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Rubrics are one thing every teacher should master! They allow students to become more independent with their learning as they can refer to the rubric to see what is expected from them. This link has multiple books on rubrics with their ratings and links to purchase the books.

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"If our cherished rubrics are in any way threatened, we immediately rise up and bring the whole our ourselves to bear in a rigorous defense of them. And might it be that what we've errantly defined as a 'threat' is in fact an act of liberation that we didn't see as such simply because (unbeknownst to us) our rubrics have become our own asphyxiating prisons and we've become our own wardens. Hence, let us dare not confuse the rescue mission that we call Christmas with anything less than what it is."
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

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"If our cherished rubrics are in any way threatened, we immediately rise up and bring the whole our ourselves to bear in a rigorous defense of them. And might it be that what we've errantly defined as a 'threat' is in fact an act of liberation that we didn't see as such simply because (unbeknownst to us) our rubrics have become our own asphyxiating prisons and we've become our own wardens.

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How do teacher assess students when it comes to oral assessment? This website has some tips for oral assessment and explains how students can grow through oral assessment.

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In oral assessment, students speak to provide evidence of their learning. Internationally, oral examinations are commonplace.

We use a wide variety of oral assessment techniques at UCL.

Students can be asked to:

present posters

use presentation software such as Power Point or Prezi

perform in a debate

present a case

answer questions from teachers or their peers.

Students' knowledge and skills are explored through dialogue with examiners.

Teachers at UCL recommend oral examinations, because they provide students with the scope to demonstrate their detailed understanding of course knowledge.

Educational benefits for your students

Good assessment practice gives students the opportunity to demonstrate learning in different ways.

Some students find it difficult to write so they do better in oral assessments. Others may find it challenging to present their ideas to a group of people.

Oral assessment takes account of diversity and enables students to develop verbal communication skills that will be valuable in their future careers.

Marking criteria and guides can be carefully developed so that assessment processes can be quick, simple and transparent.

How to organise oral assessment

Oral assessment can take many forms.

Audio and/or video recordings can be uploaded to Moodle if live assessment is not practicable.

Tasks can range from individual or group talks and presentations to dialogic oral examinations.

Oral assessment works well as a basis for feedback to students and/or to generate marks towards final results.

1. Consider the learning you're aiming to assess

How can you best offer students the opportunity to demonstrate that learning?

The planning process needs to start early because students must know about and practise the assessment tasks you design.

2. Inform the students of the criteria

Discuss the assessment criteria with students, ensuring that you include (but don't overemphasise) presentation or speaking skills.

Identify activities which encourage the application or analysis of knowledge. You could choose from the options below or devise a task with a practical element adapted to learning in your discipline.

3. Decide what kind of oral assessment to use

Options for oral assessment can include:

Assessment task

Individual or group

If group, how will you distribute the tasks and the marks?

Combination with other modes of assessment

Oral presentation of a project report or dissertation.

Oral presentation of posters, diagrams, or museum objects.

Commentary on a practical exercise.

Questions to follow up written tests, examinations, or essays.

Decide on the weighting of the different assessment tasks and clarify how the assessment criteria will be applied to each.

Peer or staff assessment or a combination: groups of students can assess other groups or individuals.

4. Brief your students

When you've decided which options to use, provide students with detailed information.

Integrate opportunities to develop the skills needed for oral assessment progressively as students learn.

If you can involve students in formulating assessment criteria, they will be motivated and engaged and they will gain insight into what is required, especially if examples are used.

5. Planning, planning planning!

Plan the oral assessment event meticulously.

Stick rigidly to planned timing. Ensure that students practise presentations with time limitations in mind. Allow time between presentations or interviews and keep presentations brief.

6. Decide how you will evaluate

Decide how you will evaluate presentations or students' responses.

It is useful to create an assessment sheet with a grid or table using the relevant assessment criteria.

Focus on core learning outcomes, avoiding detail.

Two assessors must be present to:

evaluate against a range of specific core criteria

focus on forming a holistic judgment.

Leave time to make a final decision on marks perhaps after every four presentations. Refer to audio recordings later for borderline cases.

7. Use peers to assess presentations

Students will learn from presentations especially if you can use 'audio/video recall' for feedback.

Let speakers talk through aspects of the presentation, pointing out areas they might develop. Then discuss your evaluation with them. This can also be done in peer groups.

