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Here are some tips when creating report card comments. It is important that these comments are clear and concise, and this article outlines the key considerations when creating comments.

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SplashLearn Blog - Educational Resources for Parents, Teachers & Kids

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Dive in,

Giving students constructive criticism is one of the most important tasks a teacher faces. It can be difficult to know how to best communicate with a student about their progress, especially when it comes to report card comments. This guide will help you write effective report card comments that are clear, concise, and accurate. So let's get started!

What Makes a Good Report Card Comment?

There are a few key things to keep in mind when writing report card comments. Here is what makes a good report card comment:

1. Positive and Solution-Focused

It's important to focus on the positive when writing report card comments. For every negative comment, there should be at least two positive comments. This report card comment template is a great way to make sure you're including both positive and negative feedback in your comments.

2. Clear and Concise

Report card comments should be clear and concise. This means avoiding generalities and using specific, concrete examples. This will help the student (and their parents) understand what they need to work on.

3. Accurate

Report card comments should be accurate. This means making sure your comments align with the grades the student has earned. There's no point in sugar-coating a bad grade - it will only confuse the student and their parents.

Now that we've gone over what makes a good report card comment let's look at some tips for writing effective report card comments.

Tips for Writing Effective Report Card Comments

1. Use Specific, Concrete Examples

One of the most important things to do when writing report card comments is to use specific, concrete examples. This will help the student understand what they need to work on. For example, instead of saying, "______ needs to work on his behavior," you could say, "_____ needs to work on staying seated during class."

2. Avoid Generalities

When writing comments on a report card, it's important to avoid generalities. For example, instead of writing "Your child is a joy to have in class," try something more specific, such as "Your child is always willing to help out other students." This will give the student and their family a better idea of what they're doing well and what areas they can continue to improve in.

3. Use Positive Language

It's essential to use positive language when writing report card comments. This means avoiding negative words like "doesn't," "won't," and "can't." For example, instead of writing "_____ doesn't pay attention in class," try "_____ is working on paying attention in class." This small change can make a big difference in how students and their families perceive their progress.

4. Employ Sandwich Technique

The sandwich technique is a great way to deliver both positive and negative feedback in a report card comment. This means starting with a positive comment, followed by constructive criticism, and ending with another positive comment. This gives the student a sense of their progress while still providing areas for improvement.

5. Proofread Your Comments

When writing report card comments, it's important to be clear and accurate. However, it's also important to make sure that your comments are free of typos and grammatical errors. After all, you don't want to give a student or their family the wrong impression about their academic progress! Make sure to proofread your comments before sending them home.

Now that we've gone over some tips for writing effective report card comments let's take a look at some examples.

Example Report Card Comments

We have divided our report card comments into four categories:

1. Academic Achievement

This is for students who have performed well academically. These comments assess a student's progress and encourage future academic success.

1. ______ is an excellent student who always comes prepared for class. He is a joy to have in class and is always willing to help out other students.

2. _______ is a smart and inquisitive student who loves to learn. She is a pleasure to have in class and is always asking questions.

3. _______ is a hard-working student who is always trying his best. This year, he has made great progress, and I'm excited to see what he does next year.

4. _______ is a gifted student who excels in all her subjects. She has a bright future ahead of her, and I'm excited to see what she accomplishes.

5. _______ is a talented student who has a real passion for learning. He is always asking questions and is eager to get his hands on new material.

2. Partially Meeting Expectations

This is for students who are partially meeting expectations academically.

1. _______ is an intelligent student who has great potential. He needs to work on staying focused in class and following directions.

2. _______ is a hard-working student who is making progress. She need to work on ___________ and ___________.

3. _______ has moments of greatness, but he needs to be more consistent with his effort and focus.

4. _______ is a bright student, but she needs to learn to apply herself more consistently.

5. _______ is a hard worker, but he needs to improve his organizational skills.

3. Social/Emotional Development

This is for students who are developing well socially and emotionally.

1. _______ is a kind and caring student who always looks out for others. He is a good friend to all and is always willing to help.

2. _______ has made great strides in his/her social development this year. She is more confident and able to express herself well.

3. _______ works well with others and is able to take turns and share.

4. _______ is a leader among his/her peers and is often looked up to by other students.

5. _______ is an independent thinker who is not afraid to express his/her opinions.

Related Reading: Result-Driven Instructional Strategies for Teachers to Use

4. General Development

This is for students who are developing well academically, socially, and emotionally.

1. _______ has made great strides in his/her development this year. He is more confident and independent and is doing well academically.

2. _______ is a happy and thriving student who loves school. She is making friends and doing well academically.

3. _______ is a well-rounded student who is doing well in all areas. He is a good friend, does his best in school, and loves to learn.

4. _______ is a joy to have in class. She is polite, hard-working, and always has a smile on her face.

5. _______ is a model student who always puts his best foot forward. He is a role model to others and sets a good example for all to follow.

Let's Grade!

Now that we have gone over some tips for writing effective report card comments and examples of what to write, it's time to get started on those report cards! We hope this guide has been helpful and wish you the best of luck in the new school year.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What should I do if I'm having trouble coming up with something to write?

Can I use report card comments from other sources?

What if I need to give a student negative feedback?

Do I need to write a comment for every subject?

What is the best way to end a report card comment?

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Giving students constructive criticism is one of the most important tasks a teacher faces. It can be difficult to know how to best communicate with a student about their progress, especially when it comes to report card comments. This guide will help you write effective report card comments that are clear, concise, and accurate.

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This article written by the ATA discusses how report cards are here to stay, therefore teachers must understand the purpose of report cards. This article discusses the do's and don't of report cards, and what they are meant to do.

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Historically, a certain communication tool has occupied a prominent position at the centre of the teacher-parent relationship: the report card.

Sherry Bennett is executive director of the Alberta Assessment Consortium, a nonprofit organization that advocates for sound classroom assessment practices. In this Q&A, Bennett outlines the purpose of the ever-present report card and how its role has evolved over the years.
What are report cards for?
Report cards, sometimes called progress reports, provide written records of student performance on curriculum outcomes over a period of time. An effective report card is a document that can be easily understood by those for whom it is intended-parents and students. The report card should provide straightforward information about what a student knows and can demonstrate relative to the graded curriculum. It should acknowledge actions that all the partners in learning can take: students, parents and teachers.
What are they NOT for?
A report card cannot possibly share all the information that a teacher knows about a student's learning. Because report cards report on student performance at a specific period of time, they are not able to report on student growth, except through teacher comments. Report cards are not intended to compare students against each other, or one class of students against another class.
Who decides on the format or system used?
Within some very broad provincial regulations around reporting student progress to students and parents, decisions regarding report card format and frequency are left to school jurisdictions. In some jurisdictions, individual schools are able to design their own report cards. While this variety can be helpful in meeting the needs of the local community, it can cause challenges when students move from one jurisdiction to another.
To what extent do report card formats vary across the province?
The format of report cards varies widely across the province. In many cases, schools are using a form of parent/teacher/student conference in addition to the formal report cards. Some schools are scheduling conferences in advance of the report cards so that the report card truly is simply a formal communication of information that is already known. With the availability of digital parent portals, some jurisdictions are no longer even sending the report card home as a document.
What trends have you noticed in report cards in recent years?
Over the past decade, there has been a movement towards outcomes-based reporting. However, this term can mean different things to different people.

In any report card, there are two dimensions. One dimension is what is being reported and the other dimension is the level of quality of the performance, sometimes called a performance scale.

Concerning what is being reported, conventional report cards reported by subject, such as mathematics, science, English language arts and so on. In recent years, educators have determined that it can be helpful to break these large subject areas down into smaller components and report on smaller units or skills. This can provide parents with information about where within these subject areas students are experiencing success, and where they may need more help.

Regarding the performance scale, conventional report cards used percentages or letter grades. While both of these are still in use today, many school jurisdictions are starting to use performance descriptors to describe a level of performance. A wide variety of descriptors are used throughout the province. Because Alberta Education still uses percentages for high school courses, most high schools continue to use percentage grades.

Often when a jurisdiction renovates its reporting system, changes are made in both dimensions. As a parent, if you have questions about how the report card is designed and what it is intended to communicate, schedule a meeting with your child's teacher.
What are the challenges for teachers around report cards?
The most difficult challenge for teachers is to condense all they know about each student's learning into a single mark, whether that be a percentage, a letter grade or a performance category. As such, it is important for parents and teachers to remain in open and ongoing conversations about each student's success and challenges. However, there needs to be balance so this process does not become overwhelming or burdensome for either teachers or parents.

There should be no surprises on a report card. Teachers have a responsibility to communicate concerns early enough that corrective action can be taken; parents have a responsibility to acknowledge information that is shared by the teacher and to work to support their child as best as they are able. Report cards and conferences are times for productive conversations about how to support students.
What are the challenges for parents?
It is important that parents (and grandparents) see the report card as simply one method for communicating student performance. With improved technology, teachers are able to stay in much closer communication with parents than has ever been possible in the past. As such, the report card is often simply a formal way to communicate information that has already been shared among teacher, parent and student.

The marks on the report cards may not mean the same thing as they did a decade or two ago. It is important that parents understand what the marks mean. Be sure to schedule a meeting with your child's teacher if you have questions.

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Report cards: they are here to stay, but changing with the times

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Historically, a certain communication tool has occupied a prominent position at the centre of the teacher-parent relationship: the report card. Sherry Bennett is executive director of the Alberta Assessment Consortium, a nonprofit organization that advocates for sound classroom assessment practices.

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Giving out zeros in assessment is not something unheard of. However, giving out a zero doesn't have any benefits, and this article discusses how teachers should rethink their philosophy, and consider other outcomes, rather than giving a zero.

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Teachers can rethink their grading practices to make them more mathematically fair for students and allow for redemption for a missed assignment.

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How to Communicate Grading with Students

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How to Communicate Grading with Students

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Grades should not be done with out communicating with students. Here are three ways to consider communicating grades with students so they are understanding of the grading system, and they feel their voice is heard when they receive a grade.

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3 Ways to Talk About Grading With Your Students

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There is often a divide between how students and teachers perceive grading, and good communication helps bridge that gap.

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Grading has major effects on students that may lead to some major problems. This article outlines how to improve grading to eliminate any of the problems that can occur.

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This article discusses the controversial topic of grading. It is important to make sure grades are meaningful and contain an explicit meaning, and this reading will outline the important aspects to grading.

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Kunnath - Creating meaningful grades.pdf

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Performance assessments are very beneficial to the classroom however, teachers must understand the basics on how to create and implement them into the classroom. This article outlines all the necessary information for understanding performance assessments.

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This article shares ways to create performance assessments in the classroom that will engage students.

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Performance-based learning is when students participate in performing tasks or activities that are meaningful and engaging. The purpose of this kind of learning is to help students acquire and apply knowledge, practice skills, and develop independent and collaborative work habits. The culminating activity or product for performance-based learning is one that lets a student demonstrate evidence of understanding through a transfer of skills.

A performance-based assessment is open-ended and without a single, correct answer, and it should demonstrate authentic learning, such as the creation of a newspaper or class debate. The benefit of performance-based assessments is that students who are more actively involved in the learning process absorb and understand the material at a much deeper level. Other characteristics of performance-based assessments are that they are complex and time-bound.

Also, there are learning standards in each discipline that set academic expectations and define what is proficient in meeting that standard. Performance-based activities can integrate two or more subjects and should also meet 21st Century expectations whenever possible:

There are also Information Literacy standards and Media Literacy standards that require performance-based learning.

Clear Expectations

Performance-based activities can be challenging for students to complete. They need to understand from the beginning exactly what is being asked of them and how they will be assessed.

Examples and models may help, but it is more important to provide detailed criteria that will be used to assess the performance-based assessment. All criteria should be addressed in a scoring rubric.

Observations are an important component and can be used to provide students with feedback to improve performance. Teachers and students can both use observations. There may be peer to peer student feedback. There could be a checklist or a tally to record student achievement.

The goal of performance-based learning should be to enhance what the students have learned, not just have them recall facts. The following six types of activities provide good starting points for assessments in performance-based learning.

Presentations

One easy way to have students complete a performance-based activity is to have them do a presentation or report of some kind. This activity could be done by students, which takes time, or in collaborative groups.

The basis for the presentation may be one of the following:

Providing information

Teaching a skill

Reporting progress

Persuading others

Students may choose to add in visual aids or a PowerPoint presentation or Google Slides to help illustrate elements in their speech. Presentations work well across the curriculum as long as there is a clear set of expectations for students to work with from the beginning.

Portfolios

Student portfolios can include items that students have created and collected over a period. Art portfolios are for students who want to apply to art programs in college.

Another example is when students create a portfolio of their written work that shows how they have progressed from the beginning to the end of class. The writing in a portfolio can be from any discipline or a combination of disciplines.

Some teachers have students select those items they feel represents their best work to be included in a portfolio. The benefit of an activity like this is that it is something that grows over time and is therefore not just completed and forgotten. A portfolio can provide students with a lasting selection of artifacts that they can use later in their academic career.

Reflections may be included in student portfolios in which students may make a note of their growth based on the materials in the portfolio.

Performances

Dramatic performances are one kind of collaborative activities that can be used as a performance-based assessment. Students can create, perform, and/or provide a critical response. Examples include dance, recital, dramatic enactment. There may be prose or poetry interpretation.

This form of performance-based assessment can take time, so there must be a clear pacing guide.

Students must be provided time to address the demands of the activity; resources must be readily available and meet all safety standards. Students should have opportunities to draft stage work and practice.

Developing the criteria and the rubric and sharing these with students before evaluating a dramatic performance is critical.

Projects are commonly used by teachers as performance-based activities. They can include everything from research papers to artistic representations of information learned. Projects may require students to apply their knowledge and skills while completing the assigned task. They can be aligned with the higher levels of creativity, analysis, and synthesis.

Students might be asked to complete reports, diagrams, and maps. Teachers can also choose to have students work individually or in groups.

Journals may be part of a performance-based assessment. Journals can be used to record student reflections. Teachers may require students to complete journal entries. Some teachers may use journals as a way to record participation.

Exhibits and Fairs

Teachers can expand the idea of performance-based activities by creating exhibits or fairs for students to display their work. Examples include things like history fairs to art exhibitions. Students work on a product or item that will be exhibited publicly.

Exhibitions show in-depth learning and may include feedback from viewers.

In some cases, students might be required to explain or defend their work to those attending the exhibition.

Some fairs like science fairs could include the possibility of prizes and awards.

A debate in the classroom is one form of performance-based learning that teaches students about varied viewpoints and opinions. Skills associated with debate include research, media and argument literacy, reading comprehension, evidence evaluation, public speaking, and civic skills.

There are many different formats for debate. One is the fishbowl debate in which a handful of students form a half circle facing the other students and debate a topic. The rest of the classmates may pose questions to the panel.

Another form is a mock trial where teams representing the prosecution and defense take on the roles of attorneys and witnesses. A judge, or judging panel, oversees the courtroom presentation.

Middle school and high schools can use debates in the classroom, with increased levels of sophistication by grade level.

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Great Ideas for Performance-Based Activities

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These six kinds of authentic performance-based activities allow students to apply knowledge, practice skills, and develop independent work habits.

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This video discusses the benefits of performance assessments as well as how to implement them into practice.

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This article discusses the benefits of performance assessments and how they can engage students better than a regular assessment. It also outlines numerous collaboration opportunities not only between students, but teachers as well.

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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 outlines all the important consideration required when creating tests. It also provides different forms of tests and the advantages and disadvantages of each type.

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Prepared by Mekiva Callahan & Micah M. Logan See the PDF version

Introduction

Assessments are essential to the learning process. As the class instructor, you need a means of gathering information on the effectiveness of your instruction and a way to measure your students' mastery of the course's educational outcomes. For students, assessment provides them with feedback on their learning and can also be an incentive for improving academic performance. From an administrative perspective, the cumulative value of assessments is tangible data suggestive of student achievement. Perhaps the most well known form of assessment is a test or an exam, so given the high stakes of evaluation, from a variety of perspectives, and the importance of accurately gauging students' learning, it's imperative that you design valid, well-written tests.

Test Composition and Design: Where to Start?

It might seem obvious, but one of the most important steps of test composition is to revisit your overall goals and objectives for the course and to determine which goals you intend to evaluate with this test, bearing in mind that a formal test or exam is not always the best way to evaluate the desired learning outcomes. Once you have identified which outcomes what you want to measure, consider what type of question or prompt best facilitates the students' production of that outcome. For instance, is it your intention to create a test asking students to recall definitions or are you interested in having students demonstrate their ability to compare various concepts and defend their position on a controversial subject?

