75% of your student papers!

Conclusion

There are unlimited different ways to construct rubrics. However, not all rubrics are created equal. Rubrics with reasonable scales, consistent language, specific requirements, and positive descriptions are more helpful for students and teachers alike.

You can take an effective rubric to the next level by involving other people; refine rubrics with other teachers before their implementation, and take a day to talk your students through a new rubric. You can even go further and grade example essays using a rubric during class, an invaluable way to clarify learning goals.

By clarifying learning goals, we bring students closer to them, one rubric at a time.

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Advantages and Disadvantages of Rubrics - Marco Learning

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Do teachers in your school feel like students misunderstand assignments? Are you worried that some students are graded differently than others? Do your students (and their parents) often debate grades? Do your teachers complain about spending way too much time grading?

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This chapter discusses what rubrics actually are and why they are important in the classroom.

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Brookhart - What are Rubrics and why are they important.docx

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This podcast episode gives advice on creating meaningful rubrics that will be valuable for both teachers and students.

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BEP030 - How Do I Make My Rubrics More Valuable?

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Listen to this episode from Be Education Podcast on Spotify.

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This episode provides an alternative method for creating rubrics, using a more visual approach.

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Episode 2: Considering & Rethinking Rubrics

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Listen to this episode from Education Considered on Spotify. Rubrics are a staple of nearly every classroom environment, but are they the best tool to capture student learning, create a mindset around the opportunity for growth, and act as a tool that promotes rich discussion about student learning?

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A list of different descriptive words that can be used to make a meaningful rubric.

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4 pre-made rubric exemplars to demonstrate different criteria and descriptors.

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Refresher on building rubrics with a few examples and explanations.

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Rubric Materials - Alberta Assessment Consortium

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Building Better Rubrics! Resource Links to Support Building Better Rubrics Rubric Templates Rubric Template (download Word document) Rubric Template (enlarged) (download Word document) Workshop Tools Rubriques Rubriques - Tools Rubriques - Templates Gabarit grilles d'évaluation (download Word document) Gabarit grilles d'évaluation (version agrandie) (download Word document)

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This chapter of Hattie's textbook dives into the importance of formative assessment and how it can be used in partnership with feedback to help students improve.

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Hattie - Developing Assessment-Capable Visible Learners Grades K-12 (Ch.5)

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An 11 page document discussing what backwards design entails and why it should be used.

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An article explaining why alignment needs to be used in the classroom.

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Why Do I Need to Build Alignment between Assessment and Learning Outcomes?

Understanding Purpose

To students, assessment is the main component of a course because it sends a message about what is important and where their time should be focused. Clearly defining your assessment and its relationship to your student learning outcomes is therefore very helpful in ensuring students understand not just how the assessment fits into their learning but how all the practices and content you engage with assists them in achieving success in the course.

Building clear alignment between your outcomes, assessment, and practice (as well as clearly communicating this alignment to students) can build mutual clarity on the learning journey and lessen students' anxiety and questions. The role of assessment is to measure student attainment of the necessary skills and learning, so being able to demonstrate this connection in class and through the syllabus is very helpful in situating why you have made the assessment choices you have.

Understanding Student Learning Progression

Building alignment between assessment and learning outcomes also allows you to develop and communicate the pathway for students' learning progression. It enables you to explain what knowledge and skills were expected on entry to the course and the knowledge and skills that will be developed throughout the course. As students move through a program, the sophistication and difficulty of the assessment choices you make should be increased as you deepen your expectation of student learning and engagement with the material.

Beginning your outcome planning at the program level when considering assessment is helpful in making this progression clearer and more seamless as students progress through the program. Courses do not exist in isolation and considering your course's outcomes and assessment from a programmatic perspective is very beneficial in ensuring that students progress appropriately through the program and achieve the skills and knowledge that are necessary in the appropriate sequence.

Being Able to Validate Attainment

Building alignment between assessment and outcomes is driven by strategically connecting the two components of course design and allows you to communicate and validate your assessment and its role in student learning attainment. Having this clarity of what you are trying to achieve with your students, and connecting this clearly with your mechanisms for measurement through assessment, allows you to be definitive in what constitutes attainment and how it is displayed and measured through assessment. Having this clarity allows you to be able to communicate this to your students and demonstrate to them what level of performance or knowledge acquisition is essential to be successful in the course and program.

Building Effective Assessment of Learning Processes

Lessons, course activities, assessment, and instruction should be planned in a way that allows students to successfully complete assessments and to make connections, gather, organize, interact with, and practice learning outcomes. In your course development process, take each of your assessments one at a time and consider the content knowledge as well as the skill development that each would require for successful completion.

For example, if you want students to analyze a case study, you will need to prepare them to successfully complete this assessment. Here's what your aligned instructional strategies and content may look like:

Learning Outcome: Analyze organizational decision making.

Assessment: Case Study Analysis.
Instructional Strategies:

Methodologies: Provide instruction and model how to:

Do a case study analysis including identifying main issues/key points.

Create case notes.

Apply principles/theories/models.

Develop solutions and provide support for them.

Activities:

Watch YouTube videos of real-life cases with directive questions.

Practice identifying main issues or key points in a case study through self-assessments such as m/c quizzes with instant feedback.

Practice creating case notes with activities such as checklists, instructor reveals to check their work against, and small formative assignments.

Practice with applying principles, theories or models through activities that have practice application with feedback.

Practice with critical thinking, supporting statements, and problem solving through discussion board activities.

Content and materials:

Reading support resources.

Textbook reading on principles, theories or models.

Videos of real-life cases.

Case studies from Library.

Template for case analysis format.

Exemplar of an excellent case analysis.

Writing support resource.

Grading rubric.

How Do I Build Alignment between Assessment and Learning Outcomes?

Considering Stage of Learning

As has been suggested earlier, the first thing that needs to be considered is where students are in their learning stage in the program and the context of the course.

Where are your students in their program?

What learning needs to take place in order for them to move on in the program?

What assessment is relevant to measure this learning?

This will enable you to start with a sense of where you can work in relation to your outcomes and the aligned assessment you choose.

Outline Your Goals

What are the goals that you have for your students and their learning? As when considering developing outcomes, this is your starting place. How do students need to progress in this course to meet course level skill and knowledge acquisition and continue on in the program?

Determine How Attainment can be Demonstrated

Once you have determined how students need to develop, you can begin considering what they need to do to demonstrate this development, which is where we should consider our assessment tools. What do students need to do to show me that they have achieved this outcome? When you are considering this, you should consider it from both formative and summative perspectives. What does attainment of the overall course outcomes look like and how can you develop meaningful formative assessment moments for students to understand their progression?

Define What Performance Looks Like

The next step is to consider what the necessary performance looks like and how to observe and measure it. This is where assessment choice becomes clearer, and you will begin having a sense of the nature of the assessment tools that fit with your outcomes and students' learning progression. At this stage, you could look at performance through different lenses. What would it look like to exceed expectations? Meet expectations? Or not meet expectations? Defining each of these is helpful to build clarity for your students.

The Role of Rubrics

Building rubrics that clearly show what attainment looks like and can be used to grade assignments are useful tools for building clarity and allowing students to measure their own progress. Making these available for students while they are engaging with assessment is important in offering this clarity and allowing students the ability to consider measurement when performing the assessment.

Scaffolding Assessments for Depth

To assist with student development through formative feedback, consider scaffolding a large piece of assessment across the course. In breaking a large piece of assessment down into a number of deliverables across the term, students build towards a final project with a clear learning pathway. Scaffolded assessment allows multiple points of connection for students to receive and reflect on feedback throughout their progression and learning in the course as they develop and refine the larger project. Scaffolded assessments have the added benefit of developing students' time management skills and promote academic integrity through refining and developing a multi-stage project.

Back to Top | Next Section

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Aligning Assessment to Learning Outcomes

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To students, assessment is the main component of a course because it sends a message about what is important and where their time should be focused. Clearly defining your assessment and its relationship to your student learning outcomes is therefore very helpful in ensuring students understand not just how the assessment fits into their learning but how all the practices and content you engage with assists them in achieving success in the course.

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An article discussing the importance of alignment, as well as how to and not to properly align lessons.

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Assessments should reveal how well students have learned what we want them to learn while instruction ensures that they learn it. For this to occur, assessments, learning objectives, and instructional strategies need to be closely aligned so that they reinforce one another.

To ensure that these three components of your course are aligned, ask yourself the following questions:

Learning objectives: What do I want students to know how to do when they leave this course?

Assessments: What kinds of tasks will reveal whether students have achieved the learning objectives I have identified?

Instructional strategies: What kinds of activities in and out of class will reinforce my learning objectives and prepare students for assessments?

What if the components of a course are misaligned?

If assessments are misaligned with learning objectives or instructional strategies, it can undermine both student motivation and learning. Consider these two scenarios:

Your objective is for students to learn to apply analytical skills, but your assessment measures only factual recall. Consequently, students hone their analytical skills and are frustrated that the exam does not measure what they learned.

Your assessment measures students' ability to compare and critique the arguments of different authors, but your instructional strategies focus entirely on summarizing the arguments of different authors. Consequently, students do not learn or practice the skills of comparison and evaluation that will be assessed.

What do well-aligned assessments look like?

This table presents examples of the kinds of activities that can be used to assess different types of learning objectives (adapted from the revised Bloom's Taxonomy).

Type of learning objective

Examples of appropriate assessments

Recall
Recognize
Identify

Objective test items such as fill-in-the-blank, matching, labeling, or multiple-choice questions that require students to:

recall or recognize terms, facts, and concepts

Interpret
Exemplify
Classify
Summarize
Infer
Compare
Explain

Activities such as papers, exams, problem sets, class discussions, or concept maps that require students to:

summarize readings, films, or speeches

compare and contrast two or more theories, events, or processes

classify or categorize cases, elements, or events using established criteria

paraphrase documents or speeches

find or identify examples or illustrations of a concept or principle

Apply
Execute
Implement

Activities such as problem sets, performances, labs, prototyping, or simulations that require students to:

use procedures to solve or complete familiar or unfamiliar tasks

determine which procedure(s) are most appropriate for a given task

Analyze
Differentiate
Organize
Attribute

Activities such as case studies, critiques, labs, papers, projects, debates, or concept maps that require students to:

discriminate or select relevant and irrelevant parts

determine how elements function together

determine bias, values, or underlying intent in presented material

Evaluate
Check
Critique
Assess

Activities such as journals, diaries, critiques, problem sets, product reviews, or studies that require students to:

test, monitor, judge, or critique readings, performances, or products against established criteria or standards

Create
Generate
Plan
Produce
Design

Activities such as research projects, musical compositions, performances, essays, business plans, website designs, or set designs that require students to:

make, build, design or generate something new

This table does not list all possible examples of appropriate assessments. You can develop and use other assessments - just make sure that they align with your learning objectives and instructional strategies!

CONTACT US to talk with an Eberly colleague in person!

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Align Assessments, Objectives, Instructional Strategies - Eberly Center - Carnegie Mellon University

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Assessments should reveal how well students have learned what we want them to learn while instruction ensures that they learn it. For this to occur, assessments, learning objectives, and instructional strategies need to be closely aligned so that they reinforce one another.

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An explanation on the importance of allowing open-ended assignments that still give students some sense of structure.

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Sponsored by CommonLit.

Many of us in education talk about how important it is to give students choice, to empower them to steer their own learning in a direction that's meaningful to them. I believe this wholeheartedly - it drives me crazy to walk the halls of a school and see 26 nearly identical student art projects, or to hear that a teacher has assigned all four sections of his history class the exact same topic for a research project.

But there is another end to this spectrum: While it's true that student choice has a lot of value, it's possible to offer so much choice that it kind of backfires. When an assignment has little to no structure at all, students often respond with confusion, not creativity.

If you're in an art class, for example, there's a big difference between having your teacher say, "OK, make something!" versus saying, "Everyone is going to start with the same block of clay. Your task is to sculpt something that ___ (fill in the blank: represents an emotion, features five different textures, gives the viewer the feeling of weightlessness)." Those all offer a clearly defined problem to solve, but each one has a lot of room for creativity.

If you're in a creative writing class, being told to "write whatever you want" isn't really inspiring, unless you happen to already be a regular writer with an ongoing project. But if you're told to write a piece that tells a full story in less than 100 words? That's a creative challenge.

I remember experiencing this once as a middle school student myself. My teacher told us we had to write a paper, and the only guideline she gave us was that the topic had to have something to do with England. That was it. That was the whole assignment. I suppose this type of assignment might appeal to someone, but it just sent me into kind of a spiral - what did she mean "about England?" Like the history of it? The geography? The people? Architecture? Food? Could I do a single paper about Cadbury chocolate? Princess Diana? And how long did it have to be, anyway? Did we have to include a bibliography? A cover page?

Yes, I was a pretty type-A kid, but I'm not going to take the blame for this one. I don't think this is a case of a grade-obsessed student being irritated by a teacher who is being innovative. It was a poorly constructed assignment, and that made it really frustrating to work on. I ended up doing kind of a travel guide of some of England's main tourist destinations, and I'm pretty sure I got a good grade on it, but it was still a really unsatisfying experience; I never knew if I was on the right track, I didn't really get the point of it, and because of that, I wasn't able to truly exercise any kind of creative muscle. I remember the whole time I had this underlying shruggy feeling like, "Well, I guess this is what I'm supposed to do."

If the assignment had had just a little bit more structure to it, I think I would have loved it. And this structure could have looked a lot of ways. Here are just two versions of what the prompt for that paper could have looked like:

In your opinion, what has been England's most significant contribution - positive or negative - to the world?

What is one value that is characteristic of English culture? Show how human-made items in the country - physical products, media, traditions, even whole cities - illustrate that value.

If I had been given either of those assignments, I would have been much more intrigued and much more excited about the challenge presented by them. They are still very open-ended, but they at least give a student a starting point to go from.

So if your students are turning in work to you that's a little uninspired, the problem might be that you're not giving them enough freedom, OR it might be that you're giving them too much. Keep experimenting until you hit the sweet spot in between.

See all EduTips here.

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EduTip 18: Avoid assignments that are TOO open-ended.

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Sponsored by CommonLit . Many of us in education talk about how important it is to give students choice, to empower them to steer their own learning in a direction that's meaningful to them. I believe this wholeheartedly - it drives me crazy to walk the halls of a school and see 26 nearly identical ...

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This blog post describes what backwards design and alignment look like in a successful classroom.

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One thing that could be addressed more often in teacher education is the importance of alignment when planning lessons. Specifically, aligning assessments and activities to learning objectives / outcomes. Alignment is often taught implicitly, through modeling or having student teachers apply selecte…

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This blog post covers the importance of using backwards design as well as the benefits by comparing it to traditional lesson design.

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When I taught seventh grade language arts, one of my favorite things to teach was S.E. Hinton's book The Outsiders. Every year, we began the unit with a discussion about the cliques that formed in students' lives, how these groups interacted, the unwritten rules that governed their behavior, and what happened when groups clashed or people formed relationships across group lines. After we did some reflecting, writing, and talking, we were ready to start the book.

The reading went fine, more or less. Some chapters we did in class (I would read to them, then they would read silently), and others at home. Some students became as absorbed in the novel as I'd hoped they would; others, not so much. Predictably, some fell behind in the book like they did with all assigned reading.