If you have large groups of students, they can support each other, each providing feedback to several peers. They can use the same assessment sheets as teachers. Marks can also be awarded for feedback.

8. Use peer review

A great advantage of oral assessment is that learning can be shared and peer reviewed, in line with academic practice.

There are many variants on the theme so why not let your students benefit from this underused form of assessment?

This guide has been produced by the UCL Arena Centre for Research-based Education. You are welcome to use this guide if you are from another educational facility, but you must credit the UCL Arena Centre.

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In oral assessment, students speak to provide evidence of their learning. Internationally, oral examinations are commonplace. We use a wide variety of oral assessment techniques at UCL. Students can be asked to: present posters use presentation software such as Power Point or Prezi perform in a debate present a case answer questions from teachers or their peers.

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This has been a hot topic for many years, should we be assigning grades to students. This articles talks about the effects of grades on students.

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The video can help with tips to teach students on how to study for tests. This tool could be used at the beginning of the year and also used throughout the year to strengthen students test taking skills.

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This is a great website to direct you to great and important information about Alberta's Education system. The website has links to the new curriculum, health and safety, international programs, education supports and so much more. A very useful website!

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This website is directed towards the grade 6 and 9 PAT's in Alberta. It provides important dates, tips for setting goals, about the results and more!

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Overview

Provincial Achievement Tests (PATs) are administered annually to all Alberta students in grades 6 and 9. These standardized tests reflect the essentials that all Alberta students are expected to achieve, regardless of school choice or location.

determine if students are learning what they are expected to learn

report to Albertans how well students have achieved provincial standards at given points in their schooling

assist schools, authorities and the province in monitoring and improving student learning

The tests occur in January, May and June for English and Français/French language arts, math, science and social studies.

Some grade 9 students write PATs in January of each year.

Grade 9 achievement tests based on the Knowledge and Employability programs of study in English language arts, math, science and social studies are also administered.

The General Information Bulletin helps support school authorities, school administrators and classroom teachers in implementing the Provincial Achievement Testing Program in their authorities and schools.

PAT Test Schedule for 2018 to 2019 (PDF, 163 KB)

Local performance targets

Each school board in Alberta sets targets for school and board performance in provincial standardized tests.

Evaluating results in the context of these targets can help school boards identify which areas students need more help in to improve learning.

Tips for setting local targets

Consider past performance on each test.

Focus on a limited number of subjects at a time where performance can improve.

Collaborate with teacher colleagues across different grade levels.

Students' performance on tests reflects their learning in all years.

Teachers in all grades can contribute to setting targets.

Use school reports on achievement test results to identify which aspects of a subject need attention.

Focus on what supports students need to succeed instead of focusing on problems.

Expect to set different targets in different grades and subjects depending on past results and current priorities.

Collaborate with other schools to identify areas of common strength or weakness.

Keep students and parents informed and report to them on achievement targets and results.

Provincial tests are a useful tool but only one way to see how well a school is performing.

Schools and boards may also choose to set targets for other measures of student achievement according to their local needs.

Targets can also be set for goals that fall outside of student achievement and reflect local priorities and parent and community involvement.

PAT results

Schools are responsible for sharing preliminary PAT results with parents and guardians.

Every fall, schools receive the official Individual Student Profile (ISPs), which are kept on the students' records in accordance with the Student Record Regulation.

Interpreting results

Careful examination and interpretation of results help educators identify areas of relative strength and weakness in student achievement.

Teachers and administrators can use this information in planning and delivering relevant and effective instruction.

View the guidelines for interpreting achievement tests. (PDF, 31 KB)

PATs are only one of many ways to evaluate student learning and are not meant to replace day-to-day teacher observations and classroom assessment. They are sources of information that must be interpreted, used and communicated within the context of regular and continuous assessment by classroom teachers.

2017 to 2018 PAT highlights

Strengths and areas for improvement varied this year and are only one indicator of student abilities

The percentage of students reaching the acceptable standard is at a 5-year high in English Language Arts 6, Français 6, Science 6, Social Studies 6 and Science 9

Grade 6 math results improved with students performing significantly better on non-calculator questions in 2018 than in 2017

Performance on Grade 6 math problem solving questions improved from the previous year. There is a strong correlation of results on non-calculator questions and problem solving questions

PAT results by school and authority

PAT results are available for each school authority and individual schools.