Many people utilize Bloom's Taxonomy, a hierarchical structure of thinking skills, as a tool for gauging the cognitive depth of student learning. Figure 1 depicts a more recent adaptation of Bloom's Taxonomy and it can be useful to keep in mind when constructing tests. Consider, for instance, the difference between the first test or assignments of the semester when you simply want to measure the students' ability to understand or recall new information, and the final exam in which you ask students to independently analyze data or situations or possibly create a project or document representative of the information covered throughout the semester. The required skills or desired level of cognition will vary based on the educational objectives for each exam, so it is vital that you keep your pre-determined goals and objectives in mind throughout the test composition progress.

For additional information on Bloom's Taxonomy and sample questions for each level of cognition, please see the additional resources provided.

Determine Test Structure/Design
Much like learning styles, research shows that many students have a preferred test format, so in order to appeal to as many students as possible you might consider drawing from a variety of testing methods or styles. In fact, you can design a single exam to include several kinds of questions and measure a range of cognitive skills. Some common types of tests and test items are discussed below.

Objective Tests: An objective test is one in which a students' performance is measured against a standard and specific set of answers (i.e. for each question there is a right or wrong answer). When composing test questions, it is important to be direct and use language that is straightforward and familiar to the students. In addition, the answer choices provided on the test should be challenging enough that students aren't able to guess the correct answer simply by comparing how all of the options are written. Examples of objective test items include the following.

Multiple-choice

True-false

Matching

Problem based questions. These require the student to complete or solve an equation or prompt and are commonly used in application based courses such as mathematics, chemistry, and physics.

For further information on writing effective test questions, please contact the TLPDC for a consultation or refer to the online resources provided below.

Subjective Tests: Unlike objective tests for which there is a definitive standardized or formulated answer, subjective tests are evaluated based on the judgment or opinion of the examiner. Tests of this nature are often designed in a manner in which the student is presented with a number of questions or writing prompts for which he/she will demonstrate mastery of the learning objective in his/her response to the question. When composing prompts as test questions, it is crucial that you phrase the prompt clearly and precisely. You want to make sure that prompt elicits the type of thinking skill that you want to measure and that the students' task is clear. For example, if you want students to compare two items, you need to provide or list the criteria to be used as the basis for comparison. Examples of subjective test items include the following.

When grading subjective tests or test items, the use of an established set of scoring criteria or a well-developed rubric helps to level the playing field and increase the test's reliability. For more information on rubric development, please see the additional online resources provided.

Table II contains a chart showing advantages and disadvantages for a selection of test items. It's important to note that this is not an exhaustive list, and remember that as the course instructor, you have the freedom to choose what form of assessment most aptly measures your specific learning objective.
Table II: Advantages and Disadvantages of Commonly Used Types of Achievement Test Items
SOURCE: Table 10.1 of Worthen, et al., 1993, p. 261.

Test Composition and Design: Additional Considerations
Validity & Reliability
Two key characteristics of any form of assessment are validity and reliability. As Atherton (2010) states, "a valid form of assessment is one which measures what it is supposed to measure," whereas reliable assessments are those which "will produce the same results on re-test, and will produce similar results with a similar cohort of students, so it is consistent in its methods and criteria." These attributes provide students with the assurance they need to know that the test they are being given is fair and reflective of what has been covered in the course.

To establish a valid test instrument it is important always be mindful of your pre-determined learning outcomes and goals. This mindfulness will help to ensure that each question you develop is an accurate measure of the specified learning outcome. An example of an invalid question is one which tests a student's ability to recall facts when it was actually intended to assess a student's ability to analyze information.

As Atherton (2010) describes it, another way to think of reliability is in terms of "replicability." Is there a general consistency in students' overall performance on an exam? If the exam is given to more than one class or over the course of multiple semesters, is there consistency between the various classes? If so, the test is considered to be reliable. Strategies such as writing detailed test questions or prompts, including clear directions, and establishing and communicating clear grading criteria will increase test reliability.

Verifying validity and reliability in a written test can be challenging. For instance, in the grading of a writing test, what exactly are you trying to measure? The students' writing abilities, content knowledge, all of the above? Be sure that all of your expectations for an exam are communicated to your students well in advance and always be sure that your expectations mirror those articulated in the overall course goals. Another way to increase test validity and reliability is to reexamine and possibly remove questions missed by a large majority of students. If a significant percentage misses the same question, there is a definite possibility that the question was somehow unclear or was not representative of the intended learning outcome.

Another important aspect of test composition is time management-on the part of the professor as well as the student. A common student complaint with tests is that the test was covered material never covered in class or had too many questions on something that was covered in only a few minutes. When designing tests it is helpful to remember that topics on which you spent a significant amount of class time, through instruction and activities, should be appropriately emphasized on the test. This does not mean that you should not include items that received less coverage in class, just be sure to maintain an appropriate balance.

Also, bear in mind that it will take students longer to complete the test than it would you. In his highly referenced book Teaching Tips (1994), Bill McKeachie outlines the following as a strategy for determining test length, "I allow about a minute per item for multiple-choice or fill-in-the-blank items, two minutes per short-answer question requiring more than a sentence answer, ten or fifteen minutes for a limited essay question, and a half-hour to an hour for a broader question requiring more than a page or two to answer."

Conclusion

Tests and exams often play a significant role in the overall assessment of students' learning. Therefore, as instructors, it essential that we pay particular attention to the manner in which we construct these instruments. Remember to always keep your course goals and learning objectives at the forefront of your mind as you begin to determine what kind of test is the best measure of your students' learning. To that end, if it fits with your course design and content, you may want consider alternate forms of assessment such as group projects, student portfolios or other activities that extend and build throughout the course of the semester. These alternative or non-traditional forms of assessment frequently offer students a more authentic opportunity to apply their knowledge and higher-order thinking skills.

Creating tests and other forms of assessment can be a challenging task, but there are plenty of resources available to you. If you would like assistance with test composition, or if you have questions about assessment in general, please contact the TLPDC for a consultation.

Online resources

Bloom's Taxonomy:
Rathburn, S. Teaching Tip Bloom's Taxonomy: Testing beyond Rote-Memory. Colorado State University, The Institute for Teaching and Learning
http://tilt.colostate.edu/tips/tip.cfm?tipid=87
This website provides a general and succinct overview of Bloom's Taxonomy with sample test questions from each of the cognitive levels established in Bloom's Taxonomy.

Vanderbilt Center for Teaching
http://www.vanderbilt.edu/cft/resources/teaching_resources/theory/blooms.htm
This link to Vanderbilt's Center for Teaching contains detailed information on Bloom's taxonomy, both the original and the revised taxonomy. It defines each level and provides a list of useful verbs to describe the cognitive processes associated with each level.
Writing Test Questions: http://web.uct.ac.za/projects/cbe/mcqman/mcqappc.html#C1 This is the appendix from the web version of Designing and Managing Multiple Choice Exam Questions, a handbook for the University of Cape Town, South Africa. This link provides examples on how to write questions that are on the higher level of Bloom's as well as more application of each level.
Clegg, V.L. & Cashin, W.E. (1986). "Improving Multiple-Choice Tests." Idea Paper 16 from Kansas State University's Center for Faculty Evaluation and Development.
http://www.theideacenter.org/sites/default/files/Idea_Paper_16.pdf

Cashin, W.E. (1987). "Improving Essay Tests." Idea Paper 17 from Kansas State University's Center for Faculty Evaluation and Development.
http://www.theideacenter.org/sites/default/files/Idea_Paper_17.pdf
For detailed information specific to improving multiple-choice and essay tests, take a look a these two IDEA papers. These are links to pdf files, and each contains information on constructing test items, the strengths and limitations for each item, and recommendations on using each to assess student learning.

Assessment: Rubrics, Validity & Reliability
Atherton, J.S. (2010). Learning and Teaching; Assessment [On-line] UK
http://www.learningandteaching.info/teaching/assessment.htm
In this article, Atherton provides an accessible discussion of assessment, applicable to any discipline or type of course.

Rubistar.
http://rubistar.4teachers.org/
This website offers a free tool to help instructors create their own rubrics. It also offers a search tool to find sample rubrics.

Davis, B.G. (1993). "Quizzes, Tests, and Exams" and " from Tools for Teaching. Accessed online
http://teaching.berkeley.edu/bgd/quizzes.html
A great reference for faculty, Barbara Gross Davis's book Tools for Teaching, has several chapters devoted to the topic testing and grading. This is a link to the chapter on assessment. It offers a broad overview the topic as well as some general strategies for test design. The hard copy, which is available in the TLPDC library, has specific chapters on designing all the items highlighted in this article.
http://www.park.edu/cetl/quicktips/authassess.html
Park University maintains an excellent website on summative assessments. This particular link compares authentic assessment to the traditional form as well as lists advantages and disadvantages of using this to assess student learning. In addition, it provides ideas for implementing various types of authentic assessments into your course.
Additional resources

Anderson, L.W., and Krathwohl, D.R. (2001). A Taxonomy of Learning, Teaching, and Assessing: A Revision of Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. New York: Longman.

Bloom, B.S., et. al. (1956). Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: Cognitive Domain. New York: David McKay.

Gronlund, N.E., & Linn, R.L. (1990). Measurement and Evaluation in Teaching (6th ed.). New York: Macmillan Publishing Company.

Improving Multiple Choice Questions. (1990, November). For Your Consideration, No. 8. Chapel Hill, NC: Center for Teaching and Learning, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Mandernach, B. J. (2003). Multiple Choice. Retrieved June 21, 2010, from Park University Faculty Development Quick Tips.

McKeachie, W. J. (1994) Teaching tips: Strategies, Research, and Theory for College and University Teachers (9th ed.). Lexington: D.C. Health and Company.

Svinicki, M.D. (1999a). Evaluating and Grading Students. In Teachers and Students: A Sourcebook for UT Faculty (pp. 1-14). Austin, TX: Center for Teaching Effectiveness, University of Texas at Austin.

Worthen, B. R., Borg, W.R., & White, K. R. (1993). Measurement and evaluation in the schools. New York: Longman.

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State of Texas and Texas Tech University

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Assessments are essential to the learning process. As the class instructor, you need a means of gathering information on the effectiveness of your instruction and a way to measure your students' mastery of the course's educational outcomes. For students, assessment provides them with feedback on their learning and can also be an incentive for improving academic performance.

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This resource provides links to online quiz maker tools for fast and effective quiz constructions.

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In this blog, we will be looking into some awesome quiz makers for teachers. You can use these plugins at your ease and most of them have a free plan too! Here is a list of the best online quiz maker for teachers:

Why use an Online Quiz Maker for Teachers?

Why use an Online Quiz Maker for Teachers?

Interactive media has always been charming. Interactive quizzes, especially in the education field, are considerably better at drawing viewers' interest than static content like blogs. And let's face it, we all need to move ahead from the makers because there is so much more to online quizzes than that; and as a matter of fact, the best online quiz maker for teachers has a lot more to offer as well!

Let us look into some significant reasons for using an for teachers:

Efficiency

Do you worry a lot about academic integrity? By using any of the online quiz generator tools, you may set up a number of protections to prevent cheating,, randomizing the order of the questions and answers, and even randomizing entire tests by assigning each student a different item from the question bank. This would create a barrier for students who might fall trap of dishonesty while taking online exams.

Also Read: How to create category-wise Random Question Quiz

Modern Analytics

It can be laborious to manually analyze the findings for each pupil. You may quickly evaluate individual students' performance as well as that of the class as a whole using online quiz creators. You can use this to determine each student's areas of strength and weakness.

Why use an Online Quiz Maker for Teachers?

Tests became widely accessible

Repurposing Quizzes

As many students as you want may take the same quiz. This implies that you can use the same exam or quiz for various academic years. And an internet quiz creator makes that possible. The questionnaire can be customized at your fingertips and saved for further use.

Also Read: How to Repurpose Existing Content

Best Online Quiz Maker for Teachers

Here is a list of the best online quiz makers for teachers:

1. Quiz and Survey Master

You can use the QSM plugin without feeling constrained by not knowing to program or as a WordPress rookie. The QSM plugin's main features are:

It is cost-free to use. The cost of creating tests, questionnaires, or surveys is zero dollars.

Themes and add-ons for the plugin are among its extensions that may be purchased. (Some themes and add-ons are offered with the plugin for free as well.)

Utilizing it is easy. It has a solid reputation in the community for excelling at user interaction.

With thorough documentation provided at every stage of the quiz-making process, designing quizzes is made simple.

It is flexible. The QSM plugin offers a multitude of design and redesign options for your surveys and quizzes.

Since nothing is fixed in stone, you can still make changes in real-time after publishing the quiz.

With thorough documentation provided at every stage of the quiz-making process, designing quizzes is made simple.

It is flexible. The QSM plugin offers a multitude of design and redesign options for your surveys and quizzes.

Since nothing is fixed in stone, you can still make changes in real-time after publishing the quiz.

User-friendly for all purposes. This might be a free, all-inclusive best online quiz maker for teachers!

Pricing: Free to use. You can purchase extensions like addons , and as per your requirements.

2. ProProfs Quiz Maker

Second, on the list of best online quiz maker for teachers, ProProfs' online quiz tools, let you create scored quizzes, public quizzes, personality tests, polls, online tests, and examinations. The application offers 100,000+ ready-to-use questions, 100+ setups, 100+ quiz templates, and an easy-to-use quiz editor.

ProProfs Quiz Maker makes it simple to build online quizzes, examinations, tests, and surveys by supporting about 10 different question types. The quizzes can be used in conjunction with large marketing automation platforms like ActiveCampaign, Constant Contact, MailChimp, and others.

The tool offers three programs with options for monthly or yearly billing. However, some of its more advanced features are only accessible through enterprise plans.

Pricing: The Basic Plan is free; the Essentials Plan is $25 per user per month, and the Premium Plan costs $50 per user per month for ProProfs.

3. Google Forms

Next on the best online quiz maker for teachers, we have Google Forms. A Google Suite program called Google Forms is bundled with Google Drive. Users can build quizzes and get results quickly due to its simple and uncomplicated design. You can create a google forms quiz using the free ExtendedForms addon.

This learning program excels at providing learners with quick feedback after they have turned in their work.

Additionally, it enables the reuse of questions from earlier forms, which is perfect for testing on related subjects.

It contains checkboxes, dropdowns, multiple-choice, and other question categories, as well as a file upload feature for images or PDF files for questions that call for longer explanations or responses.

Google Forms Pricing: It is free to use. The business plan starts at $14 per month.

4. ClassMarker

An online quiz maker for teachers called ClassMarker offers special programs for both educators and business customers. It is totally up to you how many people have access to your tests and exams.

The test is adaptable to your logo, and it even enables customized certifications.

You may evaluate the data and create forecasts rapidly with the help of an advanced results platform.

This is a good choice for big businesses that have a lot of people to survey.

Pricing levels are rather fair given the level of functionality and customization provided.

ClassMarker Pricing: Prices for ClassMarker's Professional I and Professional II plans are $39.95 and $79.95, respectively, per user per month.

5. Outgrow Quiz Maker

Outgrow is an interactive marketing toolset that includes tests, calculators, evaluations, suggestions, polls, chatbots, giveaways, and surveys in order to help you generate leads.

Using Outgrow's user-friendly platform, you can create personality and Buzzfeed-style quizzes without any design or technical expertise.

After choosing from a variety of industry-specific optimum design templates, you may edit your quiz to add branching logic, conditional messaging, and brand consistency.

You can use extensions for google sheets, Mailchimp, etc.

Outgrow Pricing: Monthly fees for paid plans start at $22 (or $14 if billed annually).

6. EdApp

EdApp's Rapid Refresh tool makes creating tests simple. It is intended to make creating online quizzes for busy trainers and administrators simpler, quicker, and more effective.

Simply insert your questions into a spreadsheet template to build a quiz, and it will be instantly transformed into a quiz that is ready to be disseminated.

Using their spaced repetition tool, you can also plan the test delivery, whether it be daily or weekly.

You can make leaderboards and incentives with genuine rewards for top scores to interest your students and inspire them to perform to the best of their abilities.

You can use EdApp's basic analytics to see the learners' progress as well.

EdApp Pricing: The basic plan is free. Paid plan starts at $1.95 per user per month and the Pro plan is billed at $2.95 per user per month.