I checked students' progress with occasional quizzes, we did some work on plot and characters, setting and theme, and then, after a unit test over the whole book-containing mostly questions that asked students to identify characters, setting, and key plot points-we spent nearly three class periods watching Francis Ford Coppola's movie version of the book. And I got to drool over Matt Dillon in the movie's opening scene again and again and again. From start to finish, the whole unit took about three weeks.

In retrospect, I'm not sure why it was my favorite. Seriously. I mean, even though I loved the book, my students' response to it was mostly lukewarm. Maybe it was just the idea of teaching it that I loved. Maybe it was the connections I was able to make to the stuff students dealt with on a day-to-day basis. I don't know. I taught that book a few times, and even though I looked forward to it every time, I always finished the unit a little unsatisfied.

And it's only now, years later, that I'm starting to understand that dissatisfaction: I can't say with any confidence that my students actually learned something from that unit. Upon deeper reflection, I'm not confident that any of my students learned anything of lasting value from at least half the lessons I taught.

This is a hard pill to swallow, because I wasn't half bad as a teacher. I had decent relationships with my students and I believe most of them had good experiences in my classroom, but real, durable learning? I can't say how much of that actually happened.

I don't love admitting that.

But at least now I understand why my teaching didn't produce a lot of actual learning: I never set clear, measurable learning targets.

Things would have been so different if I'd known about backward design.

When teachers talk to each other about the stuff they're teaching, they often say things like this:
"What novels do you do in 8th grade?""Oh that'll be perfect. I can use this when I teach the American Revolution!"
"I don't think I can fit that in; we're doing moon phases next month."

We tend to talk about our teaching plans in terms of the broad topics we cover. This shorthand is practical; we're not going to drill down into specific skill and knowledge objectives while waiting our turn at the bagel table. But when I think about the lessons I gave my students, the ones I observed in my colleagues' classrooms, and the work I've seen my own children do, I think this shorthand might be a pretty fair representation of what many of us are still doing: churning out lessons that keep students busy with our content without ever getting clear about what we want them to learn.

Instead of starting with a topic, we'd do better if we start with an end goal, and that's where backward design comes in.

Traditional vs. Backward Planning

Traditional Lesson Design

For many years, teachers have been planning lessons and units of instruction like this:

Step 1: Identify a topic or chunk of content that needs to be covered.

Step 2: Plan a sequence of lessons to teach that content.

Step 3: Create an assessment to measure the learning that should have taken place in those lessons.

Notice that in this approach, the assessment is created after the lessons are planned. Sometimes it isn't created until most of those lessons have already taken place. The assessment is kind of an afterthought, a check to see if students were paying attention to the stuff we taught them.

For most of my teaching career, this is how I planned. It's presumably how most of my colleagues planned. I believe it's still how many teachers plan.

So what's wrong with it? Well, when we plan this way, we're more likely to include content and activities that have questionable value. When teaching the American Revolution, for example, if our goal is just to "teach about the American Revolution," we can throw in anything that has any relation to that topic: a coloring page of the Boston Tea Party, a colonial flag craft project, or a worksheet where students unscramble words like minuteman, independence, and Hancock.

This random approach creates two problems.

The first and most important problem is a lack of durable, transferable learning. One reason so many of us don't remember much of what we learned in school is that we learned it through this haphazard, topic-driven approach. These random activities are taking up precious time that could be spent on much more valuable stuff.

The other is poor student engagement. Our students know when they're being asked to do something pointless. If they don't see the relevance of what they're learning or a direct line between the content of your course and a desirable outcome, they'll tune it out. Sure, many students will do what you ask anyway, because they want good grades and the benefits that come from them. But they're not learning. If you don't believe me, ask them.

Backward Design

In their book Understanding by Design, which was originally published in 1998, Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe introduced us to backward design, an approach to instructional planning that starts with the end goal, then works backward from there. The "full" version of Wiggins and McTighe's original approach is pretty complex and can be time-consuming to implement. If you're ready for that, I recommend digging into their book. For now, though, I'm just going to share the most basic version of backward design.

Here are the steps:

Step 1: Identify what students should know and be able to do by the end of the learning cycle.

Step 2: Create an assessment to measure that learning.

Step 3: Plan a sequence of lessons that will prepare students to successfully complete the assessment.

The difference in order is significant: Plan the assessment first, then plan only lessons that will contribute to student success on that assessment.

I was first introduced to this concept in my sixth year of teaching, and the genius of it completely blew me away. I used it when planning my next unit and experienced the biggest spike in student success I'd ever seen. On top of that, I was actually excited about teaching the lessons I had planned. For the first time, it felt like none of my class was wasted; everything actually mattered. There was something a lot more satisfying about doing things this way.

Let's take a look at an example to illustrate the difference between a unit planned the traditional, topic-driven way, and the same unit planned with backward design.

Before and After: The Lunar Cycle

The Before, Where the Final Product is a Test

At some point in their school careers, students study the phases of the moon. One pretty typical way to teach this is as follows:

A lecture or video about the phases of the moon, followed by a worksheet to label the phases.

An interactive activity like scraping the filling out of Oreos to represent the lunar phases.

Following a teacher's sample, creating a physical model of the moon phases using something like styrofoam balls.

A unit test that requires labelling the phases of the moon from memory and answering multiple-choice questions about the lunar cycle, eclipses, and seasons.

In many classrooms, teachers also have students track the appearance of the moon over the course of a month, so that might be added as well.

Following this plan, a teacher would feel pretty satisfied that they "covered" the topic of moon phases. But if we look at the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), the standard relating to moon phases says that grade 6-8 students will:

" Develop and use a model of the Earth-sun-moon system to describe the cyclic patterns of lunar phases, eclipses of the sun and moon, and seasons" ( MS-ESS1-1).

Note the language here: Students are meant to develop a model, then use it to describe these patterns. But in the plan above, students merely copied a model, and they didn't use it to describe anything; even if the model required some written captioning to explain what was going on, because the model was a copy, it can't be safely said that students were really the ones describing the system.

Then there's the test. If we assume that a large portion of a student's grade is based on the test, then students are not being measured on their achievement of that standard. The standard does not require students to memorize the phases of the moon. Nor does it ask them to "demonstrate knowledge" of how the whole system works. The standard wants students to develop a model and use it to describe the system.

It would be easy to blow off this distinction, to say Bah, same difference. The test asks students a lot of questions that would show an understanding of these concepts, so we're covered.

But not really. Asking a person to develop a model is a much higher-order task than asking them to copy a model. Describing systems and patterns is way more challenging than selecting the correct description.

Developing models and explaining things is the work of real scientists: They notice phenomena, study it, then figure out how to represent those phenomena in order to make it clear to other people. To say, "Look at this! It's interesting and it explains why things are the way they are!"

And that's exactly what the NGSS authors had in mind: "Any education that focuses predominantly on the detailed products of scientific labor-the facts of science-without developing an understanding of how those facts were established or that ignores the many important applications of science in the world misrepresents science and marginalizes the importance of engineering." (National Research Council, 2012, p. 43).

In other words, a superior education will teach students to think and practice like scientists. If we don't plan learning experiences that make that possible, we're giving them a sub-par education.

The After, Where the Final Product is a Model and a Presentation

So if we re-do this unit plan with backward design, we'll need to start by developing an assessment that would measure success with that standard. That means the assessment would not be a test where students merely label the moon phases, but a student-developed model of the moon phases along with some kind of presentation where students use that model to explain lunar phases, eclipses, and seasons.

When designing this final assessment, it's essential that the teacher crafts a rubric that clearly outlines specific, high standards for both the model and presentation. The rubric should list criteria for the accuracy and functionality of the model, plus the quality of the presentation itself. Here's an example of what that might look like:

With a good rubric in place, we then work backwards to determine what lessons students need to do excellent work on the final assessment.

Direct Instruction: Students still need to know the basics of the lunar system. Memorization is not the goal, so we're not grading for that, but students do need to know the information well enough to explain it and use the right vocabulary, so we can keep the lecture or video from the original plan. And having them work with the information a bit on some kind of worksheet or with some kind of online practice is fine, but I wouldn't give points for this work. If you need to motivate students to do it, require them to demonstrate proficiency (like scoring at least 80% on the match game with a set of Quizlet flashcards) before they can move on to the next step.

Active processing with models: Next, give students a chance to work with a model so that they experience the cycle in action. This will deepen their understanding of the earth-sun-moon system, which will better prepare them to give their own presentations. Something like this interactive model from CK-12 allows students to manipulate the time of day and the position of the moon to see how these variables change what we see in the sky. Working in groups, students could use the simulator to answer questions about the moon's appearance depending on what phase it's in and the time of day, then transition into making and checking predictions based on those variables.

Presentation practice: If students are going to do well on the final presentation, they'll need practice in explaining the lunar cycle in their own words. Using an existing model (such as the interactive mentioned in the previous step), have students explain the lunar phases, including information about the seasons and eclipses, to a partner or small group. Ask the listening partners to "coach" the presenter if their description has any holes or inaccuracies. Hearing their peers explain the system, along with attempting the explanation themselves, will help them use the language of the lunar cycle more fluently.

Model development: Now students begin developing their own models. The standard does not specify that this has to be a physical model, so you could offer students choice: The model could very well be made with styrofoam balls, but it could also be a hand-drawn diagram, a slideshow presentation, an animated video, a children's book, or even a short skit they present to the class or record on video. Many of these options, like the children's book, include the "presentation" piece right along with the model. Give students time in class to work on these models; this will ensure that they do their own work and will allow you to give feedback if a student is heading in the wrong direction. Remind them regularly that the explanation of the model is nearly half their grade, so they should consider scripting that out if their presentation is going to be "live."

Model presentations: Finally, students present their models. If you have a lot of students opt to give a "live" presentation this could take several class periods, which could be pretty mind-numbing since the subject matter is exactly the same for everyone. To cut down on that overall time, only have students present to the whole class if the class is actually participating in the model (like in some sort of skit or simulation). Otherwise, students can record their presentations on video or present to you one-on-one while their classmates work on something else independently.

With this "after" version, every lesson is designed to prepare students to give excellent presentations at the end. The whole time, they are using the lunar cycle vocabulary, correcting each other's misconceptions, and just like scientists, thinking about how to explain concepts to other people.

Some Questions About Your Lessons

Okay, so we've looked very closely at one small unit for a middle school science class. Now, take this same process and apply it to the things you teach.

1. What exactly do your standards require? Do they ask students to memorize and identify facts, or do they ask them to describe, explain, analyze, or create? (It's probably the latter.)

2. If it's the latter, how closely do your assessments measure those standards? Do they actually require students to do the describing, explaining, analyzing, or creating (which would likely require them to write, present, or create some product), or do they merely ask them to recognize when someone else does it in the form of an answer on a multiple-choice test?

3. Do you need to adjust your assessments so they more closely align with the standards?

4. If you do, the next step is to rework the lessons that lead up to that assessment. Does every lesson contribute to student success on that assessment? Could some of your lessons be omitted because they don't connect directly to the assessment? Are you missing anything? For example, if your assessment requires students to write in academic language and support their ideas with evidence, you should include some lessons that give students practice with that kind of writing.

5. Finally, will the assessment be weighted heavily in your gradebook? (It should be.)The lessons and activities leading up to the final assessment are there to give students exposure to the knowledge and practice with the skills necessary to perform on that final assessment; ideally, they should receive no grades at all on those activities. If you absolutely must assign some points, be sure the final assessment is worth a heck of a lot more than those smaller tasks.

Like I did, you probably also have some favorite lessons and activities. Some of these might turn out to be not just fun to teach, but also solid in terms of equipping students with knowledge and skills that will last.

If it turns out that those favorite lessons don't really align with any standards, you might be able to revise them so they do. Or you might keep them for other reasons-not every minute of class time has to be spent on standards-based instruction. Some activities have value because they help us get to know each other better, they help students develop social-emotional skills, or they simply offer a bit of fun. But if a lesson doesn't do any of these things, if it's disguised as learning but is doing little more than keeping students busy, it's time for it to go.

Using a process like backward design helps us get better at making these decisions. By making this approach part of our regular practice, we'll be able to look back on a day, a week, or a year of teaching and say with a lot more certainty that when they were under our care, our students learned.
Reference:
National Research Council (2012). A framework for K-12 science education: Practices, crosscutting concepts, and core ideas. The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/13165.

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Are we planning with clear, measurable, meaningful learning goals in to guide us, or are we just keeping students busy?

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A short podcast episode that goes over the basics of backwards design and what it entails.

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Listen to this episode from Backwards By Design on Spotify. What is Backwards By Design anyway?

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This is a 23 page document that outlines the principles of fair assessment, as well as how to successfully implement them in the classroom.

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This article offers 7 direct steps to achieving fair assessment within the classroom.

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http://uncw.edu/cas/documents/FairAssessmentPractices_Suskie.pdf

If we are to draw reasonably good conclusions about what our students have learned, it is imperative that we make our assessments - and our uses of the results - as fair as possible for as many students as possible. A fair assessment is one in which students are given equitable opportunities to demonstrate what they know (Lam, 1995). Does this mean that all students should be treated exactly the same? No! Equitable assessment means that students are assessed using methods and procedures most appropriate to them. These may vary from one student to the next, depending on the student's prior knowledge, cultural experience, and cognitive style. Creating custom-tailored assessments for each student is, of course, largely impractical, but nevertheless there are steps we can take to make our assessment methods as fair as possible.

1. Have clearly stated learning outcomes and share them with your students, so they know what you expect from them. Help them understand what your most important goals are. Give them a list of the concepts and skills to be covered on the midterm and the rubric you will use to assess their research project.

2. Match your assessment to what you teach and vice versa. If you expect your students to demonstrate good writing skills, don't assume that they've entered your course or program with those skills already developed. Explain how you define good writing, and help students develop their skills.

3. Use many different measures and many different kinds of measures. One of the most troubling trends in education today is the increased use of a high-stakes assessment - often a standardized multiple-choice test - as the sole or primary factor in a significant decision, such as passing a course, graduating, or becoming certified. Given all we know about the inaccuracies of any assessment, how can we say with confidence that someone scoring, say, a 90 is competent and someone scoring an 89 is not? An assessment score should not dictate decisions to us; we should make them, based on our professional judgement as educators, after taking into consideration information from a broad variety of assessments.

Using "many different measures" doesn't mean giving your students eight multiple-choice tests instead of just a midterm and final. We know now that students learn and demonstrate their learning in many different ways. Some learn best by reading and writing, others through collaboration with peers, others through listening, creating a schema or design, or hands-on practice. There is evidence that learning styles may vary by culture (McIntyre, 1996), as different ways of thinking are valued in different cultures (Gonzalez, 1996). Because all assessments favor some learning styles over others, it's important to give students a variety of ways to demonstrate what they've learned.

4. Help students learn how to do the assessment task. My assignments for student projects can run three single-spaced pages, and I also distribute copies of good projects from past classes. This may seem like overkill, but the quality of my students' work is far higher than when I provided less support.

Students with poor test-taking skills may need your help in preparing for a high-stakes examination; low achievers and those from disadvantaged backgrounds are particularly likely to benefit (Scruggs & Mastropieri, 1995). Performance-based assessments are not necessarily more equitable than tests; disadvantaged students are likely to have been taught through rote memorization, drill, and practice (Badger, 1999). Computer-based assessments, meanwhile, penalize students from schools without an adequate technology infrastructure (Russell & Haney, 2000). The lesson is clear: No matter what kind of assessment you are planning, at least some of your students will need your help in learning the skills needed to succeed.