Search the database to find 5-year reports for each writing period and participation rates for each school and authority or view the documents below:

Key educator resources

The information provided is intended primarily to support school authorities, school administrators and classroom teachers in implementing the Provincial Achievement Testing Program in their authorities and schools.

General resources

PAT forms

Toolkit for staff

Teacher involvement

Parent guide

Quest A+

Quest A+ (access to online practice tests)

Subject area resources

These resources are developed to support classroom teachers in understanding provincial standards in the form of statistical analyses of selected responses, examples of student work, scoring guides and released materials.

Contact

To connect with Student Learning Assessments and Provincial Achievement Testing:

Hours: 8:15 am to 4:30 pm (open Monday to Friday, closed statutory holidays)
Nicole Lamarre, Director, Student Learning Assessments and Provincial Achievement Testing
Phone: 780-427-6204
Email: nicole.lamarre@gov.ab.ca

Address:

Student Learning Assessments and Provincial Achievement Testing
Alberta Education
6th Floor 44 Capital Boulevard
10044 108 Street
Edmonton, Alberta T5J 5E6

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Provincial Achievement Tests (PATs) are administered annually to all Alberta students in grades 6 and 9. These standardized tests reflect the essentials that all Alberta students are expected to achieve, regardless of school choice or location.

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When providing feedback to students, it is important that it encourages students learning, not discourages it. This website provide great ways in which teachers can implement feedback to their students.

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contributed by Laura Reynolds

While assessment gets all the press, we often misunderstand effective feedback for learning.

When feedback is predominately negative, studies have shown that it can discourage student effort and achievement (Hattie & Timperley, 2007, Dinham). In my experience, the only thing I knew is that I hated public speaking and I would do anything possible to get out of it. As a teacher, most of the time it is easy to give encouraging, positive feedback.

However, it is in the other times that we have to dig deep to find an appropriate feedback response that will not discourage a student's learning. This is where the good teachers, the ones students remember forever in a positive light, separate themselves from the others.

A teacher has the distinct responsibility to nurture a student's learning and to provide feedback in such a manner that the student does not leave the classroom feeling defeated. Here you will find 20 ideas and techniques on how to give effective learning feedback that will leave your students with the feeling they can conquer the world.

20 Ways to Provide Effective Feedback

1. Feedback should be educative in nature.

Providing feedback means giving students an explanation of what they are doing correctly and incorrectly. However, the focus of the feedback should be based essentially on what the students is doing right. It is most productive to a student's learning when they are provided with an explanation and example as to what is accurate and inaccurate about their work.

Consider using the concept of a 'feedback sandwich' to guide your feedback: Compliment, Correct, Compliment.

2. Feedback should be given in a timely manner.

When feedback is given immediately after showing proof of learning, the student responds positively and remembers the experience about what is being learned in a confident manner. If we wait too long to give feedback, the moment is lost and the student might not connect the feedback with the action.

3. Be sensitive to the individual needs of the student.

It is vital that we take into consideration each student individually when giving feedback. Our classrooms are full of diverse learners. Some students need to be nudged to achieve at a higher level and others need to be handled very gently so as not to discourage learning and damage self-esteem. A balance between not wanting to hurt a student's feelings and providing proper encouragement is essential.

4. Ask the 4 questions.

Studies of effective teaching and learning (Dinham, 2002, 2007a; 2007b) have shown that learners want to know where they stand in regards to their work. Providing answers to the following four questions on a regular basis will help provide quality feedback. These four questions are also helpful when providing feedback to parents:

What can the student do?

What can't the student do?

How does the student's work compare with that of others?

How can the student do better?

5. Feedback should reference a skill or specific knowledge.

This is when rubrics become a useful tool (single-point rubrics, for example). A rubric is an instrument to communicate expectations for an assignment and a useful way to provide effective feedback for learning. Effective rubrics provide students with very specific information about their performance, compared to an established range of standards. For younger students, try highlighting rubric items that the student is meeting or try using a sticker chart.

6. Give feedback to keep students 'on target' for achievement.

Regular 'check-ins' with students let them know where they stand in the classroom and with you. Utilize the '4 questions' to guide your feedback.

7. Host a one-on-one conference.

Providing a one-on-one meeting with a student is one of the most effective means of providing feedback. The student will look forward to having the attention and allows the opportunity to ask necessary questions. A one-on-one conference should be generally optimistic, as this will encourage the student to look forward to the next meeting.