7. Kahoot

A game-based online quiz maker called Kahoot! increases participation with vibrant visuals and gamification features. It offers multiple-choice tests and "type answer" questions, in which participants must type their answers to show a greater understanding of a certain subject.

A group of "players" can respond to quizzes in real-time, or they can be designed as a self-paced task to be finished asynchronously.

Web browsers and mobile apps can both be used to access the "Kahoots" quizzes.

This training program can be used to reinforce important subjects like classroom lectures or employee announcement surveys.

With its unique feature, you can involve your students individually or in small groups.

is suitable for both professional and informal work and is simple to use.

Kahoot Pricing: The basic plan is free, paid plans start at $3 per user per month and range to $6.75 per user per month.

FAQs

Which is the best for you?

Additionally, the QSM plugin offers a wide range of amazing features, like ready-to-use templates, a question bank, automated grading, quick feedback, automatically generated reports & statistics, a Google Sheets connector function, etc.

If you are a teacher and looking for an online quiz maker for teachers for your school, you can get the Pro Bundle from the QSM plugin, which gives you access to 10 sites!

If you enjoyed reading this article, you might also be interested in reading about the and how to create a quiz in WordPress .

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7 Best Online Quiz Maker for Teachers - QSM

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In this blog, we will be looking into some awesome quiz makers for teachers. You can use these plugins at your ease and most of them have a free plan too! Here is a list of the best online quiz maker for teachers: Interactive media has always been charming.

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7 Tips for Preparing Students for Standardized Tests

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7 Tips for Preparing Students for Standardized Tests

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In the world of education, it would be nice if we could eliminate standardized tests. However, that will not happen. Here are 7 tips to help teachers prepare their students for standardized tests.

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Wouldn't it be nice if we could eliminate standardized testing from our educational system? I hope that one day that will be a reality. Until then, regardless of how we feel about state testing, we want to make sure that we are preparing our students to be as successful as possible on the state test. One way you can do that is to teach your students effective test-taking strategies.

In this blog post, I will share seven of my favorite test taking strategies for upper elementary students.

What are test taking strategies?

A test taking strategy is a specific strategy that will help your students be successful on a standardized test. It's important for students to realize that the reading they do on standardized tests is not like the reading they do in real life. This means we need to teach them strategies that are specific to taking standardized tests.

Why do I need to teach test taking strategies to my students?

I get it. I don't like standardized testing very much either. Spending so much time focused on test prep can be frustrating for both teachers and students. Standardized testing is an unfair and inauthentic way to assess student learning. But unfortunately, it is currently a part of our educational system. Even if we don't agree with it, we want students to feel prepared and confident on test day. This means we need to make sure our students are equipped with strategies that will help them succeed on their state test.

How do I teach test taking strategies to my students?

You should teach test taking strategies to your students in the exact same way you teach everything else. In small bite-sized lessons with a clear objective and plenty of time for students to practice independently before test day.

Some test prep strategies I will teach whole group and there are other strategies that might need to be taught in small group because not every student needs that particular strategy.

Here are 7 test taking strategies that will help your students prepare for their end-of-year state test.

Strategy #1: Know the Elements of a Standardized Test

Before you go all in on on test prep and spend hours reading practice passages and answering multiple-choice questions and having students bubble in answer sheets all day every day, make sure students understand the elements that will be included on your state-specific standardized test.

Familiarity is an important part of test prep. Identifying the elements of your state's standardized test should be one of the first test-prep lessons you teach. You don't want any surprises on test day so even if your students are familiar with reading passages and answering multiple choice questions, you want them the understand as much of what they will see on test day.

One of the best ways to teach this strategy is to find a previously released state test and go through each element. Let students know what they will see on the test and you can also explain how understanding the format of the test can help them best prepare for test day.
Things you might want to point out to your students:

The number of reading passages they will see

The genres of reading passages they will most likely see

The number of questions per passage and the total number of questions they'll see on the test

An example of how the directions are worded and what they need to pay attention to in the directions

What the test booklet might look like and if there is a separate answer sheet

How and where they will record their answers

What support material they will have access to (scratch paper, dictionaries, online tools etc.)

The more students know about the test, the easier it will be for them to prepare for it in the weeks leading up to the test.

Strategy #2: Pace Yourself

This is a strategy you will want to teach your students before you do a ton of practice tests. This will give students a chance to actually apply this strategy while they practice.

The goal of this strategy is to help students create a pacing plan to use on test day. You don't want your students to run out of time, and you also don't want them to feel rushed and quickly read through the test and answer the questions.

The best way to relieve any sort of time-limit worries is to break it down and create a pacing plan.

In order to help students do this, you'll need to know how much time students have to take the test and how many passages are included on the test.

This is how I teach students to pace themselves.

The first thing we do is identify how much time they want to have at the end to review their answer choices, look over the test, and double-check everything before they turn it in. I typically suggest students save 30 minutes at the end to review the test.

Now you need to subtract that time from the total time they have. When I taught in Texas, students had four hours to take the STAAR test so we would take 4 hours and subtract 30 minutes. Now we know that we have 3 hours and 30 minutes to spend taking the test and getting through all the passages/questions.

The next thing you need to do is tell students how many passages they can expect to see on the test. If there are 5 passages, you will take the 3 hours and 30 minutes and divide it by five. This tells you how much time students can spend reading each passage and answer each question set.

If students have 3 hours and 30 minutes to get through 5 passages this means they can spend 42 minutes per passage and question set.

This helps give students a general time frame to stick to for each section of the text.

NOTE: I don't like to break it down much more than this. There is no need to tell students how much time to spend on each question. Some passages will be shorter/quicker to read. Some questions will require less thinking/searching for evidence. Students don't need to figure out the exact amount of time to spend on each question. That would just stress them out. But having a general idea of how much time to spend on each passage/question set can be helpful.

Strategy #3: Right There Questions vs. Thinking Questions

I like to teach students to categorize questions into two different types. Right There Questions and Thinking Questions.

Right There Questions are the questions with answers that can be found in the text. The answer is literally RIGHT THERE. Students know that if it is a right there question, they are going to have to go back and reread a portion of the text to figure out the answer. For example:

What happened after...

Who was responsible for...

According to the map on page...

Thinking Questions are the questions that don't have answers directly found in the text. Students will need to THINK in order to come up with the answer. Students will have to combine text evidence with their own personal knowledge and critical thinking skills in order to come up with the answer. For example:

Which example is the best summary of the selection?

What can you infer about _____?

What is the theme of this selection?

Why did the author include....

We often tell students to go back to the text to find their answer, but not every answer can be found directly in the text. Some students will spend an excessive amount of time searching for answers that can't even be found in the text.

Make sure students know the difference between Right There and Thinking Questions. This will help them come up with an effective plan to answer each question.

Strategy #4: Pay Attention to Word Choice Used in the Questions

This one is important. We want students to pay close attention to the words used in the multiple-choice questions. Often times there are words used that can act as a clue and direct students to a specific section of text where they could find the answer. Or there might be a specific word used that could help students eliminate an answer choice.

I would encourage you to look through your state's specific test and see which words you see frequently pop up in questions.

Here are some that you might see on your state test that you'll want to point out to students.

Most or Best - I bet your students will see this one on the test. When students see these words, it's important that they realize they are asking them to determine the highest quality option or the answer choice that is better than the others. This means that there might be TWO answer choices taht could be correct, but students are being asked to select the BEST.

Based on (or according to) - When students see this phrase used in a question, the question is telling them where to go in the text to find the answer. Make sure students know they should return to this portion of the text. It's important for students to realize that there might be other pieces of evidnece that they could use to answer this question, but the test creator only wants them to use the information located in a certain section of text.

Suggests or Supports - When students see these words they are a clue that they are looking for a detail in the text that is connected to the idea mentioned in the question. They are basically looking for the text evidence that supports what is mentioned in the question.

These are just some words you might want to point out to your students. The goal of this strategy is for students to think like the "test creator" when they see important signal words used in test questions.

Strategy #5: Answer the Question Using Your Own Words First

This strategy is great and works on any type of standardized test. You want to teach your students to answer the question using their own words before they look at the multiple-choice options. Sometimes students can be distracted or influenced by the multiple-choice options. In fact, test creators will intentionally throw in "distractor" questions with the intent of trying to distract students from the right answer.

To help your students feel confident in their answer choice, have them get in the habit of covering up the multiple-choice answer options.

Then read the question.

Then answer the question using their own words.

Then see how their answer compares to the multiple-choice options.

If they don't see an answer choice that matches up with their own answer, then this means they need to go back and reread a portion of the text and look for different evidence.
I f you'd like to try this strategy for free, you can grab the free download in my TPT store.

Strategy #6: Don't Forget to Bubble In!

While this may seem like a silly strategy to spend time on, it is extremely important. And I can't tell you the number of standardized tests I've proctored where I've seen students make mistakes bubbling on their answer sheet.

I always like to tell my students that it doesn't matter if they know all the correct answers on the test, if they don't know how to correctly bubble in the answers on the answer sheet they won't get credit.

If your students are taking a paper-pencil test and will be filling in bubbles, then do at least one explicit test prep lesson on how to correctly fill in the bubbles... even fifth graders can forget how to do this part correctly.

Strategy #7: A Pep-Talk for Confidence

I've saved the best for last. This is my favorite test-prep strategy to teach students. Ultimately we want our students to feel confident on test day. One of the best ways to do that is to teach them how to give themselves a pep-talk. That way in the days leading up to the test, or on actual test day, students know the words to use in their self-talk to pump themselves up for the test.

When you teach this lesson, you can have students brainstorm sayings, mantras, or phrases they can repeat to themselves on test day. You can create a giant anchor chart with all their ideas. You can even have students write a letter to themselves or put their favorite positive saying on a post-it to stick on their desk.

Anything that will remind students to think positively about the test.

Here are a few phrases you might want to have your students repeat to themselves before test day:

I am prepared for this test.

I know I am a great reader.

I have worked hard and I am ready.

No matter how I do, I am really proud of all my hard work this year.

Hopefully you find these seven test taking strategies helpful and are excited about teaching them to your students. If you'd like even more test taking strategies similar to these, you can check out my 15 Test Taking Strategies resource on TPT. It includes all of these lessons, plus 8 more.

Happy Teaching!

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7 Test Taking Strategies for Elementary Students

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Wouldn't it be nice if we could eliminate standardized testing from our educational system? I hope that one day that will be a reality. Until then, regardless of how we feel about state testing, we want to make sure that we are preparing our students to be as successful as possible on the state test.

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How to Prepare Students for Standardized Tests

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How to Prepare Students for Standardized Tests

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This article shares ways to help prepare students for standardized tests. As a teacher, these tests are inevitable, so it is out job to teach out students about standardized tests, and how to prepare for them, including mindfulness.

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Stress-Free Ways to Prepare Students for Standardized Testing

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Are you looking for ways to help prepare students for standardized testing? Discover our tips to reduce test anxiety and build confidence!

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This link will take you to the Alberta Assessment Consortium where there are over 250 performance task ideas. Using the search bar, you can search whatever grade or idea you are hoping to assess, and endless ideas will be provided for you.

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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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Dogfooding: The Critical Step to Test Construction

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Dogfooding: The Critical Step to Test Construction

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Before administering a test, it is important to dog food the test. This article outlines all the steps that should be taken BEFORE giving out a test to students.

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Listen to this post as a podcast:

Here's a word you may not have heard before: dogfooding. It's a term that's been used for years among software developers, and it refers to the act of using your own product as a consumer in order to work out its glitches, the metaphorical equivalent of "eating your own dog food."

When a new app is created, for example, company employees will load it onto their devices and actually use it for a while to see how it operates from the user's point of view. For many companies, dogfooding is just part of their best practices, a natural step in software development before a product is launched for consumer use.

I would like to propose that we start using this term in teaching, to make dogfooding a regular part of best practices in instructional design. This is not the first time I've tried to drag things from the tech world into the teaching world: Last year, I suggested we could grow more as educators by embracing the concept of teaching in beta, where we roll out a new teaching practice before it's completely perfect, then work to improve it as we go. We can follow technology's example again by dogfooding our lessons whenever possible. This means trying our own assignments. Taking our own tests. Doing our own homework. Attempting to actually complete those big projects. By doing this, we can detect all kind of problems that we'd never notice if we just created tasks and gave them straight to students.

Here are seven ways you can improve your practice with dogfooding:

1. Set realistic expectations.

If you're anything like me, you tend to go a little too big in the "idea" stage of any project. So before you hand over an assignment to your students, try doing it first to make sure you aren't asking for too much. Joanne Marks (@joannemarks ), an elementary science teacher in Gulfport, Mississippi, assigned her students to research the life of a famous scientist and display their findings on a cereal box. After explaining the requirements and reviewing the rubric, she told them she would bring in an example the next day. "So I took it home and started doing the project," she says. "I got halfway through and I was like, oh my gosh, this is way too much for the amount of time I have allowed." She cut back on the requirements for the project and gave students a new rubric the following day. If she hadn't taken this step, Joanne would have created a mess for herself and her students. Instead, she was able to adjust the assignment right on time.

2. Write better instructions.

Suppose you have created a task that includes step-by-step directions. Because you came up with the idea and wrote the instructions yourself, there's a pretty good chance you missed something, some small part of a step that could create big confusion for students if you forget to include it. This would be the equivalent of failing to mention that the lid must be placed on the blender before you turn it on...obvious to anyone who has used a blender many times, but not so obvious to someone who hasn't. So test your directions out by attempting to follow the steps exactly as they are written, or ask another person to read them to you and check to make sure you're not filling in gaps with your own knowledge. If you want an even better test of the clarity of your instructions, have a small group of students run through them first before giving them to everyone else.

3. Troubleshoot complex activities.

When you're planning a lab, a workshop, or some other kind of hands-on, multi-step activity, dogfooding it will help you proactively solve problems with equipment and logistics. Karen Ginsburg, a grade 7-8 science teacher in Oakland, California, is spending this summer practicing a water quality unit she will do with her students in the fall. "I will go each week and collect data as if I was a student," she explains. "It will give me practice and experience being a student and learning as I go. What are the pitfalls? Where are the problems likely to surface? What am I really asking my students to do? Am I being realistic? Practicing something I am asking them to do is very informative!" Running through an activity like this can help you figure out how to move students through the various stages of the task without bottlenecking them in one particular spot, and because you'll be actually using the materials, you'll have a better sense of how to organize them for student use.

4. Get your timing right.

One common issue for teachers in the early years of their careers is timing. It takes experience to be able to accurately predict how long a learning experience is going to take, and even veteran teachers can find themselves running out of time or finishing a lesson way faster than expected. When you dogfood an activity, you can get a much clearer sense for how long it will take. I wish I had done this for a lesson I did with my pre-service teachers: To show them different possibilities for student grouping, I gave them envelopes containing tiny pieces of card stock (about the size of dimes) which I wanted them to arrange in different configurations. The idea was fine, but about five minutes into the lesson, I realized there were just too many pieces - doing each part of the exercise took way too long. If I had taken some time the night before to actually run through the exercise, I would have realized this quickly and simplified it. Because I hadn't done that, I had to experience it the hard way, watching my students try diligently to do as I had asked, and wasting precious instructional time on something that should have taken just a few minutes to get the point across.

5. Create models.

Dogfooding an assignment allows you to build a prototype of a finished product, which can work wonders for helping students understand what's expected of them. This is especially important with larger projects, when students will be spending days or weeks putting together the pieces of some final presentation or artifact, or when the product you have in mind is something students have never really seen. So if, for example, you would like students to write and perform satirical skits in which they parody some significant event in history, go ahead and create one yourself first. Not only will this help you better appreciate the scope of what you're asking students to do, it will give them a much clearer target to aim for.

6. Revisit the mind of a beginner.

If you assign the kind of work to students that you yourself have been doing for years, it already makes perfect sense to you. That means you might have a hard time explaining it clearly to someone who is coming to it for the first time. Addressing this problem requires a slightly different kind of dogfooding - finding some way to approach your assignment the way a beginner would. This was the challenge for Sarah Brown Wessling (@SarahBWessling), a high school English teacher and the 2010 National Teacher of the Year. Early in her career, she had tasked her students with doing a literary analysis of The Great Gatsby, but one student just wasn't getting it. After several one-on-one sessions with the student, including think-alouds and looking at student models, Sarah still wasn't able to make the task clear, and the student never quite got it. "I had been asking her to do something that I could already do," Sarah says. "I had already read The Great Gatsby. I had written papers on it. I had analyzed it. It was not hard for me. And because I couldn't struggle along with her, I couldn't help her."