5. Engage and encourage your students. The performance of "field-dependent" students, those who tend to think more holistically than analytically, is greatly influenced by faculty expressions of confidence in their ability (Anderson, 1988). Positive contact with faculty may help students of non-European cultures, in particular, achieve their full potential (Fleming, 1998).

6. Interpret assessment results appropriately. There are several approaches to interpreting assessment results; choose those most appropriate for the decision you will be making. One common approach is to compare students against their peers. While this may be an appropriate frame of reference for choosing students for a football team or an honor society, there's often little justification for, say, denying an A to a student solely because 11 percent of the class did better. Often it's more appropriate to base a judgement on a standard: Did the student present compelling evidence? summarize accurately? make justifiable inferences? This standards-based approach is particularly appropriate when the student must meet certain criteria in order to progress to the next course or be certified.

If the course or program is for enrichment and not part of a sequence, it may be appropriate to consider growth as well. Does the student who once hated medieval art now love it, even though she can't always remember names and dates? Does another student, once incapable of writing a coherent argument, now do so passably, even if his performance is not yet up to your usual standards?

7. Evaluate the outcomes of your assessments If your students don't do well on a particular assessment, ask them why. Sometimes your question or prompt isn't clear; sometimes you may find that you simply didn't teach a concept well. Revise your assessment tools, your pedagogy, or both, and your assessments are bound to be fairer the next time that you use them.

http://aahebulletin.com/public/archive/may2.asp
Giving Students Equitable Opportunities to Demonstrate Learning
By Linda Suskie From the May 2000 AAHE Bulletin

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Seven Steps to Fair Assessment - COTE Information

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http://uncw.edu/cas/documents/FairAssessmentPractices_Suskie.pdf If we are to draw reasonably good conclusions about what our students have learned, it is imperative that we make our assessments - and our uses of the results - as fair as possible for as many students as possible.

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Warren W. Willingham & Nancy S. Cole write about the effect gender has in education and using fair assessment to ensure fair treatment.

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Review: [Untitled]

Reviewed Work: Gender and Fair Assessment by Warren W. Willingham, Nancy S. Cole

Review by: Catherine Welch

Journal of Educational Measurement

Vol. 35, No. 2 (Summer, 1998), pp. 169-174 (6 pages)

Published By: National Council on Measurement in Education

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Review: [Untitled] Reviewed Work: Gender and Fair Assessment by Warren W. Willingham, Nancy S. Cole Review by: Catherine Welch Journal of Educational Measurement Vol. 35, No. 2 (Summer, 1998), pp. 169-174 (6 pages) Published By: National Council on Measurement in Education

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This blog post discusses strategies for ensuring assessments are fair for all students.

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How to ensure fair and accurate end-to-end assessment

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A closer look at upholding academic integrity within assessments and bolster student learning outcomes.

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A short podcast episode on how to use formative assessment as feedback on how to move forward with the individual student.

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Listen to this episode from Effective Teaching on Spotify. Dan discusses the need for teachers to shift their paradigm when it comes to assessment. Key to this shift is the need to see assessment as a tool for teachers to guide future teaching for that student.Formative Assessment is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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A podcast that dives into ensuring that assessments are fair and geared to help students improve.

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Listen to this post as a podcast:
Sponsored by Screencast-O-Matic and Microsoft Inclusive Classroom

My daughter was recently given an assignment to create a model of a volcano. It was a group project, meant to be done entirely at home, and the only clear requirement was that it had to look like a volcano, with extra points if it could actually erupt.

And so it began: My daughter and I planned when her two friends would come over to work on it. I texted their moms and we set a date. We also figured out what supplies she'd need from the craft store and when I would drive her there to get it all. We ended up spending about $40 on modeling clay, spray paint, fake palm trees, and tiny dinosaurs. And that's after I said no to about $40 worth of other stuff she wanted to get.

The three girls met at our house one afternoon. One of the other parents brought over the materials they used to make the volcano erupt. I insisted that they do the project in the dining room, where we could make sure they stayed on task, instead of my daughter's bedroom, where I knew they wouldn't. My husband helped them hunt through the basement for an old lampshade to give the model some height, helped them figure out how to make the clay stick to the lampshade, then did a few trial runs of the "eruption" with them, so they knew it would work in class. A few days later, I drove my daughter to school and helped her walk the model safely into class.

So much had to happen to get this assignment done, and very little of that was actually done by the three students whose names went on the project. I'm not saying my daughter and her friends didn't build the volcano, but they got a lot of support along the way, and if any of that support had been missing-time, transportation, money, space, suggestions, supervision-the project would have been less successful.

When I ask my daughter about the other student projects that were turned in that day, she confirms my suspicions that they ranged in quality: Some, she says, were "huge and detailed," while others consisted of little more than a painted water bottle.

Though I never confirmed it, I suspect that each of those projects got vastly different grades.

What Are We Measuring?

Although a movement is growing to eliminate grades, they are still a reality for most of us, and they impact everything from college admissions to whether students get to go on certain field trips. So it's important that we do whatever we can to make sure they measure what matters.

And in too many cases, that's not happening. Take the volcano project: The grade students received on that ultimately reflected the resources each group happened to have at home-not what they learned or even the effort each student personally put into the task. Those with the "huge and detailed" ones probably got the best grades, and those with the painted water bottles probably got the lowest.

Or consider these other scenarios:

The student whose essay gets a D, because even though he organized it pretty well, made some strong, well-supported arguments, and used rich vocabulary, his teacher's rubric allotted 40 percent of the grade to neatness and correctness, and he had a lot of mistakes. The teacher lets him revise for a higher score, but only gives half credit for the points earned the second time around.

The student who raises his grade by earning extra credit for donating tissues and hand sanitizer to the class.

The student who gets a C on an assignment that requires her to compose an original song to explain a constitutional amendment. Despite her solid understanding of the constitution, she doesn't happen to have a knack for writing lyrics and music.

The student whose project is turned in a day late and gets only half credit according to her teacher's "no excuses" late policy.

In all of these cases, the grade is not an accurate representation of what a student has learned. This is a problem of design: When constructing assignments, assessments, and grading policies, every teacher makes dozens of small decisions that determine how much a grade reflects a student's academic work and how much it reflects a mishmash of other factors. Those quantities are different for every teacher and every assignment. Despite that, we tend to treat grades as if they mean the same thing all the time.

Some Questions to Ask While Planning

So what's to be done about this? If you or your colleagues aren't ready to completely overhaul your grading system (again, see how others are doing that here), or you haven't moved to standards-based grading, you can still improve the integrity of traditional grades by considering some important questions while planning for instruction.

1. What learning does this task measure?

The grade on an assignment should match the learning students are supposed to be doing in your class. This sounds simple, but it amazes me how often I see assignments that seem to have no real connection to what the curriculum says students are learning.

If your standards require students to "be able to explain how geography impacts culture," then assignments should ask them to do some variation of that: explain how geography impacts culture. If, instead, they are making a relief map that shows geographic features, and their grade is based largely on how accurately they represent those features, then they are being graded on map-making skills, not on the standard.

This is especially problematic when qualities like "creativity" are part of your criteria. For one thing, this term means completely different things to different people, so students will have to guess how to perform well on this metric. More importantly, grading for "creativity" on an assignment that is supposed to measure something else will distort the results, making it much harder to tell who actually mastered the skill.

2. Are you going to teach everything you will measure?

We often assign points for skills and qualities that students happen to bring with them, but are never taught in our class.

Suppose you assign a group project, and part of each student's grade will be based on how well he or she worked with the group. Collaborative skills are important, absolutely, but if you're grading for them, shouldn't you also be teaching them?

Similarly, if you're going to ask students to do an essay-type question to demonstrate their learning, and part of their grade will be based on how effectively they write, then ideally, some of your teaching prior to that assessment should give students practice in the kinds of writing skills you want to see on that task.

If our lessons don't prepare students to do well on graded assignments and assessments, then those grades aren't a fair measurement of learning in our class.

3. What will quality work look like on this task?

When creating assignments, we often have a general idea of what a good end-product will look like, but we don't always know for sure until the work gets turned in. At that point, it's too late for students to rise to our expectations, and if we haven't clearly defined them ahead of time, it's easy for personal bias to cloud our judgment.

We'll get better work from students and judge it more fairly if we identify and communicate the criteria for success ahead of time. Many teachers accomplish this with a rubric given to students before they start. These come in different formats: A growing number of teachers are finding that students appreciate the single-point rubric for its clarity and ease of use.

I would also strongly recommend you do the assignment yourself as if you were a student-a process we call dogfooding. This will help you get much clearer on how you define excellence for this assignment.

4. How much of the grade depends on outside resources?

If an assignment is going to be completed partly or entirely at home, take a good look at how much the available resources outside of school could influence the grade. Things like transportation, money for supplies, access to technology, or help from an adult can all contribute to an end product that looks impressive, but may not directly reflect that student's academic skill or effort.

If your assignment is designed so that the focus stays on content and skills, and if you set things up so that the majority of the work happens in class, the assignments you get back should be a more accurate representation of what each student can do.

5. Can all students do well on this task, regardless of how they learn best?

If an assignment is delivered with only one type of learner in mind-with instructions only given verbally, for example-some students will be behind before they even start. Ideally, every task will be designed in a way that all students can access.

Universal Design for Learning is a framework that can help teachers design materials so that all learners have equal access to them. To learn more, watch this overview video or explore the UDL Guidelines developed by CAST. As you work to make your assignments more universally accessible, take a look at some of the great accessibility tools Microsoft offers teachers for free.

Similarly, if the task favors students who happen to have a specific type of artistic skill-the way the constitutional song assignment did for students with musical talent-others who might have preferred to demonstrate their learning through an essay, a poster, or a video are less likely to shine.

Instead of limiting student products to a single, narrow option, consider whether you can give them choices in how they demonstrate learning. If the volcano project had been designed for students to create a model for how a real volcano works, that model could have been done with a paper diagram, in a video, with a student-produced skit, or with a physical model. Not only would this give students an opportunity to put their unique gifts to use, it would also provide options that cost a lot less money to bring to fruition.

6. Could this assignment be called "practice" instead?

Too often, teachers give grades to all classroom activity; they are convinced that kids won't do something unless it's going to get a grade. And that means tasks that are really meant to give students practice in a skill or early exposure to content are ultimately included in final grade calculations.

They shouldn't. Instead of making everything graded, have students do some class work as practice, in preparation for a task that will be graded. So if students have to take a test on long division, require them to do enough self-graded practice pages until they get 80 percent or better. These problems won't be part of their final grade calculation, which also means you don't have to grade them, but students can't take the test until they can demonstrate proficiency on the practice, and their grade on the test will count. This way, their grade will reflect their mastery of long division without penalizing them for how long it took to master the skill.

Other Factors to Consider

Late Work

Some policies on late work can have a significant impact on student grades, so that a student who turns work in late can have very low grades, even if they have mastered the content. In classes where late work is penalized, a grade is a reflection of the student's time management, or of stress, or perfectionism, or dozens of other possible factors. What it isn't is a reflection of learning.

Despite this, many teachers feel that taking points is their only option for responding to late work. This piece by Starr Sackstein explores this dilemma and considers some ways teachers can address the problem without docking points. Spoiler alert: It's not a one-size-fits-all solution, because students turn work in late for a variety of reasons. "At the root of every challenge we face with students of all ages is a story," she writes. "Our job as teachers to figure out what the story is. Some students will be an open book and others we will need to be detectives to figure stuff out. Don't give up on the kids. Giving a zero is giving up and almost expecting them to do the same."

Extra Credit

Giving points for anything that doesn't directly reflect learning can have an incredibly distorting effect on grades. In some cases, it elevates grades, giving the impression of mastery without the actual mastery. In other cases, it masks problems: If a student misses a few test items, but erases them with bonus points, that student could fly under the teacher's radar and miss opportunities for reteaching.

Students who are doing so well on the regular class work that they finish early don't need extra credit, they need differentiated assignments and more challenge. Students who do poorly on assignments don't need extra credit to make up the missing points; they need opportunities to re-do and improve on the work.

This piece by Joy Kirr does an excellent job of showing how a variety of typical extra credit assignments are rife with all kinds of problems.

Grade Averaging

If you calculate your grades by simply averaging them-dividing the points earned by the total possible points-your final course grade could be doing a poor job of representing what your students actually learned in your class. In this piece on the pitfalls of grade averaging , Rick Wormelli uses specific examples to illustrate this problem.

Having graded this way myself, I always liked the simplicity and convenience of grade averaging, so I know that the thought of trying some other system will likely be daunting. But if it means our grades will have more integrity, it's worth it.

One alternative to consider is something called a decaying average , which puts more weight on assignments done later in a learning cycle. In theory, this recognizes that skills should improve over time. Although this approach seems to work better in skill-based classes, it shows us one way to rethink the way we calculate grades so they are better aligned with who our students are as learners.

Grades are inherently imperfect. To truly assess our students' learning, we need to get to know them, observe them, and study a wide sampling of their work over time. When we reduce all that to a single measurement for the sake of efficiency, we lose that bigger picture. But as long as grades remain a reality in our system, let's be thoughtful and deliberate when we calculate them. ♦

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Grades impact everything from college admissions to whether students get to go on certain field trips. With so much at stake, how can we make sure they measure what matters?

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A list of strategies that can be used in the classroom to ensure that all assessments are fair.

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No one wants to use an assessment tool with obvious stereotyping or offensive material, of course. But it's easy to assess in ways that inadvertently favor some students over others. Effective assessment processes yield evidence and conclusions that are meaningful, appropriate, and fair to all relevant subgroups of students (Lane, 2012; Linn, Baker, & Dunbar, 1991). The following tips minimize the possibility of inequities.

1. Don't rush.

Assessments that are thrown together at the last minute invariably include flaws that greatly affect the fairness, accuracy, and usefulness of the resulting evidence.

2. Plan your assessments carefully.

Aim not only to access your key learning goals but to do so in a balanced, representative way. If your key learning goals are that students should understand what happened during a certain historical period and evaluate the decisions made by key figures during that period, for example, your test should balance questions on basic conceptual understanding with questions assessing evaluation skills.

3. Aim for assignments and questions that are crystal clear.

If students find the question difficult to understand, they may answer what they think is the spirit of the question rather than the question itself, which may not match your intent.

4. Guard against unintended bias.

A fair and unbiased assessment uses contexts that are equally familiar to all and uses words that have common meanings to all. A test question on quantitative skills that asks students to analyze football statistics might not be fair to women, and using scenarios involving farming may be biased against students from urban areas, unless you are specifically assessing student learning in these contexts.

5. Ask a variety of people with diverse perspectives to review assessment tools.

This helps ensure that the tools are clear, that they appear to assess what you want them to, and that they don't favor students of a particular background.

6. Try out large-scale assessment tools.

If you are planning a large-scale assessment with potentially significant consequences, try out your assessment tool with a small group of students before launching the large-scale implementation. Consider asking some students to think out loud as they answer a test question; their thought processes should match up with the ones you intended. Read students' responses to assignments and open-ended survey questions to make sure their answers make sense, and ask students if anything is unclear or confusing.

Excerpted and adapted from Assessing Student Learning: A Common Sense Guide, 3rd Edition by Linda Suskie. Copyright © 2018, Wiley. All rights reserved.

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6 Ways to Ensure Your Assessment Practices are Fair and Unbiased

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No one wants to use an assessment tool with obvious stereotyping or offensive material, of course. But it's easy to assess in ways that inadvertently favor some students over others. Effective assessment processes yield evidence and conclusions that are meaningful, appropriate, and fair to all relevant subgroups of students (Lane, 2012; Linn, Baker, & Dunbar, 1991 ).

