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Background information is powerful!

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Background information is powerful!

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Background information is powerful!

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Edit the document as relevant to the standardized assessment.

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Edit the document as relevant to the standardized assessment.

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Edit the document as relevant to the standardized assessment.

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Edit the document as relevant to the standardized assessment.

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Edit the document as relevant to the standardized assessment.

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Edit the document as relevant to the standardized assessment

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Contains student data, use discretion.

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Contains student data, use discretion.

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Contains student data, use discretion.

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Contains student data, use discretion.

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Contains student data, use discretion.

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Contains student data, use discretion.

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You may use this spreadsheet to track your students' progress demonstrating the science practices.

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You may use this spreadsheet to track your students' progress demonstrating the social studies practices.

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You may use this spreadsheet to track your students' progress demonstrating the seven habits of mind.

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You may use this spreadsheet to track your students' progress demonstrating the math practices.

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You may use this spreadsheet to track your students' progress demonstrating content practices.

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You may use this spreadsheet to track your students' progress demonstrating ELD practices.

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You may use this worksheet to create FBA/BIP. Does have a glitch in BIP, perhaps IT can have a look, it's late.

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You may use this form to track behavioral data.

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Students may use this to keep track of their learning for the week.

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A great first day worksheet to assess how students think about Science.

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An example of how students can self-report the teaching and learning in their course.

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Google Forms - create and analyze surveys, for free.

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Create a new survey on your own or with others at the same time. Choose from a variety of survey types and analyze results in Google Forms. Free from Google.

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Username: domblue1@gmail.com
Password: Chasez01

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use state released tests in your classroom

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use state released tests in your classroom, online testing, plain paper scanning, NCLB reporting.

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ELA differentiation, ELL, and remediation.
Username: domblue1@gmail.com
Password: Chasez01

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What's Inside

Ready-to-Go Teaching Kits for Every Text

Action opens a world of reading enjoyment and success to your most reluctant readers. Capture their attention with high-interest, multigenre stories featuring real, diverse teens and current, kid-friendly topics.

Plus! Reach every learner with multiple reading levels, videos, audio, and slideshows. Strengthen reading, writing, and thinking skills with motivating ELA activities, questions, and more.
EXPLORE AN ISSUE

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Scholastic Action Magazine | Important Stories Made Accessible

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Scholastic Action magazine has everything you need to boost the reading skills of your students: thrilling articles, step-by-step instruction, and powerful differentiation tools.

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A More Complete Picture of Student Learning

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A More Complete Picture of Student Learning

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Edutopia article.

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At the same time, by naming assessments, we may be falling into a trap of being too rigid. I know that when some teachers name an assessment as summative, they might be wary of changing it to formative. Sometimes our curriculum prescribes these assessments and whether or not they're summative, and we might feel compelled to comply with that direction.

Our current assessments are geared toward reporting on mastery-often what the grade measures-rather than learning. But we could create assessments that value the learning along the way. Such a system would record not just quizzes, tests, written work, and presentations, but also exit tickets, and even conversations between student and teacher.

I think the next step in the conversation around assessment is to be more flexible and to approach assessment of student learning as a photo album or a body of evidence rather than as one or the other of two things, either formative or summative.

It's OK to Be Flexible

At the moment, the terms formative and summative are used to describe the intention of the assessment. Is the intention to check in on what students have learned thus far? Is the intention to reflect on instruction and perhaps change practice? Is the intention to give meaningful feedback to students? Is the intention for students to reflect and set goals? If the answer to these questions is yes, the intention of the assessment is formative. And if the intent is to score, grade, or provide a cumulative evaluation of learning, then the assessment is more likely summative.

It's important to remember that assessments and their purpose can change. If a majority of students are not successful on an assessment that was intended as summative, educators should have the power to make that assessment formative.

And if a student performs at standard on an assessment that was originally intended as formative, educators might choose to use that assessment as summative.

Instead of being rigid, we should be able to change the purpose and use of an assessment in order to meet the needs of our students.

A Photo Album

Imagine that you hired a professional photographer to document an important event in your life. Maybe it's a wedding, a trip, or a religious celebration. After the event, you reach out to that photographer, excited to see the moments that were captured. The photographer instead sends you only one photo-one photo that is supposed to capture all the important memories of the event.

We would never want just one photo of a big life event, and we shouldn't want only one assessment to record our learning journey. Assessment should be more like a photo album, capturing many moments of learning. A photo album captures pictures of people, processes, items, events, and more, just as assessment should. If we treated assessment like a photo album, we'd use a variety of moments to get a better picture of student learning.

A photo album is celebratory and powerful, and assessment should be the same.

A Body of Evidence

As the teachers I work with plan units, I encourage them to not be tied down to rigid structures of assessment. Instead, they should continue to collect a variety of assessments. Students should take their own pictures, so to speak, and propose their own student-generated assessments to balance out ownership of the assessment process and products.

Consider the idea of a body of evidence. When we focus on a body of evidence, we don't have to limit ourselves to a set number of assessments. We can use a variety of assessments to report student learning, from ones that we mandate to ones mandated by our districts to ones generated by our students.

So students might have different numbers of assessments. With some students, we may need more evidence of learning than we do with other students. All students deserve a body of evidence that shows their learning. This approach honors teacher skill and judgment and helps us better know and report on what students have learned.

Here are some questions to reflect upon as we consider this approach to assessment:

How can students generate their own assessment tasks?

Where can I be flexible in using assessments to report on student learning?

Can I use a variety of types of assessment to create an album of student learning?

Can I rely on a body of evidence rather than a set number of assessments?

How can I report on the most current data of my students?

How should I communicate this approach to parents and students?

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A More Complete Picture of Student Learning | Edutopia

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At the same time, by naming assessments, we may be falling into a trap of being too rigid. I know that when some teachers name an assessment as summative, they might be wary of changing it to formative. Sometimes our curriculum prescribes these assessments and whether or not they're summative, and we might feel compelled to comply with that direction.