Determined to do a better job the following year, Sarah took a week after school let out for the summer and headed straight for the closest university library. "I didn't pull out books on how to teach literary analysis," she says. "Instead, I had the assignment sheet that I'd given my students, and I grabbed a book that was hard for me, a book I hadn't read - I grabbed some Proust. I sat down with two notebooks. In one notebook I did the assignment that I'd given my students. In the other notebook, I wrote down everything my brain did as I did that assignment." By the end of that week, Sarah had discovered a clearer approach to tackling literary analysis with her students, and was better able to explain it the following year.

7. Tweak your design.

I can't count the number of times I have gone to fill out a form - as a student and just in regular life - and didn't have enough room for something I had to write. I really wish more people would try completing their own forms. And who makes more "forms" than teachers? We create worksheets, tests, even online forms that may very well need some editing in their design. Attempting to complete them yourself is a simple form of dogfooding that can immediately show you when you have asked for a paragraph but only offer an inch of writing space, when you have set lines way too close together, or when you have provided way more space than is needed for an entry, which can make students question the quality of their response. It's just a little thing, this spacing issue, but little things can add up. Once you build this into your practice, you'll get better at spacing things right the first time around.

Although adding dogfooding to your planning process will take extra time, consider the alternative: If you don't troubleshoot an assignment before giving it to students, you could be setting yourself up for hours of frustration as you attempt to re-teach concepts, provide time for students to re-do assignments, explain requirements to parents via phone or email, make adjustments to your schedule for activities that were timed wrong, or even deal with discipline issues that result from students just not getting what they're supposed to do. Eating your own dogfood is time well spent, a simple way to take your practice one step closer to perfection.

Yum. ♥

There's more where this came from.
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Dogfooding: How Often Do You Do Your Own Assignments?

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It's time to add dogfooding -- the practice of using your own product as a consumer in order to find and fix the bugs -- to our own teaching practice.

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Standardized testing is a controversial topic. This article outlines the history of standardized tests, the purpose they have, and all the factors that go into these tests that are affecting students performance.

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Abstract

Standardized testing in some circles is demonized as the vilest form of assessment. These individuals point to many problems with how these tests are created and administered, as well how the results are used. In other circles standardized testing represents true assessment whereby individual performances can be compared to other performances in a meaningful manner. That is, standardized testing is seen by some as a fair form of comparison; others do not. Knowing where standardized testing came from and what were the motivations for its growth, may help in understanding and perhaps in being able to use the results of standardized tests to improve teaching and learning. This article serves as an overview of the history and current realities of standardized testing.

Introduction

Considering the role standardized testing has acquired in education systems internationally, one can safely assume that a vast majority of Canadians have experienced these tests as students. More and more students' lives are becoming influenced by standardized testing, as a societal push for educational accountability has led to a dramatic increase in the use of these assessments across districts and nations (Guskey & Jung, 2013). Their value is much debated by educators, academics, and politicians, but what is clear is that their use seems to be increasing rather than decreasing. Experiencing standardized tests as students can provide a useful perspective, however, it is important that faculty and students have a general understanding of the history of standardized or high-stakes testing, as well as a basic overview of the how these assessments are built.

This article will explore the history of standardized testing, recent developments within standardized testing, creation of test questions, and applicability.

Definition

Stiggins (2008) states that

these once-a-year tests are not likely to be of much value to classroom teachers as you plan and carry out day-to-day instruction. They are assessments OF learning that are too infrequent, broad in focus, and slow in returning results to inform the ongoing array of daily decisions. But this does not mean that these tests are without purpose or value. They can communicate valuable information about students' achievement status to other decision makers (pp. 347-348).

This relatively rational statement could be considered a definition of the battle lines that have been drawn up between those who are proponents of standardized tests and those against them.

The intent in standardized testing is to have large numbers of students write a single test, then to compare any single score against all others to see how an individual's score compares to the large sample. The results are then posted on a bell curve that indicates where a score sits within descriptive statistical standards. Standardized tests are given to large groups numbering at least in the thousands, sometimes millions. In order to make the results as valid as possible, thus "standardizing" the administration of the assessment, the tests are:

written at the same time and same day for all students,

administered with consistent instructions,

allowed the same amount of time for each student to write the test, and

scored in the same manner.

Scantron is a common method of marking bubble sheets of multiple-choice style questions. Essays are marked by specialists who have been trained to mark in similar fashion.

Burke (1999) maintains that traditionally "standardized" meant that the test is standard or the same in three ways: (a) format/questions, (b) instructions, and (c) time allotment. Format/questions means that the test questions are the same for all students writing the exam. The information that the students are to show they know is asked of them in the same format that is usually multiple choice. Multiple choice is the format of choice because as Stiggins (2008) suggests, "It is relatively easy to develop, administer, and score in large numbers" (p. 354). Further, in order for the test to be fair in the sense of all students having the same chance to answer each question correctly, all questions must be the same.

The instructions are to be the same as well. These are to be delivered in the same way to all students so that no students are advantaged or disadvantaged. The last standardization is time allotment. All students are to be given the same amount of time to finish the exam.

However, the standardization of standardized exams is being eroded. Common changes to standardized testing allow certain students to have more than the allotted amount of time. Some students with certain learning needs are now allowed to have more time than other students to complete the exam. These students are then often allowed to write in different rooms as well.

The second requirement of standardized tests is also frequently adapted. Students with reading problems can get "readers" to read the questions. The rationale behind this is that the curriculum asks that students know certain information. Whether the students know this information is the purpose of the exam, not whether the students can read. These readers may adapt the standardized instructions that the students receive. Also, reading the questions to the students may give them an advantage or disadvantage other students do not have. Therefore, the second and third requirements of standardized testing are no longer strongly in effect.

There are other forms of standardized testing that are available other than multiple-choice questions, for example, essay writing. This form of testing currently has the disadvantage of needing markers to assess the essays. Essay markers must be trained to gain a sense of what the standards are. Then they must engage in the time-consuming activity of reading the essays. Even with the training assessors can give significantly different grades to an essay.

Proponents of standardized testing point to large-scale use of the tests that go beyond the individual student or even the school. Standardized testing allows comparison between provincial education systems or even national education systems. Advocates say that standardized tests are impartial and rational. They state that standardized tests are an inexpensive way to check that schools and teachers are accountable, that students and therefore the public are getting the education that public dollars are paying for. Standardized tests by this measure are intended to examine the whole education system and therefore individual scores may be not as significant.

"... the standardization of standardized exams is being eroded."

History

The history of standardized testing is underpinned by noble sentiments. Testing can be found in all cultures. Evaluating the understanding of someone learning a new skill is common for all societies. Standardized testing as we know it today began in earnest in China as a form of aptitude testing, trying to ascertain who would be best at a particular job. Fletcher (2009) states that, "The earliest record of standardized testing comes from China, where hopefuls for government jobs had to fill out examinations testing their knowledge of Confucian philosophy and poetry." These exams started in about 100 CE but were firmly established during the Sui Dynasty in 605 CE. They attempted to predict aptitude by discerning the best candidates for the Chinese civil service.

The most recent impetus to standardized testing was the Industrial Revolution and the movement to increased schooling where students were moved out of the work force and into schools. One of the easiest and arguably the cheapest way to test large numbers of those children was with a standardized exam.

Alfred Binet (1857-1911) and Theodore Simon (1872-1961) developed what is now commonly known as an IQ Test, beginning in the late 1800s and culminating with the Binet-Simon scale in 1905. These intelligence tests were created in response to the French government wanting to develop special education classes for students who were not benefiting from the newly instituted regular compulsory education program. The tests tried to identify students who needed focused education in order to maximize their education. These standardized tests were an attempt to streamline education so that society would gain maximum benefit from each citizen, a noble sentiment.

The test contained problems arranged in order of difficulty in a range of subjects but had as the basis items assessing comprehension, reasoning, and judgment (Reynolds, Livingston, & Willson, 2009). Louis Terman (1877-1956), who was teaching at the time at Stanford University, noted the success of these exams and their potential applicability in America. He spearheaded the creation of the Stanford-Binet Test which remains, in its fifth iteration, the most popular IQ testing vehicle in existence.

Fletcher (2009) suggests that "... by World War I, standardized testing was standard practice: aptitude quizzes called Army Mental Tests were conducted to assign U.S. servicemen jobs during the war effort." Robert Yerkes was one of the academics assigned to test the servicemen and then suggest appropriate placement. This testing of servicemen helped build up a record of statistical evidence for IQ testing. Carl Brigham worked with Yerkes in the testing of servicemen. After the war he published a book, A Study of American Intelligence, based on the results in World War I. From this finding and analysis he created the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) in 1926. Its intention was to screen college applicants to insure the worthy candidates were allowed admission. The test became immediately popular and by 1945 it became a standard method of college and university entrance, again a noble enterprise.

Everett Linquist invented the American College Test (ACT) in 1959 as a competitor to the SAT. In 2011, more than 3.3 million individuals wrote SAT and ACT exams. The ACT is considered more of a test of accumulated knowledge while the SAT is thought to test logic. Other important standardized exams are the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) and the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT).

These standardized tests that attempt to predict success or aptitude seem to be successful. Reynolds, Livingston, and Willson (2009) state, "As a general rule, research has shown with considerable consistency that contemporary intelligence tests are good predictors of academic success" (p. 334). Fishman and Pasanella (1960) reviewed SAT predictive validity in the 1950s, finding that the median correlation between student first-year success and the SAT score was a significant 0.61. Recently Kobrin, Patterson, Shaw, Mattern, and Barbuti (2008) found a correlation of 0.29, a respectable correlation between SAT scores and First Year Grade Point Average (FYGPA).

In Alberta, standardized testing began in the 1960s. McEwen (1995) suggests that Alberta's introduction of achievement testing for Grades 3, 6, and 9 was done in response to a worldwide wave of educational reform that wanted more accountability in education. At the Grade 12 level, diploma exams were reinstated in 1984 after being removed for a few years. McEwen clarifies the reason for the achievement tests:

Public education is funded by taxpayers who want and have a right to know if they are getting value for their investment. Such accountability requires public information. An indicator system is a tool to focus reform and to improve accountability by providing better information about the education system's performance. The goals, or intended benefits, of implementing indicator systems are to assess the effectiveness and efficiency of the educational enterprise, to improve education, and to provide a mechanism for accountability (p. 28).

Pros and Cons of Standardized Testing

The primary conundrums in standardized testing of achievement lie in the validity and applicability of the test results. Validity relates to how accurately the test results actually reflect the students' knowledge about the subject. Standardized tests use a minimum number of questions and getting even one or two wrong due to environmental reasons will affect the individual student's results. The factors that affect a student getting a question right or wrong may be infinite and could be organized into (a) situational/environmental confounding factors, (b) personal/emotional factors, and (c) grade-spread requirement in standardized testing.

Situational/Environmental Factors

Even though standardized testing attempts to minimize confounding variables by requiring students to write in similar situations, it may be that some students are writing in situations that are significantly different from other students, for example, it might be too bright or too dark or even too cold or too hot. The testing conditions may cause students to perform poorly such as when students might miss questions not because they do not know the material but for something as simple as the testing centre had poor lighting that caused headaches in students, or because the testing room was too cold and did not allow certain students to focus.

Personal/Emotional Factors

Students who are poor test takers because of nerves associated with tests may not be able to show what they can accomplish in the high-stakes atmosphere of standardized testing. Their anxiety becomes the determining factor of how well they do the test, not whether they know the material. Even students who are normally good test takers can have a skewed result; for example, a student who had an emotional moment just before the test might not be able to focus and receives a result that is not reflective of his or her capabilities.

Grade-Spread Requirement

Perhaps the primary concern with achievement standardized testing is that testing should be based on curricular outcomes that are mandated by the provincial or state governing bodies. Standardized tests have to make a one-size-fits-all test that will not fit all because as Popham (1999) says, "... standardized achievement tests will invariably contain a number of items that are not aligned with what's emphasized in a particular setting" (p. 331). A 1983 study of alignment between textbook content and the standardized test found that, "In no case was even 50 percent of a test's content satisfactorily addressed in any textbook" (Popham, p. 331). That is, there was a poor correlation between what was in the test and in the textbooks that were a prime resource to prepare students for the test.

Test creators seek a score spread in their questions. They seek questions that are not answered correctly by too many students. Questions that are answered correctly by more than 60% of the students are usually removed from the test. Popham indicates this is a problem because "... items on which students perform well often cover the content that, because of its importance, teachers stress" (p. 332). So the important material that is required by the curriculum is often not tested.

How questions are determined to be most worthy for standardized testing is important. When deciding which questions to use, test creators, in essence, try to find questions that only the top 50% of the students will get right. These types of questions are popular in standardized testing because they support the common theory of testing whereby the highest achieving students answer the questions correctly. So, standardized tests can be self-affirming. Students who are in the top 50% of the class answered the questions correctly because they are in the top 50% of the class.

Further, if a concept is taught to all students in a class and all students answer the question correctly, that question will not be used in the future as it does not spread the students' scores so that fine-grained norm-referenced numbers can be associated with each student. That is, if all students did well on the test then there would be no bell curve and the associate connection with where each student sits on the curve. Put more simply, there have to be questions that are only answered by about 50% of the students in order for comparisons to be made.

A student's socio-economic status is highly correlated to standardized achievement test scores. This is probably due to the tests being skewed to reflect learning that children gain at home. Again there is a curriculum and testing mismatch. For example, if a question asks about a "field of work" such as law or medicine, students whose parents are in such professions may understand the concept from conversations at home. However, students whose parents work in the service industry or work at the local grocery store may not. Answering the question correctly may not be a function of what was learned at school but rather what has been learned out of school. Antagonists to standardized achievement testing suggest that it is not fair to check on student achievement that is not in the curriculum.

What instructors or textbooks focus on may not be reflected in the test. The requirement for a score spread in the exams means that questions that are answered by a majority of students will probably be removed because they do not discriminate enough.

Conclusion

The history of standardized testing suggests that the impetus for large-scale testing has been based on noble aspirations, primarily that of having the right person in the right place, whether that place is the correct job in the military or the correct form of education. Standardized testing has value in today's society. Aptitude testing for admission into colleges and universities seems to be especially effective as quantitative research has established links between such testing and later success at post-secondary institutions.

Achievement testing has issues especially related to situational/environmental factors, personal/emotional factors, and grade-spread requirement that may make applicability difficult to ascertain. That is, standardized testing may be best at determining aptitude or future ability in an individual and also good at examining a school district's efficaciousness. Standardized tests seem to be weaker at being able to correctly indicate how much a specific student has learned.
>> Back to Table of Contents
References

Alberta Assessment Consortium (2012). A new look at public assurance: Imagining the possibilities for Alberta students. Retrieved from http://www.aac.ab.ca/a-new-look-at-public-assurance-imagining-the-possibilities-for-alberta-students.html

Alberta Education (1997). Teaching Quality Standard applicable to the provision of basic education in Alberta. (Ministerial order #016/97). Retrieved from http://education.alberta.ca/media/6734948/teaching%20quality%20standard%20-%20english.pdf

Bew, Lord P. (2011). Independent review of key stage 2 testing, assessment and accountability, final report, as written for the Department of Education. Retrieved from https://www.education.gov.uk/publications/standard/publicationDetail/Page1/DFE-00068-2011

Boardman, A. G., & Woodruff, A. L. (2004). Teacher change and "high stakes" assessment: What happens to professional development. Teaching & Teacher Education, 20(6), 545-557.

Booi, L., & Couture, J. C. (2011). Testing, testing. What Alberta can learn from Finland about standardization and the role of the teacher. Alberta Views, 7, 28-32.

Brookhart, S. M. (2001). The "Standards" and classroom assessment research. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, Dallas, TX. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED451189).

Burke, K. (1999). The mindful school: How to assess authentic learning (3rd ed.). Arlington Heights, IL: Skylight Publishing.

Fishman, J. A., & Pasanella, A. K. (1960). College admission selection studies. Review of Educational Research, 30(4), 298-310.

Fletcher, D. (2009, December 11). Standardized testing. Time. Retrieved from http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1947019,00.html

Franklin, C. A., & Snow-Gerono, J. L. (2007). Perceptions of teaching in an environment of standardized testing: Voices from the field. The Researcher, 21(1), 2-21.

Gordon, S. P., & Reese, M. (1997). High-stakes testing: Worth the price? Journal of School Leadership, 7, 345-368.