As with all aspects of teaching, this strategy requires good time management. Try meeting with a student while the other students are working independently. Time the meetings so that they last no longer than 10 minutes.

8. Feedback can be given verbally, non-verbally, or in written form.

Be sure to keep your frowns in check. It is imperative that we examine our non-verbal cues. Facial expressions and gestures are also means of delivering feedback. This means that when you hand back that English paper, it is best not to scowl.

9. Concentrate on one ability or skill.

It makes a far greater impact on the student when only one skill is critiqued versus the entire paper being the focus of everything that is wrong.

For example, when I taught Writer's Workshop at the elementary level, I would let students know that for that day I was going to be checking on the indentation of paragraphs within their writing. When I conferenced with a student, that was my focus instead of all the other aspects of their writing. The next day would feature a new focus.

Utilize this strategy when grading papers or tests to provide effective feedback for learning. This strategy allows you the necessary time to provide quality, written feedback. This can also include using a rotation chart for students to conference with at a deeper more meaningful level. Students will also know when it is their turn to meet with you and are more likely to bring questions of their own to the conference.

11. Educate students on how to give feedback to each other.

Model for students what appropriate feedback looks like and sounds like. As an elementary teacher, we call this 'peer conferencing.' Train students to give each other constructive feedback in a way that is positive and helpful. Encourage students to use post-it notes to record the given feedback.

12. Ask another adult to give feedback.

The principal at the school I taught at would often volunteer to grade history tests or read student's writing pieces. You can imagine how the student's quality of work increased tenfold! If the principal is too busy (and most are), invite a 'guest' teacher or student teacher to critique work.

13. Have the student take notes.

During a conference over a test, paper, or a general 'check-in,' have the student do the writing while you do the talking. The student can use a notebook to jot down notes as you provide verbal feedback.

14. Use a notebook to keep track of student progress.

Keep a section of a notebook for each student. Write daily or weekly, dated comments about each student as necessary. Keep track of good questions the student asks, behavior issues, areas for improvement, test scores, etc. Of course, this requires a lot of essential time management but when it is time to conference with a student or parent, you are ready to go.

Returning papers and tests at the beginning of class, rather than at the end, allows students to ask necessary questions and to hold a relevant discussion.

16. Use Post-It notes.

Sometimes seeing a comment written out is more effective than just hearing it aloud. During independent work time, try writing feedback comments on a post-it note. Place the note on the student's desk the feedback is meant for. One of my former students had a difficult time staying on task but he would get frustrated and embarrassed when I called him out on his inattentive behaviors in front of the class.

He would then shut down and refused to do any work because he was mad that I humiliated him. I resorted to using post-it notes to point out when he was on task or not. Although it was not the most effective use of my time, it really worked for him as a way to provide effective feedback for learning.

17. Give genuine praise.

Students are quick to figure out which teachers use meaningless praise to win approval. If you are constantly telling your students 'Good Job' or 'Nice Work' then, over time, these words become meaningless. Make a big deal out of a student's A+ on that vocabulary test. If you are thrilled with a student's recent on-task behaviors, go above and beyond with the encouragement and praise.

Make a phone call home to let mom or dad know how thrilled you are with the student's behavior. Comments and suggestions within genuine feedback should also be 'focused, practical, and based on an assessment of what the student can do and is capable of achieving' (Dinham).

18. "I noticed...."

Make an effort to notice a student's behavior or effort at a task. For example; "I noticed when you regrouped correctly in the hundreds column, you got the problem right." "I noticed you arrived on time to class this entire week." Acknowledging a student and the efforts they are making goes a long way to positively influence academic performance.

19. Provide a model or example.

Communicate with your students the purpose of an assessment and/or feedback. Demonstrate to students what you are looking for by giving them an example of what an A+ paper looks like. Provide a contrast of what a C- paper looks like. This is especially important at the upper learning levels.

20. Invite students to give you feedback.

Remember when you finished a class in college and you were given the chance to 'grade' the professor? How nice was it to finally tell the professor that the reading material was so incredibly boring without worrying about it affecting your grade? Why not let students give you feedback on how you are doing as a teacher?

Make it so that they can do it anonymously. What did they like about your class? What didn't they like? If they were teaching the class, what would they do differently? What did they learn the most from you as a teacher? If we are open to it, we will quickly learn a few things about ourselves as educators.

