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How do you inclusively embed assessments into instruction to support student engagement?

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How do you inclusively embed assessments into instruction to support student engagement?

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Validated Learning: Quick Key iOS/Android Quiz & Formative Assessment

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Even if you know all about student engagement, these six tips might be new to you.

Student engagement is a hot topic these days because of its proven impact on graduation rates, school culture, and even academic achievement (although the data on this last one is not as strong one might think). Engagement is good. Engagement is also seen as key to improving student academic achievement. If you are focusing on engagement in order to improve academic achievement, then this article is for you.

This article shows you how you can easily double your impact by promoting engagement with a tool that is also proven to improve student academic achievement in and of itself: frequent in-class assessment for learning. Yes indeed, frequent assessments for learning are powerful tools for student engagement, too. Two birds, one stone. You like this idea? Read on! 🙂

Student engagement promotes lifetime achievement

Both experience and data tell us that - as a rule - engaged students achieve more. It is true for all students. Engagement is as important to fixing low graduation rates as it is to ensuring that high-achieving students stay curious and don't become fixated on grades alone.

What drives engagement? Engagement is about relationships. In her on early warning systems, Dr. Rebecca Sarlo notes that most students don't graduate on time not because they don't have goals, and not because they and their parents don't value education. Rather, at-risk students overwhelmingly cite feelings that no adult cares about them as a person, or about their success, and that their peers don't care either. In other words: engagement with learning happens or doesn't happen because of the environment in the school and in the classroom.

Teachers can positively impact engagement, and these teachers have a measurable long-term effect

In a 2016 published by the Brookings Institution, authors Jing Liu and Susanna Loeb found that high school teachers who are able to better engage their students (as measured by attendance) are able to do so consistently year over year. Also, higher engagement with these teachers leads to higher rates of graduation. Furthermore, the authors found that simply completing high school had measurable positive impact on lifetime achievement, even when test scores were held constant. So, engagement improves outcomes.

Does engagement improve grades and test scores?

Probably, depending on how engagement is fostered. Does it matter whether it does or not? That depends on how important grades and test scores are to you as a leader and/or teacher. But remember: why do we care about engagement? Because it is known to improve outcomes. If there were a way to ensure that your efforts to increase engagement in your school or classroom would also succeed in moving the needle on grades and test scores - quickly - would you do that thing? I hope so. Later we will see how to do it.

The Golden Rules of engagement

In his Golden Rules for Engaging Students in Learning Activities, author Nicolás Pino-James, PhD lists five ways teachers can encourage student engagement: making learning activities meaningful, fostering a sense of competence, supporting autonomy, collaborative learning, positive teacher-student relationships, and mastery orientations (positioning learning as steps towards reaching a goal of learning, rather than simply seeking a reward such as a grade or approval from parents or peers).

Pino-James suggests a number of ways to achieve these means, and they are backed up by peer-reviewed research. I will return to these methods later in this article, but first I would like to bring things back to the reason why most educators who make student engagement a part of their strategy, school improvement plan, or response to intervention program do so in the first place.

Increased student engagement drives several important education goals, and reduces the effort needed to improve academic performance metrics.

For most educators, student engagement is important because it drives student learning, student agency, student empowerment, and even some kinds of student achievement. And while all of those things are important, for most educators the thing that counts for our jobs is that student engagement supports on-time graduation, attendance, and reduces the effort it takes to manage a classroom and ... teach.

Fast-turnaround, frequent formative assessments drive student learning and achievement

Rapid and frequent formative assessments drive academic achievement. We are all familiar with the now-famous Black & William citation "...the practice of formative assessment produce[s] significant and often substantial learning gains. These studies range over age groups from 5‐year olds to university undergraduates, across several school subjects, and over several countries." ( Inside the Black Box by Paul Black & Dylan William). Would it be so surprising if one of the reasons for this was that these short assessments also generate engagement and agency among students? It shouldn't be.

And now...

6 ways to promote student engagement with rapid, frequent formative assessments

One of my first exposures to the power of rapid classroom assessments (frequent formatives) to promote student engagement was through the Numbers Matter program at Carver High School. Numbers Matter, an instructional plan developed by Barbara Burke, was first implemented in a school with 100% free lunch, an on-time graduation rate under 70%, 95% of freshman students arriving behind grade level, and state test scores in the bottom half of the fifth quintile. Woo!

Numbers Matter changed everything for the teachers and students at Carver. Via the program students achieved over 100% improvement on the state test in the first year and a 70% improvement in the second year. The gains continue to mount to this day. A lot of Numbers Matter is about engagement, and the rest is about frequent formative assessments aligned to a pacing guide.