Gronlund, N., & Waugh, C. (2009). Assessment of student achievement (9th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

Guskey, T. R., & Jung, L. A. (2013). Answers to essential questions about standards, assessments, grading, & reporting. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

Kobrin, J., Patterson, B., Shaw, E., Mattern, K., & Barbuti, S. (2008). Validity of SAT for predicting first year college grade point average (Report No. 2008-5). New York, NY: College Board. Retrieved from http://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/Validity_of_the_SAT_for_Predicting_First_Year_College_Grade_Point_Average.pdf

McEwen, N. (1995). Accountability in education in Canada. Canadian Journal of Education, 20, 1-17.

Pedulla, J. P. (2003). State-mandated testing - What do teachers think? Educational Leadership, 61(3), 42-46.

Popham, J. (2002). Classroom assessment: What teachers need to know (3rd ed.) Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Popham, W. J. (1999). Why standardized tests don't measure educational quality. Educational Leadership, 56(6), 8-15.

Reynolds, C., Livingston, R., & Willson, V. (2009). Measurement and assessment in education (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

Stiggins, R. J. (1999). Are you assessment literate? The High School Journal, 6(5), 20-23.

Stiggins, R. J. (2008). An introduction to student-involved assessment for learning (5th ed.). Columbus, OH: Pearson Merrill Prentice Hall.
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Standardized testing in some circles is demonized as the vilest form of assessment. These individuals point to many problems with how these tests are created and administered, as well how the results are used. In other circles standardized testing represents true assessment whereby individual performances can be compared to other performances in a meaningful manner.

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This blog takes teachers through all the good and bad of summative assessment. It also gives different types of summative assessments, and when these assessments should administered.

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Teaching Resources and Lesson Plans - Teaching Ideas 4U by Amy Mezni

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Pros of Summative Assessments:

Gauge student understanding.

Use in academic records.

Help identify weak areas in students.

Accelerate individuals who already mastered the material.

Help assess how well you teach (how you present, type of instruction, etc.)

Cons of Summative Assessments:

Can demote individuals (students who don't perform well.)

Can be disruptive for the class (stressful for students.)

Not always the perfect gauge of student understanding (students don't always test well.)

Students could underperform due to a poorly made assessment.

In most schools, there isn't time to address students' weaknesses found by assessments.

Although there are many pros and cons, the good news is that you can be well on your way to utilizing the summative assessment to its highest form with the right combination of assessment types and grade weight.

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Pros & Cons of Different Summative Assessments - Teaching Resources and Lesson Plans - Teaching Ideas 4U by Amy Mezni

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Pros of Summative Assessments: Gauge student understanding. Use in academic records. Help identify weak areas in students. Accelerate individuals who already mastered the material. Help assess how well you teach (how you present, type of instruction, etc.) Cons of Summative Assessments: Can demote individuals (students who don't perform well.)

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Feedback is just as important for teachers to give, as it is for students to give. These online tools allow for a teacher to gain feedback from their students in a fun and engaging way. All of these tools will give a teacher instant feedback.

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Educational Technology and Mobile Learning

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This is an updated version of an earlier post published here in EdTech and mLearning. Most of the web tools cited below are presently offering a wide variety of remote learning resources as a way to help schools, teachers, educators, and parents deal with the interruptions caused by the current pandemic. Make sure you check them out and see whether they are of any value to your individual situation or not.

Over the last few months we have reviewed a number of interesting web tools and mobile apps teachers can use to collect students feedback. And as we have argued elsewhere, access to students feedback can positively impact both the teaching and learning process. On the one hand, it provides teachers with a discerning window through which they can assess their teaching methodologies, assess students comprehension, and based on gleaned insights, formulate working plans to meet students learning needs. On the other hand, the act of providing feedback empowers students with a voice, makes them feel valued and that their opinion matters and therefore engages them on a deeper level in the learning process.

In today's post, we are particularly focusing on two basic feedback gathering strategies: polls and surveys. We have curated for you some of the most popular web tools you can use to create various types of polls and surveys. In doing so, we have divided our collection into two main categories: education-focused tools which are basically tools that are primarily created for use within educational settings (yes, we included Google Forms in this category) and general survey and poll creation tools. Check them out and share with us your feedback in our Facebook page.

There is an infographic version of this post which you can access and download from this page.

I- Education-focused tools

This is definitely our best in this list. Google Forms allows you to easily create polls and surveys using a wide variety of forms and question types. It also lets you include multimedia materials into your forms such as images and videos. Its collaborative features enable you to work with your team to build a survey or poll together. 'Responses to your surveys are neatly and automatically collected in Forms, with real time response info and charts. Or, take your data further by viewing it all in Sheets.'

'Plickers lets you poll your class for free, without the need for student devices. Just give each student a card (a "paper clicker"), and use your iPhone/iPad to scan them to do instant checks-for-understanding, exit tickets, and impromptu polls. Best of all, your data is automatically saved, student-by-student, at plickers.com.'

'Kahoot allows teachers to create quizzes and surreys that include a wide variety of multimedia elements such as videos, pictures and text. Each quiz you create can be accessed by students across different devices . Also teachers have the possibility to create time-controlled quizzes. You can set a specific period of time for the answer of each question. In this way students are rewarded not only for the correct answer but also for their timeliness.'
4- Socrative

'Socrative is your classroom app for fun, effective classroom engagement. Quickly assess students with prepared activities or on-the-fly questions to get immediate insight into student understanding. Then use auto-populated results to determine the best instructional approach to most effectively drive learning.'

'GoSoapBox is a powerful, flexible, and intuitive student response system for educators to use in their classrooms. Leveraging web-enabled devices, teachers digitally engage students to conduct formative assessment and gain insight into student comprehension that was never before possible.'
6- Quizalize

'This tool allows teachers to create fun classroom exams or homework. Teachers can see the results live and easily spot students' strengths and weaknesses. The process to create a quiz is simple and easy. After you log in to your account (registration is required,Quizalize is free for individual teachers), go to 'Your Quizzes' tab and click on 'Create a new quiz'. Follow the instructions and type in your data. Once you are done click on 'Save' to save your quiz. To assign the quiz to your students click on 'Set Quiz' button and enter the name of your class. A unique code will be generated for you to share with students. The students can then go to www.quizal.me and input the class code and their name to access the quiz.'
7- Formative

Another excellent web tool to collect students feedback. You can use it to create various types of polls and surveys and track students responses as they happen.

II- General survey and poll creation tools

A good web tool to engage your audience in real time interaction. It lets you design interactive polls and surveys and deliver them live to your audience. 'Responses appear in an animated graph or chart embedded in your presentation. Results update live for all to see.' Poll Everywhere works in major presentation tools such as Powerpoint, Keynote, and Google Slides.

A simple tool to easily create polls to embed on your blog or website. Micropoll provides you with the tools to customize your polls, add various types of questions, and analyze audience responses.

Use Zoho Survey to create multilingual surveys that others can access from any device. You can use pre-designed templates or start your survey from scratch. Results are graphically displayed in real time.

Lets you create and deliver online polls quickly and easily. Just compose your questions, email or post the link to your poll online, and get results.

'Typeform allows you to easily create a poll that looks beautiful, and gets more responses...You can make a poll in minutes by dragging and dropping questions and adding design elements so that it blends beautifully into your brand. Increase the level of engagement and turn the poll into an experience by adding icons, images, GIFS and video.'

It allows you to create your own surveys, questionnaires, and quizzes. It offers a real time reporting dashboard that enables you to see results and statistics of your survey. You can share your surveys through a generated URL, embed them on your website or share them through email.

'SurveyPlanet offers a tremendous set of free tools for designing your survey, sharing your survey online, and reviewing your survey's results'. Some of its features include: custom survey themes with responsive layouts, images upload, multiple languages, pre-written questions, various question types, question branching and many more.

8- Free Online Surveys

'Create a full page survey with multiple questions, question types and pages. Advanced features like question branching/skip-logic, file uploading and more.'

'Create your own questionnaire with our fast and intuitive survey tool. We have a wide range of question types for you to choose from. You can add your own colors and logo to the questionnaire, use skip logic and much more. No third party software is required. You simply need your browser and a user account!'

10- Pollmaker

Another easy and simple tool to create and share polls and surveys. First, type in your questions and answers, select a theme or create your own and on the 'settings tab set options like allowing multiple answers, allowing voters to enter their own answers and much more. Next, click share and copy your poll Vote url to share with voters. You can also hit Embed to place the poll directly on your website or blog.'

Sources:
The 20 Best Online Survey Builder Tools (Zapier).
15 Good Tools for Quickly Gathering Feedback from Students (Free Technology for Teachers).
12 Great Formative Assessment Tools for Teachers (Educational Technology and Mobile Learning).
Teaching Tools: Surveys/Polling/Quizzes (Harvard Library).
13 Great free survey tools for teachers (Educational Technology and Mobile Learning).
Polling The Classroom: 4 Free Polling Tools to Keep Students Engaged (Open Education Database).

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Tools to (remotely) Collect Students Feedback

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This is an updated version of an earlier post published here in EdTech and mLearning. Most of the web tools cited below are presently offering a wide variety of remote learning resources as a way to help schools, teachers, educators, and parents deal with the interruptions caused by the current pandemic.

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This resource contains a table that outlines different types of feedback that are appropriate for specific assessments types.

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Feedback may involve activities and strategies such as: participation, interaction in discussion, reflection, collaboration, group, or individual work (Costello & Crane, 2009).

Types of feedback include:

The table below outlines some types of feedback that could be used in higher education at various stages of learning. A course may incorporate one or multiple types of feedback.

References

Bull, J., & McKenna, C. (2004). Blueprint for Computer-Assisted Assessment, (pp. 52- 62). New York, NY: Routledge Falmer.

Costello, J., & Crane, D. (2009, October). Providing learner-centered feedback using a variety of technologies. Paper presented at EDGE 2009 conference, St. John's, Newfoundland.

Finn, B., & Metcalfe, J. (2010). Scaffolding feedback to maximize long-term error correction. Memory & Cognition, 19(7), 951-961.

Lourillard, D. (2007). Rethinking University Teaching (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge Falmer.

Mohr, D. (2010, July). Providing effective feedback in online courses for student learning. Sloan C Foundation Webinar. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDw6ONhd5ys

Nichol, D. (2007). E-assessment by design: using multiple-choice tests to good effect. Journal of Further and Higher Education, 31(1), 53-64.

Resource created by Jane C. & Daph C.

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Feedback may involve activities and strategies such as: participation, interaction in discussion, reflection, collaboration, group, or individual work (Costello & Crane, 2009). Types of feedback include: The table below outlines some types of feedback that could be used in higher education at various stages of learning.

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This article introduces 13 creative assessment ideas that are focussed on reading, writing, speaking and listening.

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English teachers often default to essays, quizzes and tests as assessments. Figuring out creative ways to assess beyond this can be challenging. So, I've teamed up with some of my favorite blogging friends (see who below) to come up with creative ways to assess students' skills as readers, writers, speakers and listeners!

This article would not be possible without the innovative ideas of these amazing teacher bloggers. Be sure to click over to their websites because they have so many brilliant, time saving ideas to offer teachers...

Reading Assessment

Google Keep

Assessing annotation while reading is tricky. The logistics are frustrating - do we have to keep collecting their books to check? What about if kids can't write in their books? What should kids be looking for? In a blog post, Amanda from Mud and Ink Teaching shares how she has started using Google Keep to track and assess student annotations while reading whole class novels. With just a small digital adjustment and the help of Google Classroom, Google Keep annotations could be an assessment lifesaver for your classroom.

Conversations

One important goal all ELA teachers should share is to be able to assess a student's comprehension of a text without making him or her hate reading. Melissa from Reading and Writing Haven wrote a blog post detailing some of her favorite strategies that make assessment enjoyable while also building teacher-student relationships and improving reading culture in the classroom. The biggest secret is that of allowing valuable conversations and abstract thinking to replace tedious and often punitive multiple choice tests and quizzes.

Chart Checkers

Students in middle and high school should have opportunities to self-assess their reading independence. One way to support them in this important real-world skill is with a chart like the one below. Have students figure out where they fall on the chart and set goals to reach higher stamina levels.

Innovative Projects

As schools are trending toward a more standard-based curriculum, standard-aligned assessments are more important than ever before. Though this may seem like a challenge, it actually creates more autonomy for teachers and students alike. One way Ashely Bible from Building Book love likes to disguise assessing student's inferencing and evidence-providing ability is by assigning a innovative projects like a tiny house character design project or this free culinary symbolism project. Students will infer and use evidence just as much as a written assessment, but will have a lot more fun doing so!

Writing Assessment

Pre-Assessment Rubrics

Writing pre-assessments are valuable because they allow teachers to see common themes across the class. Is everyone struggling with transitions? Maybe, overall, students aren't sure how to write an effective hook or thesis statement. Pre-assessments can reveal those needs. Also, they can begin our goal-setting conversations. It's important to differentiate writing unit to meet students' needs, and goal setting with individual students can be a way to we frame those conversations, initiated by a pre-assessment. It's rewarding for a student to reflect on their growth from the beginning of a writing unit to the end. Here are the goal-setting forms and pre-assessment rubrics Reading and Writing Haven uses.

Brain Dumps

Brain-based research tells educators that a "brain dump" can work wonders. Before students begin writing, allow them to brainstorm all ideas. Then, help students eliminate and elaborate on ideas. Finally, give students space to organize their ideas. This brainstorming allows the teacher to pre-assess where students will need help with their writing, as well as offset possible problems. Lauralee from Language Arts Classroom writes about brainstorming with high school students in this article.

Conferencing

Conferencing is the best way to assess and provide feedback while in the middle of a unit. But how do you go about conferencing with 125+students?!?! It can be incredibly helpful to teach students how to conference with each other to take the work load off of you and put some of the assessment work on their shoulders. This video can help...

Another question teachers have about conferring is: how do I decide what to help each student with? The best way to assess a student during a conference is by asking, "how can I help you?", and if a student can't answer that question, the next step would be to read a small portion of their writing to get a sense of one major skill they could most use support with. Keep it simple! This article from WeAreTeachers discusses using notecards to assess students' skills and plan conferences.

The Single-Point Rubric

The singe-point rubric is the wave of the future! If you have no idea what a single-point rubric is, here is a simple definition for you:

A single-point rubric lists the skills you want students to master with room for commenting if students have not yet mastered the skills, or exceeded mastery.

Here's what they look like:

So, you are probably wondering how exactly to assign points using a single point rubric, right? It depends on your needs. When a student exhibits the skills in the middle column it is considered mastery or standard met. This could mean an A in your school/district but it could also mean a B too. It all really depends on your preference. You can make each skill in the middle column worth 1 point or 10. You could make the "ways to improve" column worth a little less and the "advanced" column worth a little more. Again, it is really up to you!

Fast & Focused Feedback

As for assessing grammar knowledge, Ashley Bible from Building Book Love has implemented a system that tests students on their individual grammar issues. Once she marks a grammar issue in their writing, they watch a mini lesson and take a quiz to assess their new understanding. You can read all about this system here: Fast and Focused Feedback. Check out this amazing video about how to make your feedback fast and focused...

Listening & Speaking Assessment

Goal Setting Cards

Use goal setting cards with public speaking students. To assess public speaking, ask students to choose where they would like to improve. Assess students on their growth toward their goal. Find goal sheets and other public speaking activities on the Language Arts Classroom blog here.

Student-Led Discussions

If you're tired of multiple choice and essay questions and searching for a more meaningful way to assess students' understanding of your next novel, try a Socratic Seminar. Essentially, it is a student-led discussion over a text or big idea. Instead of you facilitating the discussion by asking questions, students take charge of their own learning in this activity by creating and asking the questions. A Socratic Seminar is truly a student-centered and social approach to learning. For you, this means it is less prep work. It's one of those lessons that teaches itself. You literally can sit back, relax, and watch the magic happen. If you'd like more information on facilitating your own seminar, check out this blog post. For ready-to-print resources, rubrics, instructions, and more, check out this bundle that works for any text.

Mock Trials

A mock trial is another effective, engaging way to assess literary analysis. In addition to this skill, students will also demonstrate close reading, citing strong and thorough textual evidence, analyzing evidence, persuasion and argument skills, debate, writing, and speaking/listening. It is more than a lesson; it is a learning experience that engages every single student. For more guidance on using a mock trial as an end-of-unit assessment, check out this blog post by Write On With Miss G. If you need some help structuring your mock trial or want to save yourself some time creating everything, then this mock trial bundle that works any text may help.