Remember that feedback goes both ways and as teachers, it is wise to never stop improving and honing our skills as teachers.
20 Ways To Provide Effective Feedback For Learning; A version of this post first appeared on opencolleges.edu.au;

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20 Ways To Provide Effective Feedback For Learning

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One way to provide effective feedback for learning is a 'feedback sandwich' to structure your feedback: Compliment, Correct, Compliment.

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This website link goes into detail on the difference between summative and formative assessment. If you scroll down near the bottom of the page there are 9 summative assessment ideas to try out!

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All Posts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Such an assessment could include:

In-lesson polls

Partner quizzes

Self-evaluations

Ed-tech games

One-minute papers

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

Exit tickets

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

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

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

End-of-unit test

End-of-chapter test

Achievement tests

Standardized tests

Final projects or portfolios

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

The differences between formative and summative assessment

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

1. Occurs through a chapter or unit

2. Improves how students learn

3. Covers small content areas

4. Monitors how students are learning

5. Focuses on the process of student learning

Summative assessment:

1. Occurs at the end of a chapter or unit

2. Evaluates what students learn

3. Covers complete content areas

4. Assigns a grade to students' understanding

5. Emphasizes the product of student learning

During vs after

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

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

Improving vs evaluating

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

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

Little vs large

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

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

Monitoring vs grading

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

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

Process vs product

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

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

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

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

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

Perceived disadvantages of summative assessment

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

1) Offer minimal room for creativity

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

2) Not accurately reflect learning

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

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

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

3) Ignore (and miss) timely learning needs

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

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

4) Result in a lack of motivation

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

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

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

5) Be inauthentic

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

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

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

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

6) Be biased

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

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

Importance and benefits of summative assessment

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

Summative assessment can:

1) Motivate students to study and pay closer attention

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

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

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

2) Allow students to apply what they've learned

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

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

3) Help identify gaps in student learning

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

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

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

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

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

Including/excluding word problems

Incorporating more visual components

Innovative summative assessments (we list some below!)

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

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

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

6) Contribute positively to learning outcomes

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

The seven aims of summative assessment

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

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

1. Accompanied with appropriate time and task management

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

3. Active involvement in planning, preparation, and performance

4. Applicable to academic standards and expectations

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

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

7. Authentic to curricular content and context

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

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

Summative assessment examples: 9 ways to make test time fun

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

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

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

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

2) TXT MSG

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

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

3) Podcast

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

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

4) Infographic

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

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

5) Compare and contrast

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

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

6) Living museum

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

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

7) Ed-Tech games

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

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

Some of the findings were quite eye-opening:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

With Prodigy Math, you can:

Start using Prodigy

8) Shark Tank/Dragon's Den

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

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

9) Free choice

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

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

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

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

10) Group projects

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some interesting examples of group projects include:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Enter the Balanced Assessment Model

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

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

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

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

Conclusion: Going beyond the test

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

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

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

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

Such an assessment could include:
Credit: Alberto G.

Formative assessment: Summative assessment:

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

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

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

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

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

Summative assessment can:

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

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

Credit: woodleywonderworks Credit: Kevin Jarrett

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

Credit :Brad Flickinger

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Credit: woodleywonderworks

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

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

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10 Summative Assessment Examples to Try This School Year

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

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Rick continues with descriptive feedback techniques and talks about the "Here's what..., So what..., Now what..." model.

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Descriptive Feedback Techniques Part 2 with Rick Wormeli

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Rick Wormeli talks about ways to properly use feedback for students to benefit their learning in the classroom.

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Descriptive Feedback Techniques Part 1 with Rick Wormeli

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This blog uses examples as to why it is important to dogfood the assessment you will be giving your 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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Putting Students Voice and Choice at the Center

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Putting Students Voice and Choice at the Center

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Giving Students a Say: Smarter Assessment Practices to Empower and Engage

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Giving Students a Say: Smarter Assessment Practices to Empower and Engage: Dueck, Myron, Dueck, Myron: 9781416629801: Books - Amazon.ca

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Teachers need innovated ways to deliver summative assessment and this book is able to help with just that!!