Let's take a look at Dr. Pino-James' six ways to foster engagement, and give them the ol' formative assessment twist. Ready? Here we go!

#6 - Make learning activities meaningful.

Pino-James suggests engaging student by showing them how the material is relevant to real-life situations. But I'm not about to suggest you "use real-life examples in your tests." I am not going to do that because there is more than one way to make something meaningful.

First, show the meaning in the goal: In Burke's Numbers Matter, students are educated about the importance of their numbers, from their APGAR score as newborns, to their 1/4 mile sprint time, yards rushed, baskets and assists, SAT/ACT score, to their blood pressure as adults. Numbers Matter demonstrates to students that numbers mean something, including their quiz scores.

But here's where I think assessment can really connect and engage students: In Numbers Matter, each class is engaged in a friendly competition to see which one racks up the highest quiz scores (or the most improved scores) each week. When each student has a chance to get tutoring and re-take a quiz to raise the class average, this kind of friendly competition ticks all the 'mastery learning' boxes. And with the winning class getting pizza for lunch on Monday, or just bragging rights, the meaning is built-in!

#5 - Foster a sense of competence

When students have the chance to instantly see how they did on a quiz, and get the chance to tell a teacher, tutor, or classmate why they answered the way they did, it gives them a sense that they are in control. When students then have the chance to get help from a tutor, or from peers, then re-take the quiz and contribute to the class's overall achievement, it gives them a sense of accomplishment and competence. Recalling Sarlo's article on early warning systems, in which she cited a study on engagement, this kind of analysis and conversation with teachers builds students' sense that the adults in the building care about them. And that builds engagement while also building academic accomplishment.

There's also an opportunity for peer-to-peer engagement benefit. In Numbers Matter, individual achievement contributes to team achievement. This is like in team sports, a place where students learn leadership and self-worth along with teamwork. Rapid formative assessments can be used to teach the same values and instill the same sense of competence and value.

#4 - Support autonomy

How does one support autonomy in learning? I don't need to tell you that autonomy does not mean saying "do it yourself." Nope! Supporting autonomy means showing students they are empowered to make their own decisions and that when they do, you will help them achieve the goals embedded in those decisions. Autonomy is about engagement. How do you support autonomy with assessments? Is that crazy? Not at all: Frequent formative assessment for learning is often paired with 'mastery learning,' where students work with teachers to achieve self-defined goals over the course of a semester or other time period. Whether you call it 'mastery learning' or just 'learning,' frequent formatives give both students and teachers rapid feedback free from the stress of a summative exam that will count towards a final grade. Rather, they are meant as guideposts along the way to a goal. Each formative assessment is another chance for the student to show the teacher - and herself - that the most important thing for them is the process of their own self-directed learning, not the score on the quiz.

#3 - Foster collaborative learning

Without belaboring the point, frequent formatives are about collaboration when they are done right. What does that mean? It means teachers and tutors giving students the opportunity to tell them why they answered a quiz the way they did, and what they could do to fill the gaps in their understanding. And, as I mentioned, in a team environment like Numbers Matter, learning becomes something cool that all students can get behind, something with which they want to help each other, because if they can win academically as a team they can get meaningful rewards as a team. This opens the door to truly effective (and fun) small group learning and peer-to-peer tutoring, which further reinforces student agency, self-worth, and engagement.

#2 - Nurture positive teacher-student relationships

The simple act of interacting with a student on the topic of their own mastery of material, the simple act of listening, and the simple act of showing a student that you don't care about the result they get nearly as much as you care about the fact they are trying, all foster a relationship that is positive, affirming, and effective at increasing student engagement. Remember Sarlo's article on early warning systems that I mentioned at the top of this article? Engagement depends more on students' sense that adults (for example teachers) care about them as people, and not just as students. Read that as "I am more than just a grade" and you can see why simply engaging with students on the 'why' and 'how' of their formative assessment response is wholly different - and more engaging - than handing back a paper with a grade on it ... even when that grade is an "A+".

#1 - Provide mastery orientation

Once again, Numbers Matter is a good example of mastery learning and teaching because it doesn't shy away from the facts - the final number does matter - while at the same time creating strong feelings of engagement from students. It does this through the process of teamwork, which naturally values practice, process, and improvement, without falsely diminishing the importance of the end goal: a high number. And, you guessed it, frequent, rapid in-class formative assessments are perfect vehicles for practice and improvement, while simultaneously providing a number that moves as students improve. Boom!

In Conclusion...