Podcasts

Assessing listening skills can be a bit tricky. But one way to integrate the listening standards into your classroom is through podcasts. Ashley Bible from Building Book Love has an engaging unit using the Serial Podcast Season 1 to build students' ability to listen, discuss and respond to a very engaging podcast for grown ups and high schoolers alike. Ashley includes ways to assess students' listening skills in this unit too!

Wrap Up

Assessments can be more than just quizzes, end of unit essays and tests! Hopefully this article has motivated you to try a new method of assessment that is engaging and maybe even excites you! Teachers getting excited about assessment and not dreading it, now that is something to strive for, don't you think?

What creative assessment ideas do you use in your classroom? We'd love to hear from you in the comments!

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13 Creative Assessment Ideas for Reading, Writing, Speaking & Listening - Amanda Write Now

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English teachers often default to essays, quizzes and tests as assessments. Figuring out creative ways to assess beyond this can be challenging. So, I've teamed up with some of my favorite blogging friends (see who below) to come up with creative ways to assess students' skills as readers, writers, speakers and listeners!

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This article explores 50+ ways to incorporate and use flipgrid in the classroom.

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You have probably heard of Flip and have seen tons of people sharing their experiences using it on social media. It seems that people all over the world have been using Flipgrid in all sorts of creative ways.

Flip is a video response platform where educators can have online video discussions with students or other educators. Teachers can provide feedback to students AND better yet students can provide feedback to one another.
The best part? Flipis completely FREE!
My first experience with Flip was back in early 2017 in our weekly #Ditchbook Twitter chat where a group of educators from all over the country shared ideas and inspire one another online. Since then I have had the opportunity to use Flip with students, administrators, as well as other educators in workshops and professional development sessions.

Each time I introduce it the reaction is always the same, "Wow! There are so many ways to use this tool. I can't wait to try it out in my class!".

But don't take my word for it, check it out and try it yourself!

In this post you will find over 50 ideas and ready-to-use Flipg activities for your class. You can use the quick navigation box below to jump to any section or scroll through the post to find something that you can use in your class tomorrow!

Getting started with Flip

Getting started with Flip is easy. As a teacher you can sign up (see the steps below) and start creating your grids and topics right away. Students and participants don't need an account, they will simply use the code you provide to log in and start recording!

The Flip Getting Started Guide

Want even MORE assistance bringing Flip to your classroom? Check out their onboarding webinar or visit the updated help center that to get up and running in no time!

Flip conversation starters from the Disco Library

Flip understands the power of community and educators connecting and becoming better together. The "Disco Library" tab at the top of your Educator Dashboard and you will find over 20,000 Flip topics ready for you to add to your Grids. Once you select a Topic to add you will have an opportunity to update and make any changes to the Topic before it is added to your grid.

Below you will find six popular topics from the Disco Library that can help your students get started using Flip in a fun and easy way. Just click on the button Don't see a topic you like? There are lots more here.

50+ Flip activities for your class

English Language Arts

Ready-to-use ELA activities from the Flip Disco Library

Reflect and assess with Flip

Flip Math activities

Ready-to-use math activities from the Flip Disco Library

Science and Social Studies

Ready-to-use science activities from the Flip Disco Library

Creating a community

Ready-to-use community building activities from the Flip Disco Library

Flipgrid beyond the classroom

Conversations about race, equity and justice from the Flip Disco Library

Appsmash with Flip

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Flip for ALL! 50+ ways to use Flip in your class

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Flip, a FREE video discussion platform, gives all students a voice. Here are more than 50 Flip ideas and activities for your class. This post is written

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This resource provides 10 creative assessment ideas for teachers to use in the classroom.

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Ed Tech

Looking back at your elementary, middle, and high school years - what was your very favorite test? I've asked many educators that question over the years, and usually I get that tell-tale cricket-chirping silence.

Sometimes an educator will look at me as if I have two heads, and asked, "What do you mean, 'favorite?' You mean a test I enjoyed?" Usually, if I get an answer at all, it is some variation of "I once got an 'A' on test I was sure I failed or that I studied really hard for."

Unfortunately, traditional tests don't inspire further learning. They don't reinforce knowledge (unless one counts cramming information that will be forgotten in a week or two as "reinforcing"). And they don't accurately reflect a full understanding of the content or an expertise of skills that were taught.

So, what is a better alternative? Authentic and creative assessments are perfect, and here's why.

A well-thought-out assessment:

Provides a comprehensive view of students' understanding

Gives students and opportunity to exercise critical thinking skills

Reinforces or furthers knowledge

Allows a range of intelligences to be expressed

Helps students create meaningful connections

Thinking creatively, you can adapt these ideas to fit any curriculum or subject. As you look through them, keep in mind (especially you STEM teachers!) that non-animated objects can be anthropomorphized to great and clever effect in some of these examples:

Here are 10 quick assessment ideas to use or inspire you.

One key to success for any authentic or creative assessment is to think carefully about what your learning goals are and create an assessment that not only helps you know where your students are at, but also how you can help them. Along with your feedback, ask students to reflect on their own work, and the other students'.
Feeling daring? Ask your students to help you come up with the assessment and bring them into the process!
Do you have a favorite assessment to contribute or have you been inspired with a new idea? Please share on Twitter by tagging me @OverthrowingEducation along with the #Ditchbook hashtag.

For notifications of new Ditch That Textbook content and helpful links:

Are you looking for quality, meaningful professional learning that both equips and inspires teachers?

Matt provides in-person and virtual keynotes, workshops and breakout sessions that equip, inspire and encourage teachers to create change in their classrooms. Teachers leave with loads of resources. They participate. They laugh. They see tech use and teaching in a new light. Click the link below to contact us and learn how you can bring Matt to your school or district!

FREE teaching ideas and templates in your inbox every week!

Subscribe to Ditch That Textbook

©2023 Ditch That Textbook by Matt Miller.

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This post is written by Batsheva Frankel an educational consultant at New Lens Ed. Batsheva has been in education for over 25 years and is the producer

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This article provides 27 formative assessment ideas. Each idea has a link that will take you to the webpage, as well as provides a brief description of what the tool does.

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27 Formative Assessment Tools for Your Classroom

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In this post, you will find 27 Formative Assessment Tools for Your Classroom! Formative assessment is such an essential part of the learning process and student success, and many digital tools can help support this process.This list has a wide variety of features and options to help you solidify your formative assessment strategies! Many of the tools below are great for both formative and summative assessments.

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This article outlines a number of fast formative assessment tools for teachers to gain feedback quickly about their students.

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Edutopia is a free source of information, inspiration, and practical strategies for learning and teaching in preK-12 education. We are published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization.

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This resource provides numerous tech tools to create formative assessments for students. There are lots of tools that allows for a variety of types of assessments.

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Top Tech Tools for Formative Assessment | Common Sense Education

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Find the right formative assessment tools for your classroom. These digital tools range from discussion (e.g., Piazza, TodaysMeet) to quizzing, polling, and student responses (e.g., Kahoot, Formative) to interactive lessons and videos (e.g., Nearpod, Flipgrid).

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This article dives into some of the pros and cons of rubrics. It outlines many positive aspects but it also discusses some of the downfalls to rubrics.

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Advantages and Disadvantages of Rubrics – Marco Learning

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Having a clear rubric lets students in on the decision making process. Students better understand the criteria of each assignment, so they can…

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This source lists a variety of free online rubric makers that teachers can use to make rubrics with a template already provided.

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Rubrics are a time-honored tool in the classroom. They identify the goal of a particular lesson, communicate clear expectations to students in regard to their work, and spell out the criteria for success. With a rubric in place, you can assess how well your students understood and learned the lesson, and if you need to reteach certain concepts.

Think of the rubric as a road map for each lesson or concept you are trying to teach. Teachers who use rubrics have a clear path for instruction and a means by which to assess student progress.

How rubrics help teachers:

Provides focus on the desired outcome of the lesson

Helps to eliminate distractions related to the lesson topic

Allows for faster and more accurate grading

Clarifies lesson elements that may need additional attention

How rubrics help students:

Defines the goal of the lesson for students

Specifies the elements that make up the lesson

Allows them to check their work against the rubric to determine if they meet all criteria

Sets up expectations for fairness in grading

But creating a rubric takes time and careful consideration of the lesson you want to teach. Do you want to assess each element of the lesson separately? Do you want to evaluate all the lesson criteria together as a whole? Will you be grading each task individually or will your assessment cover the family of tasks as one?

Creating Rubrics Online

In today's technology-driven world, creating rubrics online is a way to simplify the process. There are numerous rubric makers to be found online, for practically every need - Common Core, Project-Based Learning, custom and premade.

Online free rubric makers

Rubrics for PBIS
Can you use rubrics for your PBIS program?
Teachers have been creating behavior charts for years, so using a rubric for PBIS isn't much of a stretch. A rubric will help spell out exactly the behavior you want to see from students and allow you to award points based on those behavioral goals. Rubrics can be used schoolwide to focus both students and staff on desired behavior.

In the classroom, using a rubric can provide clarity to your lessons and help you to become a more efficient educator. By having clear goals for each lesson you teach, you know exactly what to assess when you're grading the assignment. Your students know the purpose of that assignment. They are able to plan their work based on the criteria contained in the rubric. And at the completion of the lesson, you'll be able to clearly see if any concepts need additional instruction.

How do you use rubrics in your classroom?

Here are some related articles you may find interesting:

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Rubric Maker - Where to Create Free Rubrics Online

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We've compiled a list of FREE rubric maker websites for practically every need - Common Core, Project-Based Learning, custom and premade.

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Here is a tool to assist with making rubrics. Its quick, easy and free.

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Welcome to Quick Rubric – Free, Fast, and Easy to Use! :)

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Quick Rubric – FREE, fast and simple rubric creator

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This article and video explores how a teacher should be doing just as much work as the students when tests are given. It outlines what teachers should do with tests once they are graded and how this step is one of the most important steps when administering tests and making sure feedback is given.

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When you give a test or quiz, do you basically just grade it, give it back to students, go over the answers, then move on? If you don't do anything else with the information, if you don't look carefully at how students answer your test questions, you're missing a BIG opportunity.

Assessments should give us loads of information about what our students understand, what they don't understand, and how well we've taught them. It took me years of teaching before I realized I was using my tests and quizzes to sort out, reward and punish my students, rather than measure and inform my teaching. I needed to make my assessments work harder for me.

So one year, I added an extra step while grading tests: I kept track of all the wrong answers on one page, tallying exactly which items were being chosen instead. Once I started doing this, I found myself far better equipped to respond to wrong answers: I could reteach specific concepts only to students who needed reteaching, rather than wasting everyone's time with unnecessary review. I could identify specific misconceptions students had about the material and get better at addressing those the next time around. I also became a much better test maker.

The best part about this system is you only need a pencil, an answer key, and a few extra minutes.

Here it is:

If you're already doing something like this, I would love to hear about it in the comments. If you have some kind of electronic reporting system that can crunch all these numbers for you and give you the information you need to move forward, awesome. If not, adding this extra step to your assessment routine will make a difference. ♦

Keep in touch.
Join my mailing list and get weekly tips, tools, and inspiration - in quick, bite-sized packages - all geared toward making your teaching more effective and fun. To thank you, I'll send you a free copy of my e-booklet, 20 Ways to Cut Your Grading Time in Half. I look forward to getting to know you better!

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When you give a test or quiz, do you basically just grade it, give it back to students, go over the answers, then move on? If you don't do anything else with the information, if you don't look carefully at how students answer your test questions, you're missing a BIG opportunity.

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This article shares specific test taking strategies for certain types of test questions. It also puts emphasis on how these strategies need to be taught.

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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:

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

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

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

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

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

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:

Substitute each answer in the blank

Justify answers my underlining information from the passage

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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15 Reasons Why Standardized Tests are Problematic 

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15 Reasons Why Standardized Tests are Problematic 

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This article explores 15 reasons why standardized tests are not good tests, and why they are not an effective way to assess students.

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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 article discusses the pros and cons to standardized testing. It ultimately concluded that standardized testing is neither good or bad, it's more in about how standardized are used, and if they should be used in this way.

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Is Standardized Testing a Bad Thing?

By Thomas R. Guskey, Professor Emeritus, University of Kentucky originally posted in Solution Tree Blog, December 16, 2020

"Standardized testing" is one of the most frequently used yet most commonly misunderstood expressions in education today. Some consider standardized testing to be an important, foundational component in any school improvement effort. Others believe it is a disruptive process that serves mainly to narrow the curriculum, stifle the creativity of teachers, and limit learning opportunities for students.

In truth, standardized testing is inherently neither good nor bad. It is simply a way of gathering data that involves measurement of an attribute or trait in a consistent or "standard" manner.

A standardized test includes the same or comparable items administered and scored in the same way. In other words, all individuals take the test under the same conditions, their performance is evaluated using the same methods, and scores are determined in the same manner. "Standardizing" the testing conditions doesn't remove the influence of those conditions on examinees' performance; it simply ensures those conditions are the same for all examinees. In this way, results can be used to make comparisons of individuals over time or among different groups of individuals who take the test in different settings.

Standardized testing can involve any assessment format. Many standardized tests are timed assessments composed primarily of multiple-choice items, like AP exams, IB assessments, and the SAT and ACT. These types of assessments are widely used because they yield the greatest amount of information on examinees in the least amount of testing time and at the least expense. But common formative assessments, skill performances, and projects scored with a common rubric can be considered standardized tests as well. So too are personality inventories and professional certification exams. In the area of health, tests of blood pressure and heart rate are also standardized tests.

The problems most people associate with standardized testing come not from the form of the test or testing procedures, but from how the results are interpreted and used. These are issues of validity.

Unlike what most people think, validity is not a characteristic of a test itself, and no test is fundamentally valid or invalid on its own. Rather, the results from a test can be interpreted and used in valid or invalid ways (Shepard, 2005). For example, a mathematics test composed of items that require only basic numerical calculations would be a valid test of examinees' computational skills, but it would not be a valid test of their mathematical reasoning or skill in solving complex math problems. Invalid interpretations of test results occur most frequently when a test designed for one purpose is used for another purpose for which it was not intended.

All tests are designed for a specific purpose. The SAT and ACT, for example, are designed to maximize differences among students in their knowledge and skill in specific subjects for the purpose of college admission decisions-and both do that well. In other words, they are purposefully constructed to yield the largest possible variation in students' scores, in order to facilitate the decision-making process. If many students score the same on an assessment, it is difficult to distinguish among those students. So both the SAT and ACT are developed specifically to spread out students' scores and provide the broadest range of scores possible. The ideal item on these tests is one that only 50 percent of students answer correctly, because that provides maximum discrimination and the greatest variation in scores.

To serve this purpose, the SAT and ACT are devised to be "instructionally insensitive" (Popham, 2007). This means that if a particular item measuring a vitally important concept is taught by teachers so well that nearly all students answer the item correctly, that item is typically eliminated from the test. Why? Not because it is a poor item or because it addresses an inconsequential concept, but because it doesn't serve the test's primary purpose of discriminating among students.

To measure how well students have mastered a particular curriculum, however, requires an "instructionally sensitive" test. Such a test must be well-aligned with the curriculum and measure precisely what students were expected to learn and be able to do. If instruction is effective, then all students would be expected to perform well on the test and attain the same high scores. In other words, with an instructionally sensitive test, effective instruction would serve to minimize the differences among students. Its purpose is not to spread out students' scores but to verify students' level of achievement with regard to the curriculum.

Hence, it makes little sense to use the results from instructionally insensitive tests like the SAT and ACT, known to be poorly aligned with the school's curriculum and designed primarily to maximize differences among students, to evaluate the quality of a school's instructional program. This is not the purpose for which these tests were developed and not what they are designed to do. Using SAT and ACT results in this way is a prime example of invalid interpretation and use of standardized test results.

Standardized testing is neither a good thing nor a bad thing. Standardized test results provide important and reliable information that can be highly useful to educators at all levels. But that information also has important limitations. To ensure validity in interpretation and use, educators must know the purpose for which a standardized test was developed and use results for that specific purpose only. Especially in high-stakes situations, using standardized test results for purposes other than that for which the test was designed is not only inappropriate and invalid, it also can have serious negative consequences for schools, teachers, and particularly for students.
References
Popham, W. J. (2007). Instructional insensitivity of tests: Accountability's dire drawback. Phi Delta Kappan, 89(2), 146-150.

Shepard, L. A. (2005). The centrality of test use and consequences for test validity. Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice, 16(2), 5-24.