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Grading Smarter, Not Harder: Assessment Strategies That Motivate Kids and Help Them Learn

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Grading Smarter, Not Harder: Assessment Strategies That Motivate Kids and Help Them Learn : Dueck, Myron, Dueck, Myron: Amazon.ca: Office Products

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Creating lessons that will allow students have lasting knowledge while having fun, developing social-emotional skills and building a positive classroom environment.

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

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

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

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

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

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

I don't love admitting that.

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

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

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

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

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

Traditional vs. Backward Planning

Traditional Lesson Design

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This random approach creates two problems.

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

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

Backward Design

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

Here are the steps:

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

Step 2: Create an assessment to measure that learning.

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

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

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

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

Before and After: The Lunar Cycle

The Before, Where the Final Product is a Test

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some Questions About Your Lessons

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The blog has really good insight into summative assessment such as, why it's important, the benefits, limitations and how to use it creatively in the classroom.

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SplashLearn Blog - Educational Resources for Parents, Teachers & Kids

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difference between summative assessment & formative assessment

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What Makes Summative Assessment a Powerful Tool for Teachers

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Read to know all about summative assessment - examples, benefits, limitations, etc. Also, know the differences between formative & summative assessments.

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The video provides context on why it is important for your students to know what your expectations are in the classroom.

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Strategies that can be used throughout the year to see where the students are at in their learning journey.

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7 Smart, Fast Ways to Do Formative Assessment

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7 Smart, Fast Ways to Do Formative Assessment

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Formative assessments should be practiced throughout the day in the classroom. This website provides approaches to quick and low-stakes assessments.

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Formative assessment-discovering what students know while they're still in the process of learning it-can be tricky. Designing just the right assessment can feel high stakes-for teachers, not students-because we're using it to figure out what comes next. Are we ready to move on? Do our students need a different path into the concepts? Or, more likely, which students are ready to move on and which need a different path?

When it comes to figuring out what our students really know, we have to look at more than one kind of information. A single data point-no matter how well designed the quiz, presentation, or problem behind it-isn't enough information to help us plan the next step in our instruction.

Add to that the fact that different learning tasks are best measured in different ways, and we can see why we need a variety of formative assessment tools we can deploy quickly, seamlessly, and in a low-stakes way-all while not creating an unmanageable workload. That's why it's important to keep it simple: Formative assessments generally just need to be checked, not graded, as the point is to get a basic read on the progress of individuals, or the class as a whole.

7 Approaches to Formative Assessment

1. Entry and exit slips: Those marginal minutes at the beginning and end of class can provide some great opportunities to find out what kids remember. Start the class off with a quick question about the previous day's work while students are getting settled-you can ask differentiated questions written out on chart paper or projected on the board, for example.

A quick way to see the big picture if you use paper exit tickets is to sort the papers into three piles: Students got the point; they sort of got it; and they didn't get it. The size of the stacks is your clue about what to do next.

No matter the tool, the key to keeping students engaged in the process of just-walked-in or almost-out-the-door formative assessment is the questions. Ask students to write for one minute on the most meaningful thing they learned. You can try prompts like:

What are three things you learned, two things you're still curious about, and one thing you don't understand?

How would you have done things differently today, if you had the choice?

What I found interesting about this work was...

Right now I'm feeling...

Today was hard because...

Or skip the words completely and have students draw or circle emojis to represent their assessment of their understanding.

2. Low-stakes quizzes and polls: If you want to find out whether your students really know as much as you think they know, polls and quizzes created with Socrative or Quizlet or in-class games and tools like Quizalize, Kahoot, FlipQuiz, Gimkit, Plickers, and Flippity can help you get a better sense of how much they really understand. (Grading quizzes but assigning low point values is a great way to make sure students really try: The quizzes matter, but an individual low score can't kill a student's grade.) Kids in many classes are always logged in to these tools, so formative assessments can be done very quickly. Teachers can see each kid's response, and determine both individually and in aggregate how students are doing.

Because you can design the questions yourself, you determine the level of complexity. Ask questions at the bottom of Bloom's taxonomy and you'll get insight into what facts, vocabulary terms, or processes kids remember. Ask more complicated questions ("What advice do you think Katniss Everdeen would offer Scout Finch if the two of them were talking at the end of chapter 3?"), and you'll get more sophisticated insights.

3. Dipsticks: So-called alternative formative assessments are meant to be as easy and quick as checking the oil in your car, so they're sometimes referred to as dipsticks. These can be things like asking students to:

write a letter explaining a key idea to a friend,

draw a sketch to visually represent new knowledge, or

do a think, pair, share exercise with a partner.