Do more rapid frequent formatives! Consider adopting team-oriented learning modalities, and absolutely, definitely, foster student engagement using Pino-James' six Golden Rules of student engagement. If you want to learn more about Numbers Matter, you can read about it here.

Need a technology to help you manage all those rapid assessments and give you instant turnaround time? Here's a guide to help you decide.

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Power moves: Top 6 ways to use rapid formative assessment to promote student engagement

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Even if you know all about student engagement, these six tips might be new to you. Student engagement is a hot topic these days because of its proven impact on graduation rates, school culture, and even academic achievement (although the data on this last one

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Feedback is power. This is something that is often lost in the discussion about testing our students. When students know their strengths and weaknesses, when they know what they have mastered and what they have still to learn, then control over their learning is in their own hands.

I recall being in school and getting back tests with lower grades than I had hoped. I would be perplexed, not understanding what I did wrong or what I needed to know. The class would move on, I would never return to that material, and I would be at a disadvantage with the new work. What if I could have spent the time I needed on that part of the curriculum, what if I got immediate feedback on what I was doing wrong, what if I had the opportunity to improve?

Even better, what if I could see and use that information without having to stop my learning to take a test? What if every student could? This is the promise of formative embedded assessment.

The "formative" refers to checking in for understanding frequently rather than waiting until the end of the semester for high stakes testing and using the results to tailor instruction. The "embedded" refers to not stopping to take a test, but being able to see how students are doing as they do their work. The "assessment" points out that we are not just talking about tests, but any way to figure out how students are doing, be it by observation or conversation or co-problem solving or any other method.

There is a vision that someday technology will be able to be very helpful in providing formative embedded assessment. Imagine if rather than moving on after every math test, I would be doing my math on a computer, with some sort of easy natural math interface, and the computer would realize I kept making the same errors and use that pattern to point me towards what I needed to understand better. We are very, very far from that vision of technology independently providing sophisticated feedback in most areas, though software is great at providing immediate simple feedback already. Fortunately, this is more than enough to build on. On progress, Tom Vander Ark :

The best product development work in formative assessment has been progress in products that combine adaptive assessment with targeted tutoring. The K-12 assessment in from Curriculum Associates comes with K-8 instructional units in math and reading. Dreambox Learning covers K-8 math.

Teachers can support students with formative embedded assessment already - with or without technology. In my interview with Lee Ann Tysseling of Boise State University, I found out how. Below is my paraphrased summary of her comments, but please check out this playlist for the full discussion.

What is embedded, formative assessment?

Embedded formative assessment captures data during authentic classroom learning activities such as projects, small group activities, inquiry projects, and so on. It doesn't intrude into classroom life and students don't feel as though they are being assessed and teachers capture good data - the kind that matters in the long run.

The purpose is to use the data in making instructional decisions either on a group or an individual basis.

Why is it important to have in the classroom?

With formative embedded assessment, teachers and students feel that they themselves are the ones looking for the signs that they are learning the skills they need to learn. They are not being judged, rather they are finding information that will help students learn better. The focus is on learning, not reporting to outside agencies that are focused on evaluating schools.

How does it support intrinsic motivation and ownership?

At its best kids set their own learning goals, they identify elements of their own learning that they want to work on and they learn to self-monitor and judge. This can be very tricky for a teacher who now needs to learn to maintain a hands-off approach: as soon as formative assessment starts being used for grading or the district uses it to evaluate students it loses the purpose of non-judgmental feedback to improve learning.

What does it look like in practice?

In her practice, Dr. Tysseling has used a number of formative assessments.

In working with young readers, she has a form to easily mark what they have captured from their reading based on their re-telling of the story. As the student talks, she is able to mark down a tally mark for each element they need to master. She also uses it with older students when they talk about what they just read in a history assignment, for example. This is a simple non-technological form of formative embedded assessment.

Using technology, Tysseling has used student response systems such as Nearpod to check for student understanding. She gives them a challenging problem and asks them to respond in real time and then uses that information to focus her ongoing teaching.

What are concerns about the use of formative assessments?

There is too much emphasis on high stakes summative assessment that meets the interest of external stakeholders as opposed to formative assessment that meets the needs of learners and teachers.

There is also a risk of going too far - of seeing the numbers and data instead of the child. This can lead to the child's real needs being missed as their performance is rated on a checklist of statistics.

For more check out:
Stay in-the-know with all things EdTech and innovations in learning by signing up to receive the weekly Smart Update . This post includes mentions of a Getting Smart partner. For a full list of partners, affiliate organizations and all other disclosures please see our Partner page

Marie Bjerede is President at Agentic Learning. Follow Marie on Twitter at @mbjerede.