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Is Standardized Testing a Bad Thing? - Thomas R. Guskey & Associates

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By Thomas R. Guskey, Professor Emeritus, University of Kentucky originally posted in Solution Tree Blog, December 16, 2020 "Standardized testing" is one of the most frequently used yet most commonly misunderstood expressions in education today. Some consider standardized testing to be an important, foundational component...

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This article provides a strategy to force students to not only read feedback provided by the teacher, but reflect on it, and improve their work. Student's are always concerned with their grade, so not providing them with their grade right away forces them to actually consider the feedback.

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I have a confession to make: I am terrible at handing back papers. That sounds silly, right? I mean, you literally just hand the paper to the kid whose name is at the top.

But teachers everywhere know how disheartening that small act can be. (It can't be just me, right?)

There are the eye rolls and the whispering to each other of "What did you get?" and "She gave me a ___." Next thing you know, the paper you spent so long reading and marking has been shoved into the abyss of the backpack or tossed carelessly in the recycle bin.

Wow, glad I put so much time into that assignment, said no teacher ever.

I honestly got to a point where I would just wait so long to give things back, the kids would kind of forget, and then so would I. Oops.

In English I ask my students to write a lot. I don't grade everything they write, but when it comes to the "big essays"-the graded, polished drafts-what grade they will receive becomes the sole motivator for their writing. This frustrates me, and, in my opinion, distracts them from what they should actually care about: writing.

This intense focus on the all-important grade was my least favorite part, and it was definitely what kept the stack sitting on the counter behind my desk...for an embarrassing amount of time. It really bothered me that kids didn't care about the feedback I put on their essays, not just because I took the time to do it, but because I did it to help them. I want them to grow as writers, and most of them do throughout the year, but so many only seem to care about that number.

I won't lie: It made me angry. Not only did I feel like I had wasted my time, I felt like they just didn't care. And then the snowball of thoughts would start: How will they survive if they don't care about feedback? What's going to happen in college? Or when they get jobs? Ugh! I'm done!

After dealing with this for about nine years, I couldn't take it anymore. I either had to get over it or fix it. Since I'm not usually one to give up, I set out to find a way to get my students to actually read their feedback and care less about the grade.

The Fix for Ignored Feedback

The solution was remarkably easy and accidentally originated out of my laziness (score one for being a little lazy!). Last year, kids had turned in essays on Google Classroom, but rather than pasting a completed rubric into their essay as I usually did, I made hard copies of the rubric and wrote on them. This meant that I could return papers with comments but without grades.

And from this a whole new system was born: Return papers to students with only feedback. Delay the delivery of the actual grade so student focus moves from the grade to the feedback.

The simple act of delaying the grade meant that students had to think about their writing. They had to read their own writing-after a few weeks away from it-and digest my comments, which allowed them to better recognize what they did well or not so well. The response from students was extremely positive; they understood the benefit of rereading their essays and paying attention to feedback. One boy said, "Mrs. Louden, you're a genius. I've never read what a teacher writes on my essay before, and now I have to."

The Plan

1. Grade the Papers
After collecting student papers, grade them (hard copy or electronic) as you usually would with comments on the written piece, but keep the rubric separate.

2. Plan Independent Work
Plan accordingly by creating opportunities for students to do independent or group work for a few days when it's time to return papers to students. This is probably the most vital part of the process, because it will give you time to conference with individual students.

3. Return Papers
When you finish grading the papers, return just the written work to students, not the completed rubric. When I first tried this with students, I put the following directions up on the board when I returned the essays:

Read over your whole essay, including what you wrote and my comments.

Write THREE observations based on your reading and TWO follow-up questions to discuss with me at our conference. Ask about comments, how to improve things, how to do things differently, etc.

Use the rubric (posted online) to grade yourself.

Be ready to discuss all of this.

I now incorporate these instructions into the student copy of the rubric. Below is one page of that rubric, which includes the reflection section.

4. Time to Reflect
Return the essays during class, allowing time to explain, time for kids to read their essays, and time for them to clarify if needed. Encourage them to go slowly. ( Bonus step: Walk around and listen. Hear the difference. Honestly, you probably won't hear a lot of talking or comparing. If they are talking, it will be to themselves about what they are noticing.)

5. Conference with Each Student
This step is where the magic happens.

Since you've planned for independent work, you will have time to meet with each student individually. I do my conferences on a large whiteboard-painted table; I have found that since moving these from my desk to this table, our conferences are more productive. I'm not distracted by the stuff on my desk, kids are able to spread out (Chromebook, reflection, essay, etc.), and as a bonus, we can use the surface of the table when we need to do some planning. These meetings don't have to be more than a couple of minutes per student.

When kids get to my table, I start with "What do you want to talk about?" and let them guide the conference. It is so cool to hear what they have to say. So many of them make comments like "I can't believe I did <insert careless mistake>" or "I'm sorry I turned it in like this" or "I'm embarrassed; I see so many mistakes!" Or my favorite: "You specifically told us not to do this." The level of reflection is deeper than any I've ever encountered. I assure them that it is fine and I don't expect perfection, but on the inside I'm so excited that they're seeing the things I see.

Next they usually ask questions. This is exciting because some of their questions make perfect teachable moments! I have watched many students grow this year from these conversations. Take Alex, for example. He writes the wordiest sentences I've ever read, but he's gotten to the point where he puts his own comments on his essay as he writes so we can discuss while he's still in the writing stage. At least half of these are related to wordiness. I'm excited that he's learned to identify it, if not quite how to fix it yet.

Finally, I end by asking students how they graded themselves according to the rubric. I enjoy this part because more often than not, they were much harsher on themselves than I was. I then share the rubric with the grade and the rest of my general comments. For once, kids are usually happy about their grade because it was higher than they expected, contrary to the old days when they'd say "she gave me C" but they thought they deserved an A.

6. Revision
I always offer students the opportunity to rewrite their essay. Above all else, my goal is to help students become better writers. If this means they have to do it a couple of times, then so be it. Depending on the assignment, these are the usual requirements:

The student must meet with me 1 to 3 times (depends on the student and the essay) before it is due. These meetings are quick "check-in" style meetings: What are you planning to do? What have you done? What questions do you have?

The student must make substantial revisions, not just grammatical edits.

The student must turn in the original and the updated draft on time.

And that's it! Okay, looking back over what I said, it sounds like a lot, but really it's very easy for you. I think this is the best change I have made to the writing process in the last few years. Students have become more reflective ( and sympathetic of how long it takes me to grade-haha! ), their writing has improved, and I return papers much more quickly-and happily-than ever before. ♦

Stick around.
Join our mailing list and get weekly tips, tools, and inspiration-in quick, bite-sized packages-all geared toward making your teaching more effective and fun. You'll get access to our members-only library of free downloads, including 20 Ways to Cut Your Grading Time in Half the e-booklet that has helped thousands of teachers save time on grading. Come on in!!

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Delaying the Grade: How to Get Students to Read Feedback

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You spend hours marking and commenting on student work, and then they don't even read your feedback. The solution is all in how you time it.

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This article discusses how much time is required of a teacher when giving feedback. The author shares more time manageable ways to give feedback that is still meaningful, but won't cause burnout.

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Listen to the Interview with Matthew Johnson:
Sponsored by Parlay and ViewSonic

This post contains Amazon Affiliate links. When you make a purchase through these links, Cult of Pedagogy gets a small percentage of the sale at no extra cost to you.

My study of feedback began in earnest on a sunny afternoon during my third year of teaching. I was living in California - much to the envy of my midwestern friends and family - but I was also harboring a secret, a secret that was troubling me that afternoon. The secret was that while my social media pictures showed me at the beach and hiking past redwoods, those excursions were rare, maybe once-a-quarter outings. Instead, the vast majority of my days were spent doing exactly what I was doing in that moment: responding to and grading papers.

For the better part of my first three years as a teacher, student papers acted as the chains that shackled me to my desk day after day. Like Tantalus, I could see the beach gleaming through a crack between the apartment buildings next to mine, but when I looked at the towers of student work in front of me, the sand and waves receded out of reach. Maybe tomorrow after I chop these essay stacks down I would tell myself once again.

That afternoon though, for reasons I don't fully understand, something inside me finally snapped and I admitted to myself what I'd long known unconsciously: I didn't want to live like this anymore. I was drowning, submerged under a never-ending torrent of student work in need of feedback and assessment. I didn't want to leave the classroom, but I also didn't want to stay if it meant that my next forty years would endlessly orbit stacks of student work in the way that my first three years did.

That night, in a last-ditch effort to stay a teacher, I began to read whatever I could find about responding faster and better to student work, and it didn't take long for me to realize that I was far from the first teacher to resent living a life with papers at its geographic center. In fact, the very first article of the very first volume of the The English Journal in 1912 begins with a simple question written in all caps: CAN GOOD COMPOSITION TEACHING BE DONE UNDER THE PRESENT CONDITIONS?

The answer given by the author, Dr. Edwin M. Hopkins? "No." There were simply too many students and papers to manage. By the way, it is worth noting that Dr. Hopkins had 100 students. I currently have 158.

And the problem is that Dr. Hopkins wasn't fully wrong, then or now. The issue largely comes down to feedback, which is an essential part of good teaching-not just for composition, but for any content area. Just like the conditions in Dr. Hopkins' time, our present conditions make providing quality feedback incredibly difficult. This is because effective feedback generally shares a handful of characteristics: It is given regularly, returned in a timely manner, and written in clear language. It also works best when students are in the midst of creation, as opposed to as a postscript on final drafts once they finish.

When one digs down, the logistics of providing regular, timely, and formative feedback are absurd when one has 158 or even 100 students. Take my classes: Each minute of feedback I provide to each of my 158 students takes a time investment of over two and a half hours. That means reading and responding to one essay or project or test in ten minutes-a blisteringly fast speed based on the teachers I've talked to-will take over 25 hours. Even if a teacher works 60 or 70 hours, sacrificing countless evenings and weekends to student work, there exists a hard cap on the amount of feedback a teacher can give if it's only given in big chunks on big assignments.

Of course more global feedback on larger assignments is important, and there are ways to get more efficient and effective with that feedback (I wrote a book largely on this subject, Flash Feedback: Responding to Student Writing Better and Faster-Without Burning Out, and this very site has excellent suggestions here, here, and here), but if teachers want to provide timely, regular, formative, and meaningful feedback, we need to diversify our practices.

Feedback, after all, is just a teacher's response to something, and we can meaningfully respond to different assignments in a multitude of ways, many of them only taking a minute or two. I call these practices Flash Feedback, and while they come in small packages, they can pack a serious educational punch.

Characteristics of Flash Feedback

Teachers can take countless approaches to Flash Feedback. The exact structures will depend on the discipline, students, and teacher, but the most efficient and effective Flash Feedback tends to share these four characteristics:

It focuses on one or two learning objectives. A long history of scholarship argues that feedback, even on large assignments, should generally focus only on a manageable number of topics, no more than a few. Covering too many topics tends to overload students, so they learn no lessons (or no lessons deeply) and it takes longer, making it the exact opposite of Flash Feedback.

Students do the heavy lifting. Teachers often fall into the trap of correcting work for students and doing more reflection on student work than they require the students to do. Kelly Gallagher and Penny Kittle call this Helicopter Teaching, and while it generally comes from a place of wanting to help, it often holds students back for two reasons: First, when students don't have to work for an answer, they are less likely to remember it. Second, the time it takes to correct student work and solve problems for the students severely limits how much feedback the teacher can give them. For Flash Feedback to work, students must be the primary ones finding answers, patterns, and approaches, as the teacher plays the role of the guide standing well off to the side.

It utilizes systems and technology. Feedback often has a lot of redundancies that can be mitigated with better systems or by using technology, and even little efficiencies add up. For me, each 15 second increase in efficiency saves me 40 minutes when taken on the scale of all of my students!

There is a spillover plan and time allotted for special cases. There will inevitably be times when a student's specific needs won't fit within the system and structure being used by the teacher. This is why having a clearly defined spillover plan/time will help to make sure that the needs of one or two individuals don't derail the plan for the rest of the class.

Three Ways to Do Flash Feedback

In my classes, and especially during the time when I'm writing this-an era of emergency distance learning when time is tight-there are three types of Flash Feedback that I find myself coming to again and again: Targeted Response, Micro-Conferences, and Wise Interventions.

1. Targeted Response

My students, like most people, tend to struggle with comma usage. My approach to helping them with commas used to be to circle and correct every comma error I found in every paper, but this never led to much progress and it took a tremendous amount of time.

Now I mainly use Targeted Response, which is where the teacher focuses an assignment and its feedback solely on 1 to 2 targeted learning goals. When it comes to commas, my students write a very short one-page paper about anything they want in any genre. It is called the Comma Paper, and its only criteria (and the only thing I give feedback to) is that they must include at least four correctly used examples of each type of comma we studied in class.

To speed my assessment of and response to these papers, I have students turn them in on Google Classroom. That enables me to use the Find Function (Command-F) to highlight all of the commas in the piece, so I can quickly scan for comma issues. It also allows me to pre-populate two comments in the comment bank (if you don't know how to do this, here is a quick tutorial). One is a short congratulatory note for students who had no comma errors. The other is a message where I tell students the number of comma errors and let them know that to get credit for the assignment, they must find the errors and fix them during the class time provided.

By keeping the scope of the paper and feedback focused and using the technology tools available, I can give specific, individual, and meaningful feedback in less than a minute per student, and the best part is that the deep focus on commas leads to more student growth in one short paper than a year of circling and correcting commas ever did!

2. Micro-Conferences

Conferencing is one of the most celebrated pedagogical tools, and there is good reason for that. It is a rare one-on-one opportunity to offer individualized instruction and feedback, fix misconceptions, build relationships, and give students the opportunity to be heard by a caring adult. Like written feedback though, the logistics of conferences can be daunting in most classes. My classes meet for 210 minutes each week and average 32 students. This means doing a five minute conference with each student takes over 75 percent of the class time that week.

While larger conferences are sometimes worth this time investment for me, I can only do so many if I want to cover everything else I need to do. Enter the Micro-Conference, which is a conference that is done in a fraction of the time (generally 1 to 2 minutes) by being focused and carefully structured.

One of my favorites is one I do around paraphrasing, which is another deeply important skill that students tend to struggle with. Here's how it works:

Students write a rough draft of a paper with paraphrasing, like a research paper, and bring it to class.

As a whole class, we read and discuss mentor texts with strong paraphrasing.

Students take out their own drafts, pick a page to work with, and then highlight each moment of paraphrasing they see.

They then rate their paraphrasing in their paper from 1 to 10, based on the mentor text we read, and write at least four sentences justifying their rating.

Once students have rated and reflected on their work, they call me over and we quickly conference. I generally start conferences by asking students to share their ratings and what they noticed when comparing their work to the example. We then use those thoughts to plan an actionable path forward together. My role in this is mainly that of the gadfly - asking questions and helping the student to orient in the right direction - and while I try to keep the conferences to no more than a minute, most generally wrap up naturally in that time without feeling rushed.

Like the Targeted Response, everything about these conferences is designed to maximize time efficiency. The students have already laid the groundwork and highlighted the paraphrased sections, allowing us to jump right in at a high level. Further, by focusing just on paraphrasing, a minute is not too short to go deep, answer questions, and figure out meaningful action steps forward for the student.

3. Wise Interventions

Wise Interventions is a practice that came out of Stanford and the University of Virginia, among others, and the idea behind it is that while shifting negative student mindsets, beliefs, and behaviors is often painstakingly slow, in the right circumstances it can also happen incredibly quickly. The key to these moments of rapid positive change is that if teachers can find the exact moments that fuel and perpetuate negative student beliefs/mindsets/behaviors and disrupt them, sometimes it can open students up to better alternatives in surprisingly little time.

Probably the most famous example of this was a study of Massachusetts middle schools that found that students did twice as much revision on an essay when they each received a sticky note on the top of their essays that read "I'm giving you these comments because I have very high expectations and I know that you can reach them," versus those who got a sticky note that read "I'm giving you these comments so that you'll have feedback on your paper."

The researchers theorized that the reason for why one sticky note-the product of no more than a few seconds work - would have such a large effect on student mindsets and behavior was that many students in the study might have felt the teachers didn't believe in them. Those narratives were disrupted by a note coming just at the moment they were preparing for teacher disappointment once again via the teacher comments, which in turn cleared the way for those students to put in more work.