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This video is accompanied by a short article and discusses the fundamental principles of assessment, with a focus on fairness.

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The seven fundamental principles given below (excerpted from Growing Success, page 6) lay the foundation for rich and challenging practice. When these principles are fully understood and observed by all teachers, they will guide the collection of meaningful information that will help inform instructional decisions, promote student engagement, and improve student learning.

To ensure that assessment, evaluation, and reporting are valid and reliable, and that they lead to the improvement of learning for all students, teachers use practices and procedures that:

are fair, transparent, and equitable;

support all students;

are carefully planned to relate to the curriculum expectations and learning goals and, as much as possible, to the interests, learning styles and preferences, needs, and experiences of all students;

are communicated clearly to students and parents at the beginning of the school year or course and at other appropriate points throughout the school year or course;

are ongoing, varied in nature, and administered over a period of time to provide multiple opportunities for students to demonstrate the full range of their learning;

provide ongoing descriptive feedback that is clear, specific, meaningful, and timely to support improved learning and achievement;

develop students' self-assessment skills to enable them to assess their own learning, set specific goals, and plan next steps for their learning.

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The seven fundamental principles given below (excerpted from Growing Success, page 6) lay the foundation for rich and challenging practice. When these principles are fully understood and observed by all teachers, they will guide the collection of meaningful information that will help inform instructional decisions, promote student engagement, and improve student learning.

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This website gives a checklist to apply to assessments in order to ensure they are fair. It then offers many links to help involve students in the assessment process. By involving students, it is more likely assessments will be fair.

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As far back as assessments have been used in education, there have been students who stated that the assessment was 'unfair'. What makes an assessment 'fair' or 'unfair'? As instructors, it is important to consider this question, and to make sure that we follow some basic principles to ensure that any assessments we administer are fair and equitable to students.

Here is a checklist of the different principles of fair assessments (adapted from Western and Northern Canadian Protocol for Collaboration in Education, 2006; Harlen, 2010). Check off each principle to see why it is important to consider when developing and administering your assessments.

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As far back as assessments have been used in education, there have been students who stated that the assessment was 'unfair'. What makes an assessment 'fair' or 'unfair'? As instructors, it is important to consider this question, and to make sure that we follow some basic principles to ensure that any assessments we administer are fair and equitable to students.

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This article calls on some typical beliefs surrounding marking to give insight on how to be most effective.

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Effective marking: what do we really know?

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Marking: it consumes enormous amounts of teachers’ time, but we know surprisingly little about what makes it effective. That at least was the conclusion of the Education Endowment Foundation’s review on written marking. Here I’ll summarise what we do know about marking, what we don’t, and what teach…

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This is a short list of tools with explanations for each that will be helpful when constructing tests.

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Assessment | Quality Test Construction | Teacher Tools

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A Table of Specifications is a two-way chart that describes the topics to be covered by a test and the number of items or points which will be associated with each topic. The purpose of the table is to identify the achievement domains being measured and to ensure that a fair and representative sample of questions appears on the test.

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This is a 6-page list with lots of different formative assessment strategies as well as how to use them.

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Dylan Wiliam - Formative Assessment list.docx

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This post talks about the importance of summative assessment and provides different examples of how to use it in the classroom.

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All Posts

When gauging student learning, two approaches likely come to mind: a formative or summative assessment.

Fortunately, feeling pressure to choose one or the other isn't necessary. These two types of learning assessment actually serve different and necessary purposes.

Definitions: What's the difference between formative and summative assessment?

Formative assessment occurs regularly throughout a unit, chapter, or term to help track not only how student learning is improving, but how your teaching can, too.

According to a WestEd article, teachers love using various formative assessments because they help meet students' individual learning needs and foster an environment for ongoing feedback.

Take one-minute papers, for example. Giving your students a solo writing task about today's lesson can help you see how well students understand new content.

Catching these struggles or learning gaps immediately is better than finding out during a summative assessment.

Such an assessment could include:

In-lesson polls

Partner quizzes

Self-evaluations

Ed-tech games

One-minute papers

Visuals (e.g., diagrams, charts or maps) to demonstrate learning

Exit tickets

So, what is a summative assessment?
Credit: Alberto G.
It occurs at the end of a unit, chapter, or term and is most commonly associated with final projects, standardized tests, or district benchmarks.

Typically heavily weighted and graded, it evaluates what a student has learned and how much they understand.

There are various types of summative assessment. Here are some common examples of summative assessment in practice:

End-of-unit test

End-of-chapter test

Achievement tests

Standardized tests

Final projects or portfolios

Teachers and administrators use the final result to assess student progress, and to evaluate schools and districts. For teachers, this could mean changing how you teach a certain unit or chapter. For administrators, this data could help clarify which programs (if any) require tweaking or removal.

The differences between formative and summative assessment

While we just defined the two, there are five key differences between formative and summative assessments requiring a more in-depth explanation.
Formative assessment:

1. Occurs through a chapter or unit

2. Improves how students learn

3. Covers small content areas

4. Monitors how students are learning

5. Focuses on the process of student learning

Summative assessment:

1. Occurs at the end of a chapter or unit

2. Evaluates what students learn

3. Covers complete content areas

4. Assigns a grade to students' understanding

5. Emphasizes the product of student learning

During vs after

Teachers use formative assessment at many points during a unit or chapter to help guide student learning.

Summative assessment comes in after completing a content area to gauge student understanding.

Improving vs evaluating

If anyone knows how much the learning process is a constant work in progress, it's you! This is why formative assessment is so helpful - it won't always guarantee students understand concepts, but it will improve how they learn.

Summative assessment, on the other hand, simply evaluates what they've learned. In her book, Balanced Assessment: From Formative to Summative, renowned educator Kay Burke writes, "The only feedback comes in the form of a letter grade, percentage grade, pass/fail grade, or label such as 'exceeds standards' or 'needs improvement.'"

Little vs large

Let's say chapter one in the math textbook has three subchapters (i.e., 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3). A teacher conducting formative assessments will assign mini tasks or assignments throughout each individual content area.

Whereas, if you'd like an idea of how your class understood the complete chapter, you'd give them a test covering a large content area including all three parts.

Monitoring vs grading

Formative assessment is extremely effective as a means to monitor individual students' learning styles. It helps catch problems early, giving you more time to address and adapt to different problem areas.

Summative assessments are used to evaluate and grade students' overall understanding of what you've taught. Think report card comments: did students achieve the learning goal(s) you set for them or not?

Process vs product

"It's not about the destination; it's about the journey"? This age-old saying sums up formative and summative assessments fairly accurately.

The former focuses on the process of student learning. You'll use it to identify areas of strength and weakness among your students - and to make necessary changes to accommodate their learning needs.

The latter emphasizes the product of student learning. To discover the product's "value", you can ask yourself questions, such as: At the end of an instructional unit, did the student's grade exceed the class standard, or pass according to a district's benchmark?

In other words, formative methods are an assessment for learning whereas summative ones are an assessment of learning.

Now that you've got a more thorough understanding of these evaluations, let's dive into the love-hate relationship teachers like yourself may have with summative assessments.

Perceived disadvantages of summative assessment

The pros are plenty. However, before getting to that list, let's outline some of its perceived cons. Summative assessment may:

1) Offer minimal room for creativity

Rigid and strict assignments or tests can lead to a regurgitation of information. Some students may be able to rewrite facts from one page to another, but others need to understand the "why" before giving an answer.

2) Not accurately reflect learning

"Teaching to the test" refers to educators who dedicate more time teaching lessons that will be emphasized on district-specific tests.

A survey conducted by Harvard's Carnegie-Knight Task Force on the Future of Journalism asked teachers whether or not "preparing students to pass mandated standardized tests" affects their teaching.

A significant 60% said it either "dictates most of" or "substantially affects" their teaching. While this can result in higher scores, curriculum distortion can prevent students from learning other foundational subject areas.

3) Ignore (and miss) timely learning needs

Because summative assessment occurs at the end of units or terms, teachers can fail to identify and remedy students' knowledge gaps or misconceptions as they arise.

Unfortunately, by this point, there's often little or no time to rectify a student's mark, which can affect them in subsequent units or grades.

4) Result in a lack of motivation

The University of London's Evidence for Policy and Practice conducted a 19-study systematic review of the impact summative assessment and tests have on students' motivation for learning.

Contrary to popular belief, researchers found a correlation between students who scored poorly on national curriculum tests and experienced lower self-esteem, and an unwillingness to put more effort into future test prep. Beforehand, interestingly, "there was no correlation between self-esteem and achievement."

For some students, summative assessment can sometimes be seen as 'high stakes' testing due to the pressure on them to perform well. That said, 'low-stakes' assessments can also be used in the form of quizzes or practice tests.

5) Be inauthentic

Summative assessment has received criticism for its perceived inaccuracy in providing a full and balanced measure of student learning.

Consider this, for example: Your student, who's a hands-on, auditory learner, has a math test today. It comes in a traditional paper format as well as a computer program format, which reads the questions aloud for students.

Chances are the student will opt for the latter test format. What's more, this student's test results will likely be higher and more accurate.

The reality is that curricula - let alone standardized tests - typically don't allow for this kind of accommodation. This is the exact reason educators and advocates such as Chuck Hitchcock, Anne Meyer, David Rose, and Richard Jackson believe:

6) Be biased

Depending on a school district's demographic, summative assessment - including standardized tests - can present biases if a group of students is unfairly graded based on their race, ethnicity, religion, gender, or social class.

In his presentation at Kansas State University, emeritus professor in the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, Dr. W. James Popham, explained summative assessment bias:

Importance and benefits of summative assessment

Overall, these are valid points raised against summative assessment. However, it does offer fantastic benefits for teachers and students alike!

Summative assessment can:

1) Motivate students to study and pay closer attention

Although we mentioned lack of motivation above, this isn't true for every student. In fact, you've probably encountered numerous students for whom summative assessments are an incredible source of motivation to put more effort into their studies.

For example, final exams are a common type of summative assessment that students may encounter at the end of a semester or school year. This pivotal moment gives students a milestone to achieve and a chance to demonstrate their knowledge.

In May 2017, the College Board released a statement about whether coaching truly boosts test scores:

2) Allow students to apply what they've learned

It's one thing to memorize multiplication tables (which is a good skill), but another to apply those skills in math word problems or real-world examples.

Summative assessments - excluding, for example, multiple choice tests - help you see which students can retain and apply what they've learned.

3) Help identify gaps in student learning

Before moving on to a new unit, it's vital to make sure students are keeping up. Naturally, some will be ahead while others will lag behind. In either case, giving them a summative assessment will provide you with a general overview of where your class stands as a whole.

Let's say your class just wrote a test on multiplication and division. If all students scored high on multiplication but one quarter of students scored low on division, you'll know to focus more on teaching division to those students moving forward.

4) Help identify possible teaching gaps
Credit: woodleywonderworks
In addition to identifying student learning gaps, summative assessment can help target where your teaching style or lesson plans may have missed the mark.

Have you ever been grading tests before, to your horror, realizing almost none of your students hit the benchmark you hoped for? When this happens, the low grades are not necessarily related to study time.

For example, you may need to adjust your teaching methods by:

Including/excluding word problems

Incorporating more visual components

Innovative summative assessments (we list some below!)

5) Give teachers valuable insights
Credit: Kevin Jarrett
Summative assessments can highlight what worked and what didn't throughout the school year. Once you pinpoint how, where and what lessons need tweaking, making informed adjustments for next year becomes easier.

In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes... and, for teachers, new students year after year. So although old students may miss out on changes you've made to your lessons, new ones get to reap the benefits.

This not only improves your skills as an educator, but will ensure a more enriching educational experience for generations of students to come.

6) Contribute positively to learning outcomes

Certain summative assessments also provide valuable data at district, national, and global levels. Depending on average test scores, this can determine whether or not certain schools receive funding, programs stay or go, curriculum changes occur, and more. Burke writes:

The seven aims of summative assessment

Dr. Nancy P. Gallavan, a professor of teacher education at the University of Central Arkansas, believes teachers can use performance-based summative assessments at any grade level.

However, in an article for Corwin, she suggests crafting yours with seven aims in mind:

1. Accompanied with appropriate time and task management

2. Achievable as in-class activities and out-of-class assignments

3. Active involvement in planning, preparation, and performance

4. Applicable to academic standards and expectations

5. Appropriate to your students' learning styles, needs, and interests

6. Attractive to your students on an individual and group level

7. Authentic to curricular content and context

Ideally, the assessment method should also measure a student's performance accurately against the learning objectives set at the beginning of the course.

Keeping these goals in mind, here's a list of innovative ways to conduct summative assessments in your classroom!

Summative assessment examples: 9 ways to make test time fun

If you want to switch things up this summative assessment season, keep reading. While you can't change what's on standardized tests, you can create activities to ensure your students are exhibiting and applying their understanding and skills to end-of-chapter or -unit assessments. In a refreshing way.

Why not give them the opportunity to express their understanding in ways that apply to different learning styles?
Note: As a general guideline, students should incorporate recognition and recall, logic and reasoning, as well as skills and application that cover major concepts and practices (including content areas you emphasized in your lessons).
1) One, two, three... action!

Write a script and create a short play, movie, or song about a concept or strategy of your choosing.

This video from Science Rap Academy is a great - and advanced - example of students who created a song about how blue-eyed children can come from two brown-eyed parents:

2) TXT MSG

Using a tool such as iPhone Fake Text Generator, have students craft a mock text message conversation conveying a complex concept from the unit, or each chapter of that unit.

Students could create a back-and-forth conversation between two historical figures about a world event, or two friends helping each other with complex math concepts.

3) Podcast

Have your students create a five to 10-minute podcast episode about core concepts from each unit. This is an exciting option because it can become an ongoing project.

Individually or in groups, specific students can be in charge of each end-of-chapter or -unit podcast. If your students have a cumulative test towards the end of the year or term, the podcast can even function as a study tool they created together.
Credit :Brad Flickinger
You can use online tools such as Record MP3 Online or Vocaroo to get your class started!

4) Infographic

Creating a detailed infographic for a final project is an effective way for students to reinforce what they've learned. They can cover definitions, key facts, statistics, research, how-to info, graphics, etc.

You can even put up the most impressive infographics in your classroom. Over time, you'll have an arsenal of in-depth, visually-appealing infographics students can use when studying for chapter or unit tests.

5) Compare and contrast

Venn diagrams are an old - yet effective - tool perfect for visualizing just about anything! Whether you teach history or social studies, English or math, or something in between, Venn diagrams can help certain learners visualize the relationship between different things.

For example, they can compare book characters, locations around the world, scientific concepts, and more just like the examples below:

6) Living museum

This creative summative assessment is similar to one, two, three... action! Individuals will plan and prepare an exhibit (concept) in the Living Museum (classroom). Let's say the unit your class just completed covered five core concepts.

Five students will set up around the classroom while the teacher walks from exhibit to exhibit. Upon reaching the first student, the teacher will push an imaginary button, bringing the exhibit "to life." The student will do a two to three-minute presentation; afterwards, the teacher will move on to the next one.

7) Ed-Tech games

Now more than ever, students are growing up saturated with smartphones, tablets, and video games. That's why educators should show students how to use technology in the classroom effectively and productively.

More and more educators are bringing digital tools into the learning process. Pew Research Center surveyed 2,462 teachers and reported that digital technologies have helped in teaching their middle and high school students.

