Personalized Learning & Formative AssessmentMelissa Spadin & Steve Green

Learning Goals

1. Deepen your understanding of the roles of teachers and students in the formative assessment process

2. Build your knowledge of what personalized learning means and looks like

3. Identify how the formative assessment process enables personalized learning

Success CriteriaI can:

1. Articulate the connections between personalized learning and the formative assessment process

2. Explain how formative assessment and personalized learning promote student agency and engagement

3. Communicate the shifting roles of teachers and students in a student centered learning environment

What knowledge, skills, or abilities do we want students to leave school with?

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“The purpose of education is to engage students with their passions and growing sense of purpose, teach them critical skills needed for career and citizenship, and inspire them to do their very best to make the world better.”

-Wagner & Dintersmith, 2015

The Path to Personalized...

● Establishing clear targets for learning, in accessible chunks, for students to internalize and continuously measure their learning against

● Implementing and sustaining a feedback culture in which students, teachers, and peers are continuously engaged in improvement

● Making students an integral part of the teaching, learning, and assessing process

The Path to Personalized...

● Ensuring students have access to and input on rich, authentic tasks that involve higher-order thinking and complex problem solving

● Embedding the inquiry cycle into curriculum, teaching, learning, and assessment

● Providing multiple methods and opportunities for students to demonstrate learning

Personalized Learning

Formative Assessment Practices

Let’s Talk About Assessment!

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“Assessment is the bridge between teaching and learning-it is only through assessment that we can find out whether what has happened in the classroom has produced the learning we intended.”

-Dylan Wiliam, 2011

Purposes of Assessment

Occurs when teachers and students use evidence to

inform and adjust teaching and learning while the learning is taking place

Assessment AS

Learning

Assessment OF

Learning

Formative Assessment Process Interim & Summative Assessment

Assessment FOR

Learning

Occurs when students reflect on and monitor their progress

to inform their future learning goals

Occurs when teachers use evidence of student learning

to make judgements on student achievement against

goals and standards

DifferentAssessmentsHaveDifferentRolestoPlayinaComprehensiveSystem

“Grain size” of standards assessed

ClassroomFormative

StatewideSummative

Immediacy of actionable information

ConnectingAssessmentCyclesWithIndicatorsofPerformance

LeadMeasures LagMeasures

FormativeAssessment

ProcessInterim

AssessmentSummativeAssessment

Achievement or ProgressMeasurement/Monitoring

After Teacher-Learning Cycle

Evaluate Programs & Multi-year Progress

Accountability

End of Semester/Year/Course

Assist Immediate LearningTeaching and Learning

Real time/During Instruction/Ongoing

Each level of assessment assesses “different sized chunks of learning, providing information on the degree to which students have progressed toward meeting specific instructional learning targets and, ultimately, to mastery of the content standard.”

-Margaret Heritage, 2010

Formative Assessment

Minute to minute adjustments in instruction to improve teaching and learning

The Four Attributes of Formative Assessment

Clarify Intended Learning

Learning Goals & Success Criteria

● Are clearly identified and communicated to students

● Are tightly aligned

● Are shared in student-friendly language

● Criteria made explicit through exemplars

Learning Progressions

● Helps answer the question “what do I do with this data?”

● Develop a “pathway” for learning

● Targets assessments and feedback

Elicit Evidence of Learning

● Pre-assessment

● Discussion & dialogue

● Questioning

● Tasks

● Observation

● Writing

● Digital tools

● Self & peer assessment

Interpret Evidence of Learning

Self & Peer Assessment

● Self/peer feedback helps deepen their understanding of learning goals

● Involves students in thinking meta-cognitively about their learning

● Support students’ ability to internalize learning goals and self-regulate their learning

Interpret Evidence of Learning

Feedback

● Pinpoints path on learning progression● Tightly aligned with learning goal and success

criteria● Specific, actionable, timely● Does not include