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Embedded Formative Assessment: Tests without Stress

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Feedback is power. This is something that is often lost in the discussion about testing our students. When students know their strengths and weaknesses, when they know what they have mastered and what they have still to learn, then control over their learning is in their own hands.

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Embedding Formative Assessment, which I wrote with Siobhán Leahy, is designed specifically to help individual teachers develop their practice of formative assessment on their own or with small groups of colleagues. Here are some suggestions for practical techniques you can try in your classroom right now.
Technique 1: Start with samples of work, rather than rubrics, to communicate quality

As an adult in the professional world, if someone were to ask you to write a business plan or create a product brochure and the task was somewhat unfamiliar to you, what's the first thing you might do to get help? Perhaps you would search the Internet for examples of business plans or product brochures that other professionals have created.

As you examine these examples, you might be able to pick out the high-quality vs. low-quality ones, and even identify why you think this is so. Viewing samples of work in this way can help you as you create your own piece of work and, hopefully, result in a higher-quality product than if you had just started from scratch.

While rubrics have a role to play in your classroom, we believe they are best regarded as the culmination of a developmental process that begins with examination of samples of students' work. So, before your students do a laboratory report, before they write a ghost story, spend some time getting them to look at other students' attempts at similar tasks.

Some teachers believe that it is wasteful to take time that students could be generating their own work to look at the work of others, but there are two immediate benefits of getting students to look at samples of student work. First, we are all better at spotting mistakes in the work of others than we are in our own work. Second, when we notice mistakes in the work of others, we are less likely to make the same mistakes in our own work.

Technique 2: No hands up, except to ask a question

Walk into a classroom almost anywhere in the world, and you will see the same script being played out. The teacher asks a question, and a number of students raise their hands to signal they wish to respond. Then, the teacher almost always selects one of the students with his or her hand raised, and that student responds to the question.

But if the aim of questioning is to help the teacher find out what the students know, it makes little sense to select a respondent from the volunteers, because generally, students only raise their hands when they are confident they have the correct answer. Instead, if the teacher is asking the question, students should be given time to think about the question, and then it should be the teacher who selects the student or students to respond, at random.

Technique 3: Focus on the reaction of the students-not the feedback

The only thing that matters with feedback is the reaction of the recipient. That's it. Feedback, no matter how well designed, that is not acted upon by the student is a waste of time.

This may seem obvious, but hundreds of researchers have ignored this basic truth, and have tried instead to find out whether feedback should be immediate or delayed. Should it be specific or general? Should it be verbal or written? Ultimately, it just comes down to the simple truth that the most effective feedback is just feedback that our students actually use in improving their own learning.

Technique 4: Peer feedback-two stars and a wish

Group students into pairs. When students are giving feedback to each other, they identify two features of the work that are positive (the "stars") and one suggestion for how the work could be improved (the "wish"). What teachers typically find is that students are much tougher on each other than the teacher would feel able to be, because the power relationships are different.

This is an important observation, since it suggests that, done appropriately, peer feedback may be more effective than teacher feedback, because students are more likely to act on feedback from their peers than they would on feedback from a teacher.

Technique 5: Make self-reports consequential

Provide each student with three colored paper or plastic cups (red, yellow, and green). At the beginning of the lesson, nest the cups so that the green cup is showing. Tell students they can display their yellow cup to signal that the lesson is going too fast or their red cup to stop the lesson in order to ask a question. Accountability is built in by the fact that as soon as one student shows a red cup, the teacher selects another student at random from among those showing green cups, and that student is expected to answer the question being posed by the student who showed the red cup.
Dr. Wiliam's official formative assessment handbook, Embedding Formative Assessment, provides even more guidance teachers need to conduct effective minute-to-minute formative assessment in the classroom. Order your copy from LSI.
About The Author: Dylan Wiliam

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5 Practical Techniques for Embedding Formative Assessment | Learning Sciences International

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By Dr. Dylan Wiliam Embedding Formative Assessment, which I wrote with Siobhán Leahy, is designed specifically to help individual teachers develop their practice of formative assessment on their own or with small groups of colleagues. Here are some suggestions for

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Studying geography with Galactic Mappers shows a viable strategy for embedding assessment in a classroom game.

In Galactic Mappers, a social studies game about physical geography, students compete in teams to create the most geographically diverse continent in a shared hemisphere. This group mapping project encourages students to collaborate, design, iterate, and present a finished product in a single class period.