Some of the findings were quite eye-opening:

80% report using the internet at least weekly to help them create lesson plans

84% report using the internet at least weekly to find content that will engage students

69% say the internet has a "major impact on their ability to share ideas with other teachers

80% report getting email alerts or updates at least weekly that allow them to follow developments in their field

92% say the internet has a "major impact" on their ability to access content, resources, and materials for their teaching

67% say the internet has a "major impact" on their ability to interact with parents and 57% say it has had such an impact on enabling their interaction with students

To make the most of EdTech, find a tool that actually engages your students in learning and gives you the insightful data and reports you need to adjust your instruction

With Prodigy Math, you can:

Start using Prodigy

8) Shark Tank/Dragon's Den

Yes, just like the reality TV show! You can show an episode or two to your class or get them to watch the show at home. Next, have students pitch a product or invention that can help change the world outside of school for the better.

This innovative summative assessment is one that'll definitely require some more thought and creativity. But it's important that, as educators, we help students realize they can have a huge positive impact on the world in which they live.

9) Free choice

If a student chooses to come up with their own summative assessment, you'll need to vet it first. It'll likely take some collaboration to arrive at something sufficient.

However, giving students the freedom to explore content areas that interest them most could surprise you. Sometimes, it's during those projects they form a newfound passion and are wildly successful in completing the task.

We're sure there are countless other innovative summative assessment ideas out there, but we hope this list gets your creative juices flowing.

With the exclusion of standardized state and national tests, one of the greatest misconceptions about summative assessments is that they're all about paper and pencil. Our hope in creating this list was to help you see how fun and engaging summative assessments can truly be.

10) Group projects

Group projects aren't just a fun way to break the monotony, but a dynamic and interactive form of summative assessment. Here's why:

Collaborative learning: Group projects encourage students to work as a team, fostering their communication and collaboration skills. They learn to listen, negotiate, and empathize, which are crucial skills in and beyond the classroom.

Promotes critical thinking: When students interact with each other, they get to explore different perspectives. They challenge each other's understanding, leading to stimulating debates and problem-solving sessions that boost critical thinking.

In-depth assessment: Group projects offer teachers a unique lens to evaluate both individual performances and group dynamics. It's like getting a sneak peek into their world - you get to see how they perform under different circumstances and how they interact with each other.

Catering to different learning styles: Given the interactive nature of group projects, they can cater to different learning styles - auditory, visual, and kinesthetic. Every student gets a chance to shine!

However, it's important to set clear instructions and criteria to ensure fairness. Remember, it's not just about the final product - it's about the process too.

Some interesting examples of group projects include:

Create a Mini Documentary: Students could work together to research a historical event and create a mini documentary presenting their findings.

Plan a Community Service Project: This could involve identifying a problem in the local community and creating a detailed plan to address it.

Design a Mobile App: For a more tech-focused project, students could identify a problem and design an app that solves it.

Summative assessment strategies for keeping tests clear and fair
Credit: woodleywonderworks
In addition to using the summative assessment examples above to accommodate your students' learning styles, these tips and strategies should also help:

Use a rubric - Rubrics help set a standard for how your class should perform on a test or assignment. They outline test length, how in-depth it will be, and what you require of them to achieve the highest possible grades.

Design clear, effective questions - When designing tests, do your best to use language, phrases, and examples similar to those used during lessons. This'll help keep your tests aligned with the material you've covered.

Try blind grading - Most teachers prefer knowing whose tests they're grading. But if you want to provide wholly unbiased grades and feedback, try blind grading. You can request your students write their names on the bottom of the last test page or the back.

Assess comprehensiveness - Make sure the broad, overarching connections you're hoping students can make are reasonable and fluid. For example, if the test covers measurement, geometry and spatial sense, you should avoid including questions about patterning and algebra.

Create a final test after, not before, teaching the lessons - Don't put the horse before the carriage. Plans can change and student learning can demand different emphases from year to year. If you have a test outline, perfect! But expect to embrace and make some changes from time to time.

Make it real-world relevant - How many times have you heard students ask, "When am I going to use this in real life?" Far too often students assume math, for example, is irrelevant to their lives and write it off as a subject they don't need. When crafting test questions, use culturally-relevant word problems to illustrate a subject's true relevance.

Enter the Balanced Assessment Model

Throughout your teaching career, you'll spend a lot of time with formative and summative assessments. While some teachers emphasize one over the other, it's vital to recognize the extent to which they're interconnected.

In the book Classroom Assessment for Student Learning, Richard Stiggins, one of the first educators to advocate for the concept of assessment for learning, proposes something called "a balanced assessment system that takes advantage of assessment of learning and assessment for learning."

If you use both effectively, they inform one another and "assessment becomes more than just an index of school success. It also serves as the cause of that success."

In fact, Stiggins argues teachers should view these two types of assessment as "in sync."

Conclusion: Going beyond the test

Implementing these innovative summative assessment examples should engage your students in new and exciting ways.

What's more, they'll have the opportunity to express and apply what they've learned in creative ways that solidify student learning.

So, what do you think - are you ready to try out these summative assessment ideas? Prodigy is a game-based learning platform teachers use to keep their students engaged.

Sign up for a free teacher account and set an Assessment today!

Such an assessment could include:
Credit: Alberto G.

Formative assessment: Summative assessment:

Repeated practice tests reinforce the low self-image of the lower-achieving students... When test scores are a source or pride and the community, pressure is brought to bear on the school for high scores.

Similarly, parents bring pressure on their children when the result has consequences for attendance at high social status schools. For many students, this increases their anxiety, even though they recognize their parents as being supportive.

Curriculum matters and 'fixing' the one-size-fits-all, inflexible curriculum will occupy both special and general educators well into the future... Students with diverse learning needs are not 'the problem'; barriers in the curriculum itself are the root of the difficulty.

This doesn't necessarily mean that if minority students are outperformed on a summative test by majority students that the test is biased against that minority. It may instead indicate that the minority students have not been provided with the appropriate instruction...

An example of content bias against girls would be one in which students are asked to compare the weights of several objects, including a football. Since girls are less likely to have handled a football, they might find the item more difficult than boys, even though they have mastered the concept measured by the item.

Summative assessment can:

Data shows studying for the SAT for 20 hours on free Official SAT Practice on Khan Academy is associated with an average score gain of 115 points, nearly double the average score gain compared to students who don't use Khan Academy. Out of nearly 250,000 test-takers studied, more than 16,000 gained 200 points or more between the PSAT/NMSQT and SAT...

In addition to the 115-point average score increase associated with 20 hours of practice, shorter practice periods also correlate with meaningful score gains. For example, 6 to 8 hours of practice on Official SAT Practice is associated with an average 90-point increase.

Credit: woodleywonderworks Credit: Kevin Jarrett

Summative assessments also provide the public and policymakers with a sense of the results of their investment in education and give educators a forum for proving whether instruction works - or does not work.

Credit :Brad Flickinger

Tip: Teaching math from 1st to 8th grade? Use Prodigy!

With Prodigy Math, you can:

Deliver engaging assessments: Prodigy's game-based approach makes assessments fun for students.

Spot and solve learning gaps: See which students need more support at the touch of a button.

Reduce test anxiety: Prodigy has been shown to build math confidence.

Plus, it's all available to educators at no cost. See how it works below!👇

Start using Prodigy

Credit: woodleywonderworks

They can even be the exact same thing - only the purpose and the timing of the assessment determine its label. Formative assessments provide the training wheels that allow students to practice and gain confidence while riding their bikes around the enclosed school parking lot.

Once the training wheels come off, the students face their summative assessment as they ride off into the sunset on only two wheels, prepared to navigate the twists and turns of the road to arrive safely at their final destination.

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10 Summative Assessment Examples to Try This School Year

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All Posts When gauging student learning, two approaches likely come to mind: a formative or summative assessment. Fortunately, feeling pressure to choose one or the other isn't necessary. These two types of learning assessment actually serve different and necessary purposes.

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This video gives tips on how to construct quizzes in an efficient manner.

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An explanation on why most feedback should wait until after the task has been completed.

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EduTips are micro-episodes of the Cult of Pedagogy Podcast.
Each EduTip offers one small, useful thing that will help you become a better teacher.

Sponsored by Reading Progress in Teams.

When students are in the middle of learning to do something, and we see them making a mistake, or maybe just needing some improvement, we may be tempted to stop them and offer a correction.

It may be best to resist that temptation. Many educators understand that feedback is most valuable when it is given in a timely manner—soon after a student completes a task, but a number of studies (listed below) have shown that when feedback interrupts the learning process, it can be detrimental to learning. Feedback given soon after a task is completed results in more accurate and long-lasting learning.

The theory behind this is that too much feedback during a task robs the learner of the opportunity to develop their own internal sense for how to do the task correctly. They can become dependent on the feedback and, once that feedback is removed, be unable to self-correct. By contrast, when a learner gets feedback after a task, they can take that information into the next attempt and continue to hone their own neural pathways that tell them the right way to do it.

This principle doesn’t necessarily apply to all students in all situations. When someone is first learning a task, they may need more frequent feedback to get closer to the desired behavior, but always keep in mind that at some point, the learner needs to spend some time struggling with the task on their own, making their own judgments about what move to make next, rather than relying on constant feedback from an instructor, a coach, or a peer.

You know your students and your subject area best, so experiment with the timing of feedback to see what works best for you. It would also be useful to ask your students: Does it help you more when I correct you while you’re doing this, or would you rather I wait until after? Explain that the long-term goal is to have students be able to do the task independently without any guidance from you—to be able to give themselves feedback—and that slowing down the frequency of your feedback is part of the plan to get them there.

So the next time you’re observing a student doing something, trying something new, and you get that instinct to jump in and offer advice? Hold back. Give them a chance to work through it themselves, then give some feedback.

Some studies that support delaying feedback:

Butler, A. C., Karpicke, J. D., & Roediger, H. L. (2007). The effect of type and timing of feedback on learning from multiple-choice tests. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 13(4), 273–281. https://doi.org/10.1037/1076-898x.13.4.273

Park, J.-H., Shea, C. H., & Wright, D. L. (2000). Reduced-Frequency Concurrent and Terminal Feedback: A Test of the Guidance Hypothesis. Journal of Motor Behavior, 32(3), 287–296. https://doi.org/10.1080/00222890009601379

Shute, V. J. (2008). Focus on Formative Feedback. Review of Educational Research, 78(1), 153–189. https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654307313795

Walsh, C. M., Ling, S. C., Wang, C. S., & Carnahan, H. (2009). Concurrent Versus Terminal Feedback: It May Be Better to Wait. Academic Medicine, 84(Supplement), S54–S57. https://doi.org/10.1097/acm.0b013e3181b38daf

Winstein, C. J., Pohl, P. S., & Lewthwaite, R. (1994). Effects of Physical Guidance and Knowledge of Results on Motor Learning: Support for the Guidance Hypothesis. Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport, 65(4), 316–323. https://doi.org/10.1080/02701367.1994.10607635

See all EduTips here.

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EduTip 4: Hold off on most feedback until AFTER a task is done.

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It’s tempting to correct students the second they make a mistake, but resist that temptation.

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Part 1 of a 2 part series detailing the importance of lesson design.

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Grant Wiggins - Understanding by Design (1 of 2)

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This tool is a list of over 250 different examples of performance assessments that could be used in the classroom.

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Performance Assessments - Alberta Assessment Consortium

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AAC Performance Assessments: Engage students in their learning Develop critical thinking skills Encourage innovation and problem solving Provide quality assessment evidence Are based on Alberta curriculum Some Performance Assessments are for Members Only, while others are open to everyone. Create Your Own Performance Tasks Check out "Developing a Performance Assessment Task" to guide you through ...

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An explanation on the benefits and importance of specific feedback compared to general praise.

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Sponsored by Stash101.

While we go about our days interacting with students, we're constantly watching the things they do and oftentimes, we feel the urge to give them some sort of feedback. Some of the most powerful feedback is the positive kind. Positive feedback helps students know they're on the right track. It helps push them to keep going.

The thing is, not all praise is created equal. When we say something generic like "good job," it might make the student feel good, but that's about it, because the student doesn't know exactly what they did right. They might be able to guess, but they don't know for sure. And if you say "good job" to an entire class? Then no one really knows what they did well. These kinds of compliments don't really do any significant damage, and it could be argued that they're better than nothing, but we could be doing so much better.

What has a lot more impact is specific praise given to individual people.

Suppose Nathan is a student who tends to get off track easily in class and usually needs to be redirected several times every class period to get back to work. One day you give students an assignment and he starts right away, staying on task for ten full minutes without looking around, getting out of his seat, or striking up a conversation with a neighbor. If you just walked by and said, "Good job, Nathan," that's not going to be nearly as powerful as saying "You're really sticking with your work today, Nathan," or even "Great focus this morning, Nathan." This tells him what he's doing right and encourages him to keep going.

Here are some other examples of specific praise:

For a student who struggles with organization: "Looks like you got all your papers hole-punched and in the rings."

For a student who often turns work in late: "You submitted your assignment an hour before the deadline last night."

For a student who tends to get easily frustrated with math: "Awesome-you went back to those two really challenging problems and tried again. Way to stick with it."

By the way, there's nothing inherently wrong with phrases like Good job or Nice work, so adding them on to specific compliments is perfectly fine. Just try to get the specifics in there, too.

A couple more tips about praise:

Praise the behavior, not the person. Saying something like "You're such a talented writer" contributes to a fixed mindset. A compliment like "You used some pretty advanced writing techniques in this piece" focuses on what the student did-which is under the student's control-not on some trait they happened to be born with.

Focus praise on effort, not outcome. The student can't control the outcome, but they can control how much effort they put in, so instead of saying "You got the highest score!!" say, "You worked so hard on this!"

Praise privately. As students get older, public praise can become much less desirable for most students, because it can draw attention to them in ways they may not want, so deliver your praise in one-on-one conversations.

Don't overdo it. Being overly effusive with your praise can come off as insincere, so for best results, go for a sincere, direct, pleasant demeanor, rather than running laps of joy around the parking lot.

See all EduTips here.

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EduTip 11: Replace general praise with something specific.

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Sponsored by Stash101 . While we go about our days interacting with students, we're constantly watching the things they do and oftentimes, we feel the urge to give them some sort of feedback. Some of the most powerful feedback is the positive kind. Positive feedback helps students know they're on the right track.

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Part 2 of a 2 part series detailing the importance of lesson design.

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Grant Wiggins - Understanding by Design (2 of 2)

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A short interview detailing the importance of formative assessment and feedback in the classroom.

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This is part 1 of a 2 part video series which shows different techniques on how to provide descriptive feedback to students.

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Descriptive Feedback Techniques Part 1 with Rick Wormeli

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This is part 2 of a 2-part video series which shows different techniques on how to provide descriptive feedback to students.

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Descriptive Feedback Techniques Part 2 with Rick Wormeli

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This video gives a presentation on creating questions that will engage students in higher order thinking.

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Writing Quiz Questions That Require Higher Order Thinking

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This blog post gives an extensive list of report card comments that can be adapted to fit your students.

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Just about every teacher agrees: report card comments are important to provide insights and next steps to students and families. But there are few who actually look forward to writing them.

Why?

Because every instructor knows working under tight deadlines to create upwards of 20 unique and detailed reports at the end of the year or term isn't exactly straightforward (or particularly fun). That's especially true in the era of distance learning.

And while no one at your school knows your students better than you do, writing valuable report card comments for each of them can be a huge challenge.