Your own observations of students at work in class can provide valuable data as well, but they can be tricky to keep track of. Taking quick notes on a tablet or smartphone, or using a copy of your roster, is one approach. A focused observation form is more formal and can help you narrow your note-taking focus as you watch students work.

4. Interview assessments: If you want to dig a little deeper into students' understanding of content, try discussion-based assessment methods. Casual chats with students in the classroom can help them feel at ease even as you get a sense of what they know, and you may find that five-minute interview assessments work really well. Five minutes per student would take quite a bit of time, but you don't have to talk to every student about every project or lesson.

You can also shift some of this work to students using a peer-feedback process called TAG feedback (Tell your peer something they did well, Ask a thoughtful question, Give a positive suggestion). When you have students share the feedback they have for a peer, you gain insight into both students' learning.

For more introverted students-or for more private assessments-use Flipgrid, Explain Everything, or Seesaw to have students record their answers to prompts and demonstrate what they can do.

5. Methods that incorporate art: Consider using visual art or photography or videography as an assessment tool. Whether students draw, create a collage, or sculpt, you may find that the assessment helps them synthesize their learning. Or think beyond the visual and have kids act out their understanding of the content. They can create a dance to model cell mitosis or act out stories like Ernest Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants" to explore the subtext.

6. Misconceptions and errors: Sometimes it's helpful to see if students understand why something is incorrect or why a concept is hard. Ask students to explain the " muddiest point" in the lesson-the place where things got confusing or particularly difficult or where they still lack clarity. Or do a misconception check: Present students with a common misunderstanding and ask them to apply previous knowledge to correct the mistake, or ask them to decide if a statement contains any mistakes at all, and then discuss their answers.

You can use sticky notes to get a quick insight into what areas your kids think they need to work on. Ask them to pick their own trouble spot from three or four areas where you think the class as a whole needs work, and write those areas in separate columns on a whiteboard. Have you students answer on a sticky note and then put the note in the correct column-you can see the results at a glance.

Several self-assessments let the teacher see what every kid thinks very quickly. For example, you can use colored stacking cups that allow kids to flag that they're all set (green cup), working through some confusion (yellow), or really confused and in need of help (red).

Similar strategies involve using participation cards for discussions (each student has three cards-"I agree," "I disagree," and "I don't know how to respond") and thumbs-up responses (instead of raising a hand, students hold a fist at their belly and put their thumb up when they're ready to contribute). Students can instead use six hand gestures to silently signal that they agree, disagree, have something to add, and more. All of these strategies give teachers an unobtrusive way to see what students are thinking.

No matter which tools you select, make time to do your own reflection to ensure that you're only assessing the content and not getting lost in the assessment fog. If a tool is too complicated, is not reliable or accessible, or takes up a disproportionate amount of time, it's OK to put it aside and try something different.

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7 Smart, Fast Ways to Do Formative Assessment

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Within these methods you'll find close to 40 tools and tricks for finding out what your students know while they're still learning.

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These are 6 key questions to ask yourself when building clear high quality rubrics.

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A framework for creating assessment tools that clearly communicate assignment expectations and encourage high-quality work.

For decades, I've supported teachers in developing problem-based performance tasks and project-based learning assessments. One thing I've learned doing this work is that while the overall quality and rigor of most performance assessments has improved, many rubrics still use negative, subjective, and kid-unfriendly language, especially at lower performance levels.

High-quality rubrics clearly describe agreed-upon learning expectations so that teachers can make learning visible to students, frame actionable feedback (uncovering student thinking to provide feedback that students can immediately act on) to advance their learning, and accurately evaluate student progress over time. Likewise, students can use well-constructed rubrics to clarify expectations for learning, monitor and reflect on their progress, and provide feedback to peers on the quality of their work.

Focus on 6 Key Questions to Build a Better Rubric

In order to understand how to improve rubric quality, we start by breaking down performance task(s) to be assessed, identifying the learning evidence demonstrated with a product or performance. For example, let's analyze a sample task given to students in which they are asked to research a "giant of science" and present their learning orally and in written form (for which they could choose to write an article, museum brochure, or infographic).

Use multiple sources to describe the discovery and analyze its significance (past to present)

Include biographical information about the scientist(s)

Include a prop or visual symbolizing an aspect of the discovery

Finally, share your reflections on what it means to be a "giant" in any field.