I use a number of Wise Interventions in my classes, but my favorite with feedback is one called "I'm so sorry about the rain." It comes from Daniel Coyle's book The Culture Code, and the basic premise is that a study out of Harvard found that people were 422% more likely to let a stranger borrow their phone if the stranger prefaced asking for the phone by saying "I'm so sorry about the rain." The reason this rather banal comment about the weather led to a striking shift in behavior was likely that it was enough to signal a relationship, which changes nearly everything about how a brain responds to a request.

I have found that little personal things that take only a few seconds to write-like quickly referencing something a student said in class or an aspiration the student shared at some point-can often have the same effect on students, especially those who are wary of writing, and shift the attention and care they give to feedback on that paper and beyond.

By being focused and carefully structured, Flash Feedback allows us to make feedback a part of class that is as regular as the bells in the halls. It also allows us to teach many more personalized lessons each semester; gives us regular points of contact with students, which have been shown to improve performance and relationships; and best of all, can be done quickly, allowing teachers to break those shackles to student papers and take a day at the beach every once in a while.

Come back for more.
Join our mailing list and get weekly tips, tools, and inspiration that will make your teaching more effective and fun. You'll get access to our members-only library of free downloads, including 20 Ways to Cut Your Grading Time in Half, the e-booklet that has helped thousands of teachers save time on grading. Over 50,000 teachers have already joined-come on in.

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Flash Feedback: How to Provide More Meaningful Feedback in Less Time

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If we want to provide timely, regular, formative, and meaningful feedback, we need to diversify our practices. These three strategies pack a lot of punch in very little time.

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This article discusses how beneficial it is to co-create criteria for student work. It outlines why it is important to have student's involved in the criterion process, as well as how it actually benefits their learning in the classroom.

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Build it Together: Co-Constructing Success Criteria with Students | Cult of Pedagogy

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When we include students in the process of defining quality work, they are more likely to rise to those standards.

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This link will take me to the Alberta Assessment Consortium. At this link I will find rubric templates, but also free workshops. For the workshops, there are 4 modules that will take me through how to design rubrics, the quality of them, tools to help make them, as well as supporting students learning.

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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 PDF provides numerous rubric examples to assist me when creating rubrics.

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This PDF will assist with word choice when creating rubrics. This will help me use advanced vocabulary which will sets out specific guidelines for students to follow when completing assignments.

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This blog post shares how teachers should be constructing their feedback in a feedforward type of way. Feedback should allow for students to further their development, and always keep them moving forward, and this blog post with give tips on how to do this.

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Listen to my interview with Joe Hirsch (transcript):
Sponsored by Kiddom and Pear Deck

As teachers, we pretty much give feedback all day long. We tell students how they can improve on assignments, we praise them for things they're doing well, we correct their incorrect responses, and we redirect them when they behave in ways that aren't helpful to learning.

And that's just the students. We also give feedback to our colleagues, although in most cases, these exchanges don't happen as often or as freely as they probably should. We receive plenty of feedback as well, from our students, their parents, our administrators, and our peers. And we encourage our students to give feedback to each other, albeit with pretty uneven results. Really, the experience of school could be described as one long feedback session, where every day, people show up with the goal of improving, while other people tell them how to do it.

And it doesn't always go well. As we give and receive feedback, people get defensive. Feelings get hurt. Too often, the improvements we're going for don't happen, because the feedback isn't given in a way that the receiver can embrace.

It turns out there's a different way to give feedback that works a lot better, a way of flipping its focus from the past to the future. It's a concept called "feedforward," which was originally developed by a management expert named Marshall Goldsmith. As far as I can tell, not a lot of educators are familiar with the practice of feedforward, and I really think if we learned how to do it and started using it more consistently, it could make a huge difference in how our students grow and how we grow as professionals.

In this week's podcast, I interview Joe Hirsch, author of The Feedback Fix: Dump the Past, Embrace the Future, and Lead the Way to Change. ( Bookshop.org | Amazon). In the book, Joe digs deep into the practice of feedforward and shows us how and why it works. You can listen to our full conversation in the player above, read the full transcript, or stay right here-I'll give you a quick overview.

What's Wrong with the Way We Give Feedback?

When we give feedback to our students, or when our co-workers or administrators give feedback to us, the focus is on the past. "People can't control what they can't change, and we can't change the past," says Hirsch. "And that happens to be the focus of most of the feedback that we give or receive."

More specifically, backward-looking feedback doesn't often get good results for three reasons:

It shuts down our mental dashboards. "When we get negative feedback about something that we can't change or control," Hirsch says, "our brains flood with stress-inducing hormones, cortisol, that trigger our threat awareness and put us on the defensive. The parts that are responsible for executive function, for creativity, the parts that allow us to sort of set our agendas and make rational decisions, essentially we are in a state of mental paralysis."

It focuses primarily on ratings, not on development. Most of feedback's time and energy is spent on looking back and rating (or grading) performance that's already over, rather than focusing on what can be done from now on. "When feedback consists of an impersonal set of performance standards, we're overlooking the essential goal of feedback, and that's to create positive and lasting improvement."

It reinforces negative behaviors. "When we hear about flaws that we can't fix anymore-because they're in a past that we can't change-it creates a feeling of learned helplessness, the feeling that we are unable to do anything about our future. Instead of committing ourselves to improvement, which is what we would hope would happen, we hold onto this debilitating view of who we are instead of focusing on who we are becoming."

What is Feedforward?

When we give feedforward, instead of rating and judging a person's performance in the past, we focus on their development in the future.

Suppose my student is writing an essay. Instead of waiting until she is finished, then marking up all the errors and giving it a grade, I would read parts of the essay while she is writing it, point out things I'm noticing, and ask her questions to get her thinking about how she might improve it.

In his book, Hirsch takes this broad concept of feedforward and defines six components of it, six specific characteristics of feedforward that make it so effective. He refers to these by the acronym REPAIR (regenerates, expands, particular, authentic, impact, refines).

So let's take a look at each of these. If you want to implement feedforward well, it should have these attributes:

It REGENERATES talent.

The most effective kind of feedforward helps people see opportunities for growth-ways they could take on new opportunities and roles. "At the simplest level," Hirsch writes in his book, "it leads to the unmistakable feeling that we're moving forward in our professional and personal lives. Getting positive feedback about our performance may feel good, but it doesn't break new ground. It merely confirms what we already know about ourselves and our talents, essentially holding our growth in check. But when feedback gets us thinking about how to spread that talent to others, it has a multiplying effect."

So when we notice that a student is developing a strength or an interest in an area, instead of just pointing that out, we might give the student an opportunity to enter their work in some kind of competition, publish it in some way, or share it with others in a presentation, rather than simply keeping it to themselves. This helps students see themselves in a new light and gets them thinking about ways they could grow.

It EXPANDS possibilities.

Effective feedback starts with what is and helps add to it, expanding what's possible, rather than simply pointing out problems. In his book, Hirsch describes a concept used by Pixar studios called "plussing." When Pixar's creators get together to review a day's work, they are expected to give each other feedback to improve the work. What makes these sessions so effective is one important rule: Participants can't point out a problem without proposing an alternative, saying "What if?" to a problem.

This concept of "plussing" could work wonders in staff or committee meetings: When we are discussing possible solutions to an issue, rather than shooting down ideas that might not work, we could add to them by making small tweaks. "That's an interesting idea. What if we made this small change and tried that?" This technique would also work beautifully with project-based learning tasks, when students may need to come up with several ideas for solving a problem before arriving at the best solution.

It is PARTICULAR.

Far too often, feedback is given in an "information dump," with lots of criteria being measured and reported on at the same time. This can be a pretty ineffective way to help people grow. "There's a limit to how much we can absorb and operationalize in any given time," Hirsch says. "Feedforward is really about picking your battlegrounds strategically and selectively." He advises us to make feedback an ongoing process that is embedded in the day-to-day work, and to only focus on a few things at a time.

So rather than wait until an assignment is done to point out all the ways a student can improve, find ways to give them specific pointers while they work, and only one thing at a time, so students can process and act on it right away.

It is AUTHENTIC.

No one particularly likes giving criticism. "We see problems, we see pitfalls in other people, and we know it's a problem," Hirsch says, "but we don't want to be mean, right? We don't want to crush them. So the tendency is to either avoid giving feedback altogether or to disguise it as a praise sandwich, where we basically slip one piece of criticism in between two very, very surface level gauzy praises."

The problem with that approach, Hirsch explains, is what's called the recency effect: People remember most the thing they heard last. So when you tack on some praise after delivering constructive feedback, the person doesn't really absorb the critical part as well as they would if you'd just given it to them more directly.

Hirsch recommends a more direct approach: Describe what's happening, explain why it's a problem, then prompt the person for a solution. "When delivered this way," Hirsch explains, "it puts people at ease, it takes them off the defensive. It is clear, it is concise, it's locating the problem, it's looking for solutions together. People don't want a praise sandwich. People want the truth."

This approach could work with academic situations or classroom management problems: If you're dealing with a student who is disrupting class, describe the behavior you're seeing, explain why it's a problem, then ask the student for ideas on how to solve it. It sounds really simple, but if what you're doing right now isn't giving you the results you want, it's worth a try.

It has IMPACT.

One of the reasons people don't make progress after receiving feedback is that they don't necessarily know what to do with it. "If you want feedback to make an impact," Hirsch notes, "you have to put it in terms that people can operationalize." In his book, he cites studies showing that regular feedback doesn't typically result in a transfer of new skills or habits, but when that feedback is combined with coaching, the transfer skyrockets to 95 percent.

So if a student regularly forgets to bring materials to class, rather than simply telling him to change, help him make a specific plan for improvement. Ideally, that plan should have lots of small steps to make it achievable, and the student should take the lead in developing that plan.

It REFINES group dynamics.

"Feedback is a team sport," Hirsch says. "It is not just something that happens one to one. It happens in groups and across and within organizations. And when we dump that command and control nature of traditional feedback, we make room for something much more collaborative and shared."

So rather than give feedback in a top-down, hierarchical model, open up more pathways for people to get feedback from their peers, even those whose jobs might on the surface have little in common with our own. In his book, Hirsch borrows a term from management circles known as "creative abrasion," which is what happens when people with opposing views work on the same task together. Although it can result in more conflict, the contributions from different points of view usually produce a higher-quality product in the end.

This idea can play out in a lot of educational settings: Instead of just having our department head observe our teaching, why not get feedback from someone who teaches a completely different subject? When students go to the same peers for feedback on their work, have them seek out the opinion of someone new, or consider getting the input of a group of students from a different class or grade level entirely.

There's nothing simple or straightforward about telling people how to improve. So it's no surprise that we're still figuring it out and finding new ways to refine it. If the feedback you're giving to your students, your coworkers, and even the people at home isn't having quite the effect you intend, try shifting to a feedforward approach. Doing so can help us, as Hirsch says, stop seeing ourselves just as who we are, but who we are becoming. ♦

Learn more about Joe Hirsch on his website or visit his LinkedIn page. Teachers who read The Feedback Fix should also grab this free Discussion Guide for Teachers to help apply the book's principles to your own work.

Come back for more.
Join our mailing list and get weekly tips, tools, and inspiration that will make your teaching more effective and fun. You'll get access to our members-only library of free downloads, including 20 Ways to Cut Your Grading Time in Half, the e-booklet that has helped thousands of teachers save time on grading. Over 50,000 teachers have already joined-come on in.

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Instead of rating and judging a person's performance in the past, feedforward focuses on their development in the future.

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Ideas for Student Projects using Google 

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Ideas for Student Projects using Google 

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This blog post will share 16 student project ideas that can be used for a summative assessment. It allows students to use google docs, slides and forms.

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As you probably know, Google Drive is far more than a place to store files online. It also includes a suite of versatile creation tools, many of which perform the same functions as the ones we use in other spaces. These include Google Docs, a word processing program that behaves similarly to Microsoft Word, Google Slides, a presentation program similar to PowerPoint, and Google Forms, a survey-creation tool similar to Survey Monkey. Although Drive also includes other tools, these three are particularly useful for creating rigorous, academically robust projects. If your school uses Google Classroom or at least gives students access to Google Drive, your students are probably already using these tools to write papers or create slideshow presentations, but there are other projects they could be doing that you may not have thought of.

Below I have listed 16 great ideas for projects using Google Docs, Slides, and Forms.

Docs

Annotated Bibliography
By the time a student reaches the later years of high school, and certainly by the time she's gotten to college, it's likely that she'll be required to write an annotated bibliography, a list of resources that not only includes the bibliographical information of each source, but also a short paragraph summarizing the resource and reflecting on its usefulness for a given project. Usually an annotated bibliography is required as a part of a larger research paper, but it could stand alone as an assignment that tasks students with seeking out and evaluating sources just for the practice of doing so. And the research tools in Google Docs allow students to locate, read, and cite their sources all in one place. To learn more, see this guide from Cornell University Library on How to Prepare an Annotated Bibliography .

Book Review
Instead of a book report, have students write a book review instead. This is certainly not a new idea, but publishing the work electronically allows students to enhance the final product with the book's cover image, a link to the book's page on Amazon, and even links to other titles the author has written or articles on related topics. For models and inspiration, elementary and middle school students can read student-written reviews on sites like Spaghetti Book Club . Older or advanced students might work toward more sophisticated, nuanced review styles like book reviews written on Oprah.com .

Book Review

Any kind of research paper can be given a big boost when done in a Google Doc, because students can insert images, drawings, and links to other relevant resources, like articles and videos. Using the Media-Rich Research Paper
research tools built into Docs, students can research their topics and include in-text citations with footnotes.

"Blog Posts" without the fuss, written in Google Docs.

Instead of creating a job chart yourself, have students build it from scratch.

Slides

These could take a variety of forms: mini-textbooks, children's books, cookbooks or how-to manuals, personal art or writing portfolios, even yearbook-style memory books. To learn more about the possibilities, see my post from earlier this year on E-book
Student E-Books.

Click the image above to watch a sample Museum Kiosk in action.

Students can upload their own images and add text boxes to a slideshow to create an animated story, then record the slideshow with a Google extension called Short Film
Screencastify. They can either record their own voice as narration, add background music, or both. There are so many different kinds of films students could produce: illustrated stories or poems, final reflections for a 20 Time or Genius Hour project, video textbooks on content-related topics, or news-like feature stories of school or community events. In this quick sample, I added music from YouTube's library of royalty-free music that anyone can use to enhance their recordings:

Using the same screencasting software mentioned above, students could also create their own video tutorials by creating a Slides presentation on their topic (such as "How to Open a Combination Lock"), then recording the slideshow with narration. This would make a nice final product for a unit on informational writing or a way for students to demonstrate their learning at the end of a unit in science ("How to Take Care of Lab Equipment"), social studies ("How to Measure Distance on a Map"), or math ("How to Multiply Fractions"). Student-made tutorials could even be created to teach classroom procedures. And any tutorials students make could be stored for later, so other students can also benefit from them. Video Tutorial
Learn more about how Screencastify works right inside Chrome.

Forms

Whenever students need to gather data to support an Peer Survey
argumentative essay or speech, let them gather data quickly and easily by creating a survey with Google Forms. Links to the survey can be sent out via email, QR codes, or through a post in a learning management system like Edmodo or Google Classroom. When results come in, students can use them to support whatever claim they are trying to make in their argument, or make adjustments based on what they discover in their research.

Way Beyond Worksheets

Just this morning on Twitter, someone posted a comment along these lines: "A worksheet on a Google Doc is STILL a worksheet. Students should be using tech to create!" I've heard this sentiment over and over, and it's exactly why I've put this list together. Google offers some incredibly powerful tools if we know how to use them. I hope this list has given you a few new ideas to put into your students' hands. ♦

There's a lot more where this came from.
Join the Cult of Pedagogy mailing list and get weekly tips, tools, and inspiration-in quick, bite-sized packages-all geared toward making your teaching more effective and fun. You'll get access to my members-only library of free downloadable resources, including my e-booklet, 20 Ways to Cut Your Grading Time in Half, which has helped thousands of teachers spend less time grading. If you are already a subscriber and want this resource, just check your most recent email for a link to the Members-Only Library-it's in there!

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16 Ideas for Student Projects Using Google Docs, Slides, and Forms

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Your students probably already use these tools to write papers or create presentations, but they could be doing other projects you may not have thought of.

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Dylan Wiliam - List of formative assessment strategies.docx

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Draw, choose, write or say: Fantastic formative assessments

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Formative assessment can be fantastic! Here are options for letting students draw, choose, write and say as a formative assessment tool. Formative

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Fun formative assessment: 12 easy, no-tech ideas you can use tomorrow

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Formative assessment means providing students with opportunities to show you what they are learning while you are teaching it. These assessments inform