That's why we created a list of 107 sample report card comments - starters to help you find ideas, inspiration, and insights while writing your own report cards.

The 107 report card comments in this list will help you:

Instill a growth mindset in students

Build stronger home-to-school connections

Write stronger leads and use livelier language

Choose the right phrasing when writing positive and constructive report card comments

Report card comment starters

You'll notice that the report card comments below can act as a springboard for more fully developed ones. But don't worry, using them you'll be able to take some of these one-liners and turn them into insightful and actionable next steps!

For example, you'll be able to take a 1st grade number sense comment like "Your child is able to add and subtract numbers up to 20 using various manipulatives" and transform it into:

Or taking a responsibility-related learning skill comment from "Your child is able to take responsibility for her own actions both in and out of the classroom" to:

Notice the difference?

Compared to a single number or letter grade, report card comments can provide even more value to your students and their families. In other words, a number or letter or grade captures the what, while an accompanying comment captures the how.

Depending on the age group or grade level you teach, a letter or grade letter might be enough. However, research in Phi Delta Kappan, the professional journal for educators, suggests:

Learning skills (positive comments)

________ is confident, positive and a great role model for his/her classmates.

________ is frequently among the first to help and mentor other classmates. He/she is a valuable part of the classroom.

________ has shown excellent ability to set goals and be persistent in achieving them.

________ is interested in his/her own learning, listens attentively, and makes a solid effort to avoid distractions that could interrupt the learning process.

________ is accountable and responsible. He/she makes smart decisions, admits mistakes and listens to opportunities to improve.

________ relates well to classmates and is appreciative of different perspectives and experiences.

________ manages his/her emotions maturely and responds to feedback appropriately.

________ always looks for ways to be helpful in the classroom.

________ is dependable and reliable, follows directions effectively, and follows through on his/her commitments to him/herself and others.

________ is thoughtful, insightful and thorough in written and verbal communication, and has a talent for expressing his/her ideas clearly.

________ works well with classmates in group work and often takes a leadership role.

________ shows a positive attitude with classmates in group projects and activities, and both takes and gives suggestions and directions effectively.

________ shows maturity when solving problems with classmates and uses good communication.

________ excels at applying what he/she learns in the classroom to real-world and real-life situations.

It has been a pleasure to have _______'s enthusiasm, positivity and maturity in my class.

________ is an enthusiastic member of the class and shows a willingness to learn.

________ shows responsible behavior, works well with a group and shows appreciation for the efforts of classmates.

________ is focused during classroom activities and willingly participated in class discussions.

________ performs independent work with confidence and focus.

________ works independently and takes pride in work done well.

________ is focused in class and willingly participates in group discussion.

________ is very conscientious and shows excellent effort and care with daily work.

________ demonstrates a willing and conscientious effort in his/her daily work.

________ shows a conscientious effort to learn.

________ has done a great job facing and overcoming big challenges this year. Please continue to nurture and encourage this behavior over the summer.

________ shows responsibility and follows directions whenever they are given.

________ listens to and follows directions precisely and attentively.

________ follows directions promptly and accurately.

________ is an active participant in class.

________ is a hard worker who calmly perseveres through challenging topics.

Learning skills (needs improvement)

________ is encouraged to demonstrate more responsible attitudes and behavior in the classroom.

________ needs to show more appropriate behavior when interacting with classmates.

________ needs to pay attention to the use of appropriate language at all times

________ requires encouragement to listen attentively during group sharing times.

________ needs to listen to directions more attentively during lessons.

________ would benefit from showing a greater desire to contribute ideas in class.

________ needs frequent reminders to be attentive during instructions and lessons.

________ needs to improve his/her cooperation in group settings. He/she should work on voicing feelings and opinions and listening to others.

________ needs to improve his/her work with others. He/she must ensure to accept a share of the work when participating in a group assignment.

________ needs to improve on working independently and be sure to ask for assistance only when it is needed.

________ often struggles to focus in class, which harms his/her ability to engage well with class activities and assignments.

________ is encouraged to use time wisely to finish tasks in the time required.

________ is encouraged to be more responsible in completing tasks without needing regular reminders.

________ needs to show by the quality of work and use of class time that he/she is properly engaged in the learning process.

________ consistently needs reminders to focus on time management.

________ needs to follow classroom rules more closely throughout the school day.

Math (general comments)

________ is having considerable difficulty with math. I recommend he/she work on studying ________ and ________. This extra practice will help him/her feel more relaxed when doing math in the classroom. Please contact me if you need materials to get him/her started.

________ has a good understanding of all math concepts taught so far this year. He/she continues to turn in excellent assignments and especially enjoys hands-on math activities.

________ has a positive attitude towards math but continues to have trouble in a few key areas. He should practice every evening at home. Areas that need extra attention are ________ and ________ .

________ demonstrates a good understanding of all math concepts studied and communicates with clarity and good justification of reasoning.

________ needs to work on increasing his/her speed in math facts. He/she should continue with daily practice with a focus on addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.

________ seems to need continuous encouragement in math. He/she continues to struggle with basic math concepts for his/her grade level.

________ is having a difficult time in certain areas of math. Areas in need of extra work are ________ . Working on these problem areas every night would help improve his/her learning outcomes.

________ is struggling to keep up in math. He/she could benefit from practicing the multiplication table and should also continue to practice the long division process.

________ is easily distracted during math lessons and behavioral issues are interfering with his/her learning. We will be working on more difficult subjects and he/she will struggle if he/she does not pay attention in class.

________ is having trouble with math tests. He/she does well on assignments, but does not seem to retain information for tests. I always give a week's notice before tests, so please be sure ________ studies and adequately prepares for them as they approach.

Addition and subtraction

Skip counting

Place value

Comparing numbers

Addition with regrouping

Word problems (math)

________ is able to complete word problems using one- and two-digit addition, showing his/her work and writing a full sentence answer.

________ is becoming more confident in his/her ability to complete word problems using one- and two-digit addition, showing his/her work and writing a full sentence answer.

As we move into language and literacy, the following sections include starter report card comments which cover reading, writing, oral communication and critical thinking skills.

Language arts (general)

________ 's (comprehension, spelling, reading) has greatly improved, but he/she still needs extra work in (comprehension, spelling, reading). Please contact me if you need supplemental learning materials to use at home for practice.

________ is conscious of putting care into his/her daily writing work, and frequently goes beyond the minimum requirements for assignments.

________ has trouble with his handwriting. I believe he/she can form letters well, but has to slow down and take a little more time. Neater handwriting will improve his/her schoolwork overall.

________ makes a good effort to make his/her handwriting legible. He/she is able to print on the lines, use good spacing, and form letters correctly.

________ needs to focus on her spelling. More improvement is needed in the areas of (dictation, weekly spelling tests, sentence structure). Daily practice at home will help improve his/her results.

________ shows the ability to quickly use spelling, punctuation and grammar rules that were recently taught. He/she is able to quickly learn new skills and is eager to apply them to his/her writing.

________ is having considerable difficulty with reading, particularly with fluency and comprehension.

________ speaks well in front of the class, but requires improvement in written language. He/she is having trouble with (dictation, copying words correctly, story writing, creating logical sequences). Further practice is needed in this area.

________ continues to make excellent progress in spelling and reading. He/she works hard to submit work that is free of grammatical errors.

________ has difficulty remembering previously discussed writing skills and often makes errors with punctuation, grammar, and overall sentence structure. Basic writing skills need improvement.

Reading responses

Reading comprehension

________ shows good ability when completing reading comprehension tests.

________ would benefit from extra practice with reading aloud and discussion of content.

________ consistently demonstrates comprehension of short spoken texts by answering questions, and explaining the events described.

________ consistently reads grade-level material independently.

________ uses good editing skills and correctly places capitals, quotation marks, question marks, apostrophes, commas, and periods.

________ is doing a good job of breaking a story into paragraphs

________ determines various forms of writing and identifies important ideas through the development of insightful questions and answers.

________ is able to analyze character actions, story plots, and shows strong fluency with reading.

Response journal

Note taking

________ shows an excellent understanding of note taking from lectures and readings in preparation for tests and assignments.

________ requires ongoing support to develop an understanding of note taking from lectures and readings in preparation for tests.

Distance learning

________ was very engaged and focused during distance learning activities, and participated in class discussions.

________ stayed motivated to complete assignments during distance learning, and turned in all required materials on time.

________ needed some extra prompting to stay engaged during online lessons, but participated well in discussions when called upon.

________ modeled good online learning behavior for other students.

________ was disruptive during online learning and did not meaningfully participate in class discussions.

________ handled technical problems well and was always prepared.

Although he/she couldn't always access a device, _________ consistently completed online assignments and asked thoughtful questions.

________ should ask more questions during online discussions to avoid confusion later.

________'s attendance during online lessons was infrequent and assignments were not always completed.

________ worked well independently and in a group setting during distance learning activities.

________ is excellent at completing distance learning activities independently, but struggled to engage with his/her classmates during breakout sessions or class discussions.

________ is a technology superstar! He/she rarely needed assistance and even helped other classmates troubleshoot issues.

________ asks good questions and always reaches out proactively when he/she needs help with an assignment or lesson.

Tips for teachers to write more effective student report card comments

1. Give yourself extra time and start writing comments early

Somewhere around the halfway point to your deadline for report cards, you make your best effort to use time at the end of each week to reflect - and jot down notes - about your students' performance and class week.

What are their strengths and weaknesses? How are their social skills developing with classmates? How is their class participation - are they an enthusiastic learner? Have they shown great improvement in one particular subject area? Are homework assignments getting done? Have any new challenges come up that affect learning?

Even just a few minutes of note-taking in the weeks preceding report card deadlines will help to ease your stress when the time comes to write your final comments.

Moreover, having a dated log of information detailed throughout the school year will help you remember how students are performing throughout each week, which can be valuable information come parent-teacher conference time.

This will also help to engage and reassure parents who want relevant and detailed commentary about their child's performance at school.

2. Use free, curriculum-aligned apps for teachers

Use Prodigy to write insightful report cards with a minimum of hassle. Prodigy Math is an engaging math adventure for students where success depends on correctly answering adaptive math questions.

As students play, you'll get insights into:

Use one of Prodigy's eight reports to track student progress throughout the year. When the time comes to write report card comments, you'll have detailed reports on all your students' achievements.

Just getting started with Prodigy? No problem! The first time students explore the world of Prodigy Math, they'll start completing the Placement Test - without even knowing. Once they're done, you'll have a snapshot of the grade level they're at, what they know and specific skills they still need to work on.

Spend more time teaching and less time grading

Prep for standardized tests, deliver adaptive skill practice or test students on a new skill - all while they play Prodigy Math, Prodigy English, or both!

3. Be encouraging, informational and professional

Although every report card cannot be glowingly positive, do strive to write in an encouraging and informational tone. As you write constructive report card comments, use encouraging language that focuses on the student's opportunity for improvement.

For example, instead of describing a student struggling with listening as a "bad listener," remark that the student "would benefit from listening more carefully."

If appropriate, frame a negative comment in terms of what students are doing well -- and consider how this more successful characteristic can help them bolster performance in other areas.

4. Use a consistent format

Lead your report card comments with the positive comments, followed by areas that need more attention.

Choosing the right format for reporting information will simplify the entire process, while resulting in a clearer and more organized final product.

If you are unclear about your school's format for report cards, request samples or consult with other teachers or staff members to clarify.

Being open and honest about a student's performance requires tact and consideration with regard to how you express those comments. Be transparent, and remain mindful that your goal is to improve your students' learning experience.

Openness and honesty are key to ensuring that experience is the best it can be. If possible, discuss what intervention strategies you can use to help improve the student's learning outcomes.

As elementary teacher Donna Donaghue remarks in her book A Guide for Beginning Elementary Teachers: Getting Hired and Staying Inspired:

6. Move on if you get stuck

If you get stuck completing the comments for a particular student, move on to your other students and return to it later. You will likely have more trouble completing comments for students who have multiple areas needing further improvement and attention.

Feel free to move on and return to those students periodically or as you find the right language to express your insights.

7. Keep parents and guardians in mind

While every report card comment is ultimately about your student, think of your students' parents or guardians as much as possible and offer suggestions for their participation.

In fact, if you can, keep parents up to date on an ongoing basis. This will help ensure they don't get caught off guard by any of your comments.

As you make note of your students' strengths and weaknesses, endeavor to include practical insights into how parents can involve and support their child at home. If possible, make reference to how you use differentiated instruction to support the student in question.

Simple examples of tips for parents include:

"Encourage your child to read. It doesn't have to be on your own either. Dedicating time before bed to read together can help make it seem like less of a chore."

"Find homework help for your child if needed. Myself and other parents who are also getting homework help for their child are great resources to get started."

"Ensure that your child completes their homework by creating a homework routine with your family where incentives like TV or computer time come after homework."

"Help your child with organization skills at home. If a room in your house could be tidier, try using that as an opportunity to sort things like toys or dishes and utensils."

"Help your child prepare for math tests by focusing their skills in addition and subtraction. If they don't like studying with traditional worksheets, try a digital game-based learning tool to help get them excited about the process."

As high school educator and teaching comprehension expert Anne Goudvis writes in her book Strategies That Work:

8. Try not to repeat yourself

It is unlikely that your students or parents will compare their report card comments, but it is still a best practice to aim for unique commentary for each student that reflects each, individual learning outcome.

9. Proofread, even if you don't want to

Report card time is perhaps your busiest period of the year, and it is understandable that you want to simply get them over with.

Despite this, you should make sure to double check all your comments before hitting print and handing them out. All your communications to parents are a reflection of you as a teacher, and should mirror the care and attention you show your students in class.

10. Notify parents

Make use of your school's parent portal or email system to let parents know - as needed - that report card time is coming up.

This will help parents be prepared, and will also ensure that any important questions they may have are addressed before the final report cards are delivered.

Did you know?

If you're using Prodigy Math in your classroom, you can connect parents to follow their child's progress. A free parent account comes with a monthly report card and insights into classroom learning, helping them stay informed of how their child is doing in class. They can also send their child an encouraging message to cheer their child on as they play and practice skills in Prodigy!

11. Use specific examples with the help of direct observation

Record and use classroom anecdotes in your assessments. No matter how involved you are in your students' progress, it can still be difficult to produce specific examples related to their performance if you haven't recorded them along the way.

When you notice a positive or negative skill, ability, strength, or weakness in a class activity or assignment, be sure to note it down so that you may refer to it in your report card comments. Likewise, consider noting a sample of a student's work every week or two.

To help with ease of access, keep ongoing files of this work in a personal folder or use a digital tool such as a Google Doc.

Putting this into practice is a time-saver and helps prevent last-minute stress. A strategy like direct observation and note-taking (as soon as possible) is far more reliable than trying to recall information and behaviors from weeks or months prior.

12. Try using tech to help

Writer's block happens to all of us, including teachers. If the report card comments in this article didn't help, fear not, there are still plenty of tools and resources to give you a helping hand.

One new option for teachers is using artificial intelligence (AI) to assist with report card ideas. For example, teachers can use tools like ChatGPT to generate examples for their specific needs.

When using chat technology, try to keep your prompt concise and easy to follow. A good template prompt to follow is:
"Write [number] report card comments for students studying [subject] in [grade]."
Here are some more specific examples to help get you started:

Alternatively, you can use spreadsheets and report card builders to manually piece together a report card based on a template of comments.