Let's say the instructions require students to do these things:

Now, let's work through six research-based questions to examine rubric quality, evaluating criteria aligned with the task and language of rubric descriptors.

Question 1

It's important that performance assessments aren't limited to applying basic skills in routine tasks. They should require students to integrate multiple skills and concepts in complex tasks. Because of that, it's necessary for the rubric to cover a range of criteria aligned with task expectations.

Form/format of the final product (oral and written projects, cite sources)

Content accuracy (describe discovery biographical information, use terms appropriately, check sources)

Processes/procedures (research, organize information, edit)

Most rubrics typically include these criterion types:

Impact (analyze significance; past to present)

Knowledge construction (reflect on the essential question)

But what about these?

Only the latter two criteria assess transfer of learning and deeper understanding, so consider including at least one of these criteria. Learning can happen even if a final product fails to meet higher levels. Remember, assessing student self-reflections can uncover learning that your performance task might not have addressed!

The research includes multiple credible sources.

Biographical information is provided along with relevant visuals or props.

Evidence explains why the discovery was significant at the time and whether it still has importance today.

The conclusion goes beyond summarizing ideas and includes personal reflections about what it means to be a giant in science or any field.

Next, identify all criterion types that align with the intended learning. For example, on a research paper, you'd start filling in the rubric template, by describing proficient performance-what did students do to show completion of the task? Here are some examples:

Do the number of performance levels support accurate evaluation of progress?

An odd number of performance levels (e.g., low-middle-high) usually results in most students scoring in the middle, especially when the lowest level describes "doing little or nothing" and the highest level describes perfection. An even number of performance levels (e.g., getting started-developing-proficient-advanced) drives more qualitative decision-making, describing what evidence learning looks like along a continuum.

Is the rubric language descriptive, observable, and measurable?

Avoid using negative or judgmental language (e.g., behavioral indicators rather than learning evidence), subjective language (e.g., poor, neat, ample, sophisticated), and vague frequency indicators (e.g., rarely, often, sometimes), and focus on evidence of learning.

Adjacent performance levels should describe qualitatively different and achievable performance. Consider how changes to rubric wording facilitate interpretation and agreement when grading student work and provide guidance to students.

Level 1: May be missing central claim, supporting subclaims, or relevant counterclaims.

Level 2: Partially develops central claim, supporting subclaims, and relevant counterclaims.

Level 1: Identifies one or both of the following: Possible claims and possible counterclaims.

Level 2: Identifies all of the following: Central claim, supporting subclaims, and possible counterclaims.

Do all levels describe performance in the positive-what is happening, rather than not happening?

Rubric levels can reflect how learning and task completion might naturally progress and provide a road map that illustrates to students what novice to expert performance looks like. Using "I can..." statements, such as "I can use information from at least one source to describe the historical event," leads students to think about what they're learning to do at each level and describe under what conditions they can be successful.

Do numbers emphasize quality over quantity?

Rather than using numbers to ask for more sources or examples that might not improve quality, consider using numbers to describe successful completion of performance task parts that describe progress. This approach is less subjective than simply giving a score between 3 and 4 because it isn't quite a 4. Some teachers I've worked with use a range of numbers at one performance level to describe each part successfully completed at the proficient level.

Does the rubric use kid-friendly language that encourages peer- and self-assessment?

Consider the message that students get when they see negative performance-level headings like these: "Unacceptable," "Below," "Limited." When students have input into the writing, refinement, or "translation" (rewriting rubrics in their words) of performance-level descriptions, they're more open to own their learning. In my classroom, I created interactive " What I need to do " rubrics that focused on proficient performance, requiring students to identify their evidence, which dramatically improved the quality of their work.

Peer collaboration is the best tool for developing high-quality rubrics. Take out your performance assessment rubrics and examine potential areas of improvement with colleagues. You may discover that it's time for your rubrics to get a reboot.

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A framework for creating assessment tools that clearly communicate assignment expectations and encourage high-quality work.

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This article has 7 steps teachers can make towards fair assessment in the classroom.

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https://docs.google.com/document/d/1W9sgHAjH3CdirhOacIRBvXYA3NGrxRxd/edit

Formative assessment strategies with complete descriptions for each of them; 5 pages worth of strategies.