It's also a fun and informative way to assess my sixth grade students at Quest to Learn early in the school year-and a powerful example of an embedded assessment that allows me to better support the learning process.

Embedding Assessment in a Game

Galactic Mappers provides many opportunities for me to assess my students, give immediate feedback, and track their learning across a class period as they attempt to reach their goal.

As they design their first continent, I might observe a group and note how easily they construct landforms without using notes or text. Better yet, I might see a student assisting her teammates. And I can always ask certain students to define the different landforms they are about to "unlock" as they play. In this way, the game enables me to clearly identify if any student is having difficulty understanding a concept, and then support her or have a teammate do so.

The game also allows me to assess skills beyond content-primarily social and emotional learning skills. Like most games, Galactic Mappers has time limits as well as winners and losers. In the time it takes to play a complete game, I can see which students are skilled time managers and collaborators, and how each student deals with frustration and challenges.

During gameplay, I check in with groups and individuals, and record observations. I use a rubric that assesses three areas:

1. Geography skills: Students can use a key and proper labeling skills, as well as demonstrate a firm knowledge of physical geography.

2. Design: Students present a clear, neat, and visually pleasing continent that is appropriate for a map.

3. Listening: Students have the ability to listen to their teammates and teacher, as well as be a positive force in their group.
Credit: Institute of Play
Preparation and Planning

In order to successfully implement an embedded assessment in a game like Galactic Mappers, it's useful to lay some important groundwork in the days leading up to gameplay.

Content preparation: First, students are required to come to class with a basic knowledge of maps and physical geography terms-content covered in the weeks leading up to the game.

Strategic grouping: It's important for the teacher to create balanced student groups that will function well. Students can also be assigned specific roles in their groups: The on-task manager handles materials, watches the clock, and quiets the group when the teacher addresses the class. The scribe is responsible for cutting materials, writing labels, and drawing landforms and bodies of water based on the map key. The researcher looks up information in the text or student notes when the group is stuck, and examines classroom maps for design inspiration. And the presenter presents the group's final design at the end of each round.

Transparency: Students should not be taken by surprise on the day of gameplay. As in test prep, they need to know what they are being assessed on, how the teacher will be assessing them, and possibly the format of the test itself. The day before we play Galactic Mappers, I show students the game cards, reveal the different rounds of play, and review student work from previous years. I make it clear that, while this is a game, it's also an assessment of their map skills, collaboration, and time management. They're aware that I'll be asking them questions while they play and that I have high expectations for their teamwork skills.

Gameplay

Galactic Mappers is generally played during one 90-minute class period, but it can be adjusted to fit different schedules. Gameplay is divided into several rounds that involve both group work and whole-class discussion. Opportunities for feedback and assessment differ in each round.

Round 1 (15 minutes): Students are given their supplies and initial continent, as well as a first set of land cards. As they play, look for any initial group dynamic issues and check for basic understanding of gameplay. Reward some groups with extra land cards for demonstrating superior knowledge or excellent time management.

Presentation 1 (10 minutes): The class will circle around "the ocean"-the center of the classroom-as each presenter shares out their group's continent and land cards. Reward each successful explanation with a feature card.

Round 2 (20 minutes): Students begin to place landforms and bodies of water on their continent maps, properly shading and labeling them. Start discussions with students about where and why vegetation might grow around certain feature cards (rivers, lakes), but not others (buttes, mesas). With some groups, you may be able to have deeper discussions about where early humans might settle on their continent, while with other groups you can talk more specifically about the basics of physical geography. (What is the difference between a river and a lake? A hill and a mountain?)

Presentation 2 (10-15 minutes): Students return to "the ocean" and place their finished continents on the class map. Presenters share out their continents and must correctly identify feature cards in order to earn points. Points are tallied and a winning group is announced.

Class reflection (10 minutes): Before cleaning up the classroom, start a reflective discussion about the experience. Talk about the game itself, and what students may have learned from the experience. Try making a connection to future units: "Where would people want to live on the map we created?"

Next Steps

I've been thinking about iterations on this game to challenge students further or teach different concepts-for example, modifying it to focus on building actual continents or civilizations that students are learning about. While this may take away some of the more creative elements of the game, it would certainly ground it in the reality of the civilizations we will be studying over the course of the year.

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How a Classroom Game Becomes an Embedded Assessment

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Studying geography with Galactic Mappers shows a viable strategy for embedding assessment in a classroom game. In Galactic Mappers, a social studies game about physical geography, students compete in teams to create the most geographically diverse continent in a shared hemisphere.

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Embedding Formative Assessment into the 5E Instructional Model

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