Important tip: When using AI chat technology, make sure you don't submit any personal details about you or your students. Instead let the tool use a placeholder like "Student".

Key considerations for report card comments at the end of the year

Report card comments should aim to deliver feedback to students and parents that is personalized, detailed, and meaningful.

Writing report card comments doesn't have to be stressful. Use these strategies to create livelier, more meaningful evaluations.

Effective report card comments emphasize and discuss: Effective report card comments are personalized - customized to each, individual student - and discuss:

The student's learning preferences, willingness to learn, and interests

Detailed evidence of learning or skill-development gathered from in-class observations, and/or student assignments

Effective report card comments are expressed with clear and simple phrasing, using:

An encouraging and/or positive tone

Language that is easy to understand for both students and parents, as opposed to educational jargon used from the curriculum

Report Card Comments: Final Thoughts

Common Sense Education observes that "effective parent communication is crucial in helping students learn. But, for busy teachers it can be challenging just to keep up... Transparency and equity are key to managing any communication between home and school."

Personalized report card comments that are clear, precise, and meaningful are essential for informing students and their parents about what students have learned, what their strengths are and how they can effectively progress.

Among the pressure and deadlines of writing report cards, it can be helpful to keep these key goals in mind.

Get inspired by the report card comment examples - and strategies for success - above to ensure that precision, clarity, and meaning shine through in your report card comments.

When it comes time to hand out your report cards, you can do so with the full confidence that you are doing yourself - and each of your students - the justice your hard work deserves.

Gather student insights on Prodigy

Create or log in to your free teacher account on Prodigy - a standards-aligned, game-based learning platform that assesses student progress and performance as they play. Use Prodigy to motivate student learning, control the questions they answer as they play and collect student learning insights all year long.

Sign up for your free teacher account today!

Just about every teacher agrees: report card comments are important to provide insights and next steps to students and families. But there are few who actually look forward to writing them.

Why?

Because every instructor knows working under tight deadlines to create upwards of 20 unique and detailed reports at the end of the year or term isn't exactly straightforward (or particularly fun). That's especially true in the era of distance learning.

And while no one at your school knows your students better than you do, writing valuable report card comments for each of them can be a huge challenge.

That's why we created a list of 107 sample report card comments - starters to help you find ideas, inspiration, and insights while writing your own report cards.

The 107 report card comments in this list will help you:

Instill a growth mindset in students

Build stronger home-to-school connections

Write stronger leads and use livelier language

Choose the right phrasing when writing positive and constructive report card comments

Report card comment starters

You'll notice that the report card comments below can act as a springboard for more fully developed ones. But don't worry, using them you'll be able to take some of these one-liners and turn them into insightful and actionable next steps!

For example, you'll be able to take a 1st grade number sense comment like "Your child is able to add and subtract numbers up to 20 using various manipulatives" and transform it into:

Or taking a responsibility-related learning skill comment from "Your child is able to take responsibility for her own actions both in and out of the classroom" to:

Notice the difference?

Compared to a single number or letter grade, report card comments can provide even more value to your students and their families. In other words, a number or letter or grade captures the what, while an accompanying comment captures the how.

Depending on the age group or grade level you teach, a letter or grade letter might be enough. However, research in Phi Delta Kappan, the professional journal for educators, suggests:

Learning skills (positive comments)

________ is confident, positive and a great role model for his/her classmates.

________ is frequently among the first to help and mentor other classmates. He/she is a valuable part of the classroom.

________ has shown excellent ability to set goals and be persistent in achieving them.

________ is interested in his/her own learning, listens attentively, and makes a solid effort to avoid distractions that could interrupt the learning process.

________ is accountable and responsible. He/she makes smart decisions, admits mistakes and listens to opportunities to improve.

________ relates well to classmates and is appreciative of different perspectives and experiences.

________ manages his/her emotions maturely and responds to feedback appropriately.

________ always looks for ways to be helpful in the classroom.

________ is dependable and reliable, follows directions effectively, and follows through on his/her commitments to him/herself and others.

________ is thoughtful, insightful and thorough in written and verbal communication, and has a talent for expressing his/her ideas clearly.

________ works well with classmates in group work and often takes a leadership role.

________ shows a positive attitude with classmates in group projects and activities, and both takes and gives suggestions and directions effectively.

________ shows maturity when solving problems with classmates and uses good communication.

________ excels at applying what he/she learns in the classroom to real-world and real-life situations.

It has been a pleasure to have _______'s enthusiasm, positivity and maturity in my class.

________ is an enthusiastic member of the class and shows a willingness to learn.

________ shows responsible behavior, works well with a group and shows appreciation for the efforts of classmates.

________ is focused during classroom activities and willingly participated in class discussions.

________ performs independent work with confidence and focus.

________ works independently and takes pride in work done well.

________ is focused in class and willingly participates in group discussion.

________ is very conscientious and shows excellent effort and care with daily work.

________ demonstrates a willing and conscientious effort in his/her daily work.

________ shows a conscientious effort to learn.

________ has done a great job facing and overcoming big challenges this year. Please continue to nurture and encourage this behavior over the summer.

________ shows responsibility and follows directions whenever they are given.

________ listens to and follows directions precisely and attentively.

________ follows directions promptly and accurately.

________ is an active participant in class.

________ is a hard worker who calmly perseveres through challenging topics.

Learning skills (needs improvement)

________ is encouraged to demonstrate more responsible attitudes and behavior in the classroom.

________ needs to show more appropriate behavior when interacting with classmates.

________ needs to pay attention to the use of appropriate language at all times

________ requires encouragement to listen attentively during group sharing times.

________ needs to listen to directions more attentively during lessons.

________ would benefit from showing a greater desire to contribute ideas in class.

________ needs frequent reminders to be attentive during instructions and lessons.

________ needs to improve his/her cooperation in group settings. He/she should work on voicing feelings and opinions and listening to others.

________ needs to improve his/her work with others. He/she must ensure to accept a share of the work when participating in a group assignment.

________ needs to improve on working independently and be sure to ask for assistance only when it is needed.

________ often struggles to focus in class, which harms his/her ability to engage well with class activities and assignments.

________ is encouraged to use time wisely to finish tasks in the time required.

________ is encouraged to be more responsible in completing tasks without needing regular reminders.

________ needs to show by the quality of work and use of class time that he/she is properly engaged in the learning process.

________ consistently needs reminders to focus on time management.

________ needs to follow classroom rules more closely throughout the school day.

Math (general comments)

________ is having considerable difficulty with math. I recommend he/she work on studying ________ and ________. This extra practice will help him/her feel more relaxed when doing math in the classroom. Please contact me if you need materials to get him/her started.

________ has a good understanding of all math concepts taught so far this year. He/she continues to turn in excellent assignments and especially enjoys hands-on math activities.

________ has a positive attitude towards math but continues to have trouble in a few key areas. He should practice every evening at home. Areas that need extra attention are ________ and ________ .

________ demonstrates a good understanding of all math concepts studied and communicates with clarity and good justification of reasoning.

________ needs to work on increasing his/her speed in math facts. He/she should continue with daily practice with a focus on addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.

________ seems to need continuous encouragement in math. He/she continues to struggle with basic math concepts for his/her grade level.

________ is having a difficult time in certain areas of math. Areas in need of extra work are ________ . Working on these problem areas every night would help improve his/her learning outcomes.

________ is struggling to keep up in math. He/she could benefit from practicing the multiplication table and should also continue to practice the long division process.

________ is easily distracted during math lessons and behavioral issues are interfering with his/her learning. We will be working on more difficult subjects and he/she will struggle if he/she does not pay attention in class.

________ is having trouble with math tests. He/she does well on assignments, but does not seem to retain information for tests. I always give a week's notice before tests, so please be sure ________ studies and adequately prepares for them as they approach.

Addition and subtraction

Skip counting

Place value

Comparing numbers

Addition with regrouping

Word problems (math)

________ is able to complete word problems using one- and two-digit addition, showing his/her work and writing a full sentence answer.

________ is becoming more confident in his/her ability to complete word problems using one- and two-digit addition, showing his/her work and writing a full sentence answer.

As we move into language and literacy, the following sections include starter report card comments which cover reading, writing, oral communication and critical thinking skills.

Language arts (general)

________ 's (comprehension, spelling, reading) has greatly improved, but he/she still needs extra work in (comprehension, spelling, reading). Please contact me if you need supplemental learning materials to use at home for practice.

________ is conscious of putting care into his/her daily writing work, and frequently goes beyond the minimum requirements for assignments.

________ has trouble with his handwriting. I believe he/she can form letters well, but has to slow down and take a little more time. Neater handwriting will improve his/her schoolwork overall.

________ makes a good effort to make his/her handwriting legible. He/she is able to print on the lines, use good spacing, and form letters correctly.

________ needs to focus on her spelling. More improvement is needed in the areas of (dictation, weekly spelling tests, sentence structure). Daily practice at home will help improve his/her results.

________ shows the ability to quickly use spelling, punctuation and grammar rules that were recently taught. He/she is able to quickly learn new skills and is eager to apply them to his/her writing.

________ is having considerable difficulty with reading, particularly with fluency and comprehension.

________ speaks well in front of the class, but requires improvement in written language. He/she is having trouble with (dictation, copying words correctly, story writing, creating logical sequences). Further practice is needed in this area.

________ continues to make excellent progress in spelling and reading. He/she works hard to submit work that is free of grammatical errors.

________ has difficulty remembering previously discussed writing skills and often makes errors with punctuation, grammar, and overall sentence structure. Basic writing skills need improvement.

Reading responses

Reading comprehension

________ shows good ability when completing reading comprehension tests.

________ would benefit from extra practice with reading aloud and discussion of content.

________ consistently demonstrates comprehension of short spoken texts by answering questions, and explaining the events described.

________ consistently reads grade-level material independently.

________ uses good editing skills and correctly places capitals, quotation marks, question marks, apostrophes, commas, and periods.

________ is doing a good job of breaking a story into paragraphs

________ determines various forms of writing and identifies important ideas through the development of insightful questions and answers.

________ is able to analyze character actions, story plots, and shows strong fluency with reading.

Response journal

Note taking

________ shows an excellent understanding of note taking from lectures and readings in preparation for tests and assignments.

________ requires ongoing support to develop an understanding of note taking from lectures and readings in preparation for tests.

Distance learning

________ was very engaged and focused during distance learning activities, and participated in class discussions.

________ stayed motivated to complete assignments during distance learning, and turned in all required materials on time.

________ needed some extra prompting to stay engaged during online lessons, but participated well in discussions when called upon.

________ modeled good online learning behavior for other students.

________ was disruptive during online learning and did not meaningfully participate in class discussions.

________ handled technical problems well and was always prepared.

Although he/she couldn't always access a device, _________ consistently completed online assignments and asked thoughtful questions.

________ should ask more questions during online discussions to avoid confusion later.

________'s attendance during online lessons was infrequent and assignments were not always completed.

________ worked well independently and in a group setting during distance learning activities.

________ is excellent at completing distance learning activities independently, but struggled to engage with his/her classmates during breakout sessions or class discussions.

________ is a technology superstar! He/she rarely needed assistance and even helped other classmates troubleshoot issues.

________ asks good questions and always reaches out proactively when he/she needs help with an assignment or lesson.

Tips for teachers to write more effective student report card comments

1. Give yourself extra time and start writing comments early

Somewhere around the halfway point to your deadline for report cards, you make your best effort to use time at the end of each week to reflect - and jot down notes - about your students' performance and class week.

What are their strengths and weaknesses? How are their social skills developing with classmates? How is their class participation - are they an enthusiastic learner? Have they shown great improvement in one particular subject area? Are homework assignments getting done? Have any new challenges come up that affect learning?

Even just a few minutes of note-taking in the weeks preceding report card deadlines will help to ease your stress when the time comes to write your final comments.

Moreover, having a dated log of information detailed throughout the school year will help you remember how students are performing throughout each week, which can be valuable information come parent-teacher conference time.

This will also help to engage and reassure parents who want relevant and detailed commentary about their child's performance at school.

2. Use free, curriculum-aligned apps for teachers

Use Prodigy to write insightful report cards with a minimum of hassle. Prodigy Math is an engaging math adventure for students where success depends on correctly answering adaptive math questions.

As students play, you'll get insights into:

Use one of Prodigy's eight reports to track student progress throughout the year. When the time comes to write report card comments, you'll have detailed reports on all your students' achievements.

Just getting started with Prodigy? No problem! The first time students explore the world of Prodigy Math, they'll start completing the Placement Test - without even knowing. Once they're done, you'll have a snapshot of the grade level they're at, what they know and specific skills they still need to work on.

Spend more time teaching and less time grading

Prep for standardized tests, deliver adaptive skill practice or test students on a new skill - all while they play Prodigy Math, Prodigy English, or both!

3. Be encouraging, informational and professional

Although every report card cannot be glowingly positive, do strive to write in an encouraging and informational tone. As you write constructive report card comments, use encouraging language that focuses on the student's opportunity for improvement.

For example, instead of describing a student struggling with listening as a "bad listener," remark that the student "would benefit from listening more carefully."

If appropriate, frame a negative comment in terms of what students are doing well -- and consider how this more successful characteristic can help them bolster performance in other areas.

4. Use a consistent format

Lead your report card comments with the positive comments, followed by areas that need more attention.

Choosing the right format for reporting information will simplify the entire process, while resulting in a clearer and more organized final product.

If you are unclear about your school's format for report cards, request samples or consult with other teachers or staff members to clarify.

Being open and honest about a student's performance requires tact and consideration with regard to how you express those comments. Be transparent, and remain mindful that your goal is to improve your students' learning experience.

Openness and honesty are key to ensuring that experience is the best it can be. If possible, discuss what intervention strategies you can use to help improve the student's learning outcomes.

As elementary teacher Donna Donaghue remarks in her book A Guide for Beginning Elementary Teachers: Getting Hired and Staying Inspired:

6. Move on if you get stuck

If you get stuck completing the comments for a particular student, move on to your other students and return to it later. You will likely have more trouble completing comments for students who have multiple areas needing further improvement and attention.

Feel free to move on and return to those students periodically or as you find the right language to express your insights.

7. Keep parents and guardians in mind

While every report card comment is ultimately about your student, think of your students' parents or guardians as much as possible and offer suggestions for their participation.

In fact, if you can, keep parents up to date on an ongoing basis. This will help ensure they don't get caught off guard by any of your comments.

As you make note of your students' strengths and weaknesses, endeavor to include practical insights into how parents can involve and support their child at home. If possible, make reference to how you use differentiated instruction to support the student in question.

Simple examples of tips for parents include:

"Encourage your child to read. It doesn't have to be on your own either. Dedicating time before bed to read together can help make it seem like less of a chore."

"Find homework help for your child if needed. Myself and other parents who are also getting homework help for their child are great resources to get started."

"Ensure that your child completes their homework by creating a homework routine with your family where incentives like TV or computer time come after homework."

"Help your child with organization skills at home. If a room in your house could be tidier, try using that as an opportunity to sort things like toys or dishes and utensils."

"Help your child prepare for math tests by focusing their skills in addition and subtraction. If they don't like studying with traditional worksheets, try a digital game-based learning tool to help get them excited about the process."

As high school educator and teaching comprehension expert Anne Goudvis writes in her book Strategies That Work:

8. Try not to repeat yourself

It is unlikely that your students or parents will compare their report card comments, but it is still a best practice to aim for unique commentary for each student that reflects each, individual learning outcome.

9. Proofread, even if you don't want to

Report card time is perhaps your busiest period of the year, and it is understandable that you want to simply get them over with.

Despite this, you should make sure to double check all your comments before hitting print and handing them out. All your communications to parents are a reflection of you as a teacher, and should mirror the care and attention you show your students in class.

10. Notify parents

Make use of your school's parent portal or email system to let parents know - as needed - that report card time is coming up.

This will help parents be prepared, and will also ensure that any important questions they may have are addressed before the final report cards are delivered.

Did you know?

If you're using Prodigy Math in your classroom, you can connect parents to follow their child's progress. A free parent account comes with a monthly report card and insights into classroom learning, helping them stay informed of how their child is doing in class. They can also send their child an encouraging message to cheer their child on as they play and practice skills in Prodigy!

11. Use specific examples with the help of direct observation

Record and use classroom anecdotes in your assessments. No matter how involved you are in your students' progress, it can still be difficult to produce specific examples related to their performance if you haven't recorded them along the way.

When you notice a positive or negative skill, ability, strength, or weakness in a class activity or assignment, be sure to note it down so that you may refer to it in your report card comments. Likewise, consider noting a sample of a student's work every week or two.

To help with ease of access, keep ongoing files of this work in a personal folder or use a digital tool such as a Google Doc.

Putting this into practice is a time-saver and helps prevent last-minute stress. A strategy like direct observation and note-taking (as soon as possible) is far more reliable than trying to recall information and behaviors from weeks or months prior.

12. Try using tech to help

Writer's block happens to all of us, including teachers. If the report card comments in this article didn't help, fear not, there are still plenty of tools and resources to give you a helping hand.

One new option for teachers is using artificial intelligence (AI) to assist with report card ideas. For example, teachers can use tools like ChatGPT to generate examples for their specific needs.

When using chat technology, try to keep your prompt concise and easy to follow. A good template prompt to follow is:
"Write [number] report card comments for students studying [subject] in [grade]."
Here are some more specific examples to help get you started:

Alternatively, you can use spreadsheets and report card builders to manually piece together a report card based on a template of comments.

Important tip: When using AI chat technology, make sure you don't submit any personal details about you or your students. Instead let the tool use a placeholder like "Student".

Key considerations for report card comments at the end of the year

Report card comments should aim to deliver feedback to students and parents that is personalized, detailed, and meaningful.

Writing report card comments doesn't have to be stressful. Use these strategies to create livelier, more meaningful evaluations.

Effective report card comments emphasize and discuss: Effective report card comments are personalized - customized to each, individual student - and discuss:

The student's learning preferences, willingness to learn, and interests

Detailed evidence of learning or skill-development gathered from in-class observations, and/or student assignments

Effective report card comments are expressed with clear and simple phrasing, using:

An encouraging and/or positive tone

Language that is easy to understand for both students and parents, as opposed to educational jargon used from the curriculum

Report Card Comments: Final Thoughts

Common Sense Education observes that "effective parent communication is crucial in helping students learn. But, for busy teachers it can be challenging just to keep up... Transparency and equity are key to managing any communication between home and school."

Personalized report card comments that are clear, precise, and meaningful are essential for informing students and their parents about what students have learned, what their strengths are and how they can effectively progress.

Among the pressure and deadlines of writing report cards, it can be helpful to keep these key goals in mind.

Get inspired by the report card comment examples - and strategies for success - above to ensure that precision, clarity, and meaning shine through in your report card comments.

When it comes time to hand out your report cards, you can do so with the full confidence that you are doing yourself - and each of your students - the justice your hard work deserves.

Gather student insights on Prodigy

Create or log in to your free teacher account on Prodigy - a standards-aligned, game-based learning platform that assesses student progress and performance as they play. Use Prodigy to motivate student learning, control the questions they answer as they play and collect student learning insights all year long.

Sign up for your free teacher account today!

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107 Report Card Comments to Use and Adapt

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This resource will help teachers craft helpful, insightful report card comments at the end of a year or term.

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This essay shows a list of records that should be kept both by teachers and by administrative staff at most schools.

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World's Largest Collection of Essays! Published by Experts

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Again, there are several types of educational records maintained in the form of registers in a school. Some of these include:

(a) Attendance Registers:

As for as possible, only one attendance register should be kept by a teacher. Usually, students' attendance register is maintained by their class-teacher and it maintains a record of students' names with their attendance on every working day.

Great care should be taken to see that attendance is regularly and properly marked. Attendance should be, ideally, marked twice a day, one in the morning or beginning of the school day and the other at the end of the school day.

No blank spaces should be left in the register and no dots in pencil should be marked in it. It should be filled in with ink only. However, one can use some letters to make the process of marking the attendance faster such as 'P' for being present, 'A' for absence, 'S' for sickness and 'L' for leave.

Usually, names of boys and girls are entered separately though it does not serve any specific purpose. For the sake of convenience, students' names should be entered in the register in an alphabetical order. Holidays need to be shown in the attendance register along with the nature of the holiday, e.g. Sunday; Diwali, Christmas etc.

If a student wishes to remain absent, application for leave must be signed by his\her parent or guardian. The application must clearly specify the reason for absence and vague reasons such as 'urgent domestic work' should not be accepted.

In case of absence for a longer duration on account of sickness, a doctor's medical certificate should accompany the application for leave. If a student remains absent for a longer duration i.e. about a week or longer without intimation, the principal should be informed immediately.

At the last day of the month, the total number of working days along with the number of days each student has remained present in school need to be entered in the register in a separate column.

(b) Teachers' Attendance Register:

This is generally kept in the principal or supervisor's office. It should show the time of arrival and departure of a teacher. It should be regularly signed by a teacher twice a day, once when he/she arrives at the school and once at the end of the school day.

Holidays and their nature should be entered in this register. It should also indicate the number and nature of leave taken by teachers such as casual leave, sick leave, leave without pay, duty leave, etc. All applications of leave must be filed in the school office.

In case of medical leave, a doctor's certificate must accompany the leave application. Leave application needs to be sanctioned by the principal.

At the end of each month, the number of days' casual or sick leave taken during the month should be entered in the register. Names of the teachers are usually entered in this register in order of seniority along with their dates of appointment confirmation.

In addition to these two, there are some other records to be maintained by a school. These include:

(c) Records of Time-tables:

(d) Examination Result's Records:

(e) Teachers' Log-book:

It is a record showing details about the daily teaching- learning activities of a teacher. It contains details about the date, class, chapter, objectives of the lesson, teaching points, teacher's activities, students' activities, audio-visual aids used, home-work given to students, students asked question at the time of recapitulation and evaluation of the lessons questions the tests conducted.

It also contains space for supervisor's and principal's remarks, if any, while supervising teacher's lessons in the classroom. This log-book may be in the form of a printed book or loose sheets papers to be kept neatly in a file. Nowadays, instead of a book or sheets of paper, some schools use computers for recording such details.

A Log-book helps in advance planning of weekly teaching-learning activities, in ensuring that teaching of lesson is as per these plans and in maintaining a record for future reference. It is aimed at making daily work of a teacher more systematic and organized.

(f) Conduct Register:

In which the general conduct of all students is recorded. However, if regular progress reports are maintained, such a register may not be kept.

(g) Punishment Register:

In which a record is kept of punishments give by the principal or teachers. However, this register is meant only for serious infractions of rules or misconduct or breaches of discipline.

This register should include name and class of the student, date of misconduct, nature of the breach of discipline, nature of punishment and signature of the principal. All cases entered in this register must be reported to the parents concerned and the date of reporting to parents must be entered in the register.

The principal can also enter in this register, at a later date, his/her remarks concerning the effect of the punishment-positive, negative or indifferent on the student.

(h) Cumulative Records:

The importance of adequate student records cannot be over emphasized as they give assistance to a teacher in improving his/her instructional programme by understanding the make-up of individual student in his or her class better.

Individual development trends and academic achievement patterns become clearly discernible through and cumulative record card. Proper placement and objective scheduling of student is possible through the use of cumulative record cards. The more a teacher knows about his/her student, the greater is his\her interest in their Welfare.

A central cumulative file should be organized by the clerical staff so the teachers are spared from this continuous responsibility of receiving and issuing records to other interested personnel. Cumulative records should be kept up-to-date and absolutely confidential.

A good cumulative record card should contain the following information about each student:

(1) Name in full, date and place of birth, name of the previous school attended and its location.

(2) Photograph of the student, general registration number of the student.

(3) Academic achievement in terms of marks and/or grades obtained from KG class onwards.

(4) Scholastic aptitude test scores, scholastic ability test scores.

(5) Results of personality and interest inventories and aptitude tests.

(6) Home address.

(7) Information about home background, number of family members, siblings, step-parent (if any), languages spoke l, occupation of parents or guardian and his\her office address, family and home relationships.

(8) Attendance data, health record, maturation characteristics, accomplishments and honours, interests and actives, educational and occupational aspirations and other comments.

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8 Types of Educational Records Every School Must Maintain

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Again, there are several types of educational records maintained in the form of registers in a school. Some of these include: (a) Attendance Registers: As for as possible, only one attendance register should be kept by a teacher. Usually, students' attendance register is maintained by their class-teacher and it maintains a record of students' names [...]

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This short video provides helpful tips to keep in mind when creating rubrics.

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This episode talks about how to plan for and use summative assessments in elementary school.

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Summative assessments, planning with high quality texts and leading Year 6...

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Listen to this episode from Thinking Deeply about Primary Education on Spotify. Episode 118: This week on Thinking Deeply about Primary Education, I'm joined by Lloyd Williams-Jones and Christopher Such for a spot of format diversification as we take questions from listeners and do our very best to provide mildly-satisfactory responses.

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This webinar describes the importance of performance assessment and how it can be used to benefit students.

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How a Performance Assessment Shows What Students Know and Can Do

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This video explains the importance of summative assessments and gives examples of them.

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Summative Assessment: Overview & Examples

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This video uses visuals to help describe backwards design and alignment as well as how to use them in the classroom.

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This webinar video explains and demonstrates how to write effective multiple choice questions.

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This is the section on PAT tests to give more information on standardized tests for grades 6 and 9.

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Overview

Provincial Achievement Tests (PATs) are administered annually to all Alberta students in grades 6 and 9. These standardized tests reflect the essentials that all Alberta students are expected to achieve, regardless of school choice or location.

determine if students are learning what they are expected to learn

report to Albertans how well students have achieved provincial standards at given points in their schooling

assist schools, authorities and the province in monitoring and improving student learning

The tests occur in January, May and June for English and Français/French language arts, math, science and social studies.

Some grade 9 students write PATs in January of each year.

Grade 9 achievement tests based on the Knowledge and Employability programs of study in English language arts, math, science and social studies are also administered.

The General Information Bulletin helps support school authorities, school administrators and classroom teachers in implementing the Provincial Achievement Testing Program in their authorities and schools.

PAT Test Schedule for 2018 to 2019 (PDF, 163 KB)

Local performance targets

Each school board in Alberta sets targets for school and board performance in provincial standardized tests.

Evaluating results in the context of these targets can help school boards identify which areas students need more help in to improve learning.

Tips for setting local targets

Consider past performance on each test.

Focus on a limited number of subjects at a time where performance can improve.

Collaborate with teacher colleagues across different grade levels.

Students' performance on tests reflects their learning in all years.

Teachers in all grades can contribute to setting targets.

Use school reports on achievement test results to identify which aspects of a subject need attention.

Focus on what supports students need to succeed instead of focusing on problems.

Expect to set different targets in different grades and subjects depending on past results and current priorities.

Collaborate with other schools to identify areas of common strength or weakness.

Keep students and parents informed and report to them on achievement targets and results.

Provincial tests are a useful tool but only one way to see how well a school is performing.

Schools and boards may also choose to set targets for other measures of student achievement according to their local needs.

Targets can also be set for goals that fall outside of student achievement and reflect local priorities and parent and community involvement.

PAT results

Schools are responsible for sharing preliminary PAT results with parents and guardians.

Every fall, schools receive the official Individual Student Profile (ISPs), which are kept on the students' records in accordance with the Student Record Regulation.

Interpreting results

Careful examination and interpretation of results help educators identify areas of relative strength and weakness in student achievement.

Teachers and administrators can use this information in planning and delivering relevant and effective instruction.

View the guidelines for interpreting achievement tests. (PDF, 31 KB)

PATs are only one of many ways to evaluate student learning and are not meant to replace day-to-day teacher observations and classroom assessment. They are sources of information that must be interpreted, used and communicated within the context of regular and continuous assessment by classroom teachers.

2017 to 2018 PAT highlights

Strengths and areas for improvement varied this year and are only one indicator of student abilities

The percentage of students reaching the acceptable standard is at a 5-year high in English Language Arts 6, Français 6, Science 6, Social Studies 6 and Science 9

Grade 6 math results improved with students performing significantly better on non-calculator questions in 2018 than in 2017

Performance on Grade 6 math problem solving questions improved from the previous year. There is a strong correlation of results on non-calculator questions and problem solving questions

PAT results by school and authority

PAT results are available for each school authority and individual schools.

Search the database to find 5-year reports for each writing period and participation rates for each school and authority or view the documents below:

Key educator resources

The information provided is intended primarily to support school authorities, school administrators and classroom teachers in implementing the Provincial Achievement Testing Program in their authorities and schools.

General resources

PAT forms

Toolkit for staff

Teacher involvement

Parent guide

Quest A+

Quest A+ (access to online practice tests)

Subject area resources

These resources are developed to support classroom teachers in understanding provincial standards in the form of statistical analyses of selected responses, examples of student work, scoring guides and released materials.

Contact

To connect with Student Learning Assessments and Provincial Achievement Testing:

Hours: 8:15 am to 4:30 pm (open Monday to Friday, closed statutory holidays)
Nicole Lamarre, Director, Student Learning Assessments and Provincial Achievement Testing
Phone: 780-427-6204
Email: nicole.lamarre@gov.ab.ca

Address:

Student Learning Assessments and Provincial Achievement Testing
Alberta Education
6th Floor 44 Capital Boulevard
10044 108 Street
Edmonton, Alberta T5J 5E6

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Provincial Achievement Tests (PATs) are administered annually to all Alberta students in grades 6 and 9. These standardized tests reflect the essentials that all Alberta students are expected to achieve, regardless of school choice or location.

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This video describes how rubrics are helpful for both teachers and students, as well as the most effective ways to use them.

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This is a list of appropriate report card comments to be adapted, separated by the skills you may be assessing.

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This Twitter thread provides different opinions on the problems of assessment in the classroom. This provides insight on how to complete assessments by avoiding these issues.

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If you could narrow down your answer to the following question to just one thing, what would you say?

What is the problem with assessment practices in a typical classroom?

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If you could narrow down your answer to the following question to just one thing, what would you say?

What is the problem with assessment practices in a typical classroom?

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If you could narrow down your answer to the following question to just one thing, what would you say?

What is the problem with assessment practices in a typical classroom?
— Tyler Rablin (@Mr_Rablin) January 6, 2022

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If you could narrow down your answer to the following question to just one thing, what would you say?

What is the problem with assessment practices in a typical classroom?

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If you could narrow down your answer to the following question to just one thing, what would you say?

What is the problem with assessment practices in a typical classroom?

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If you could narrow down your answer to the following question to just one thing, what would you say?

What is the problem with assessment practices in a typical classroom?

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This video outlines the purpose of letter grades and grading in general.

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This website is specific to Ontario curriculum, but gives applicable information on the purpose and benefits of report cards at different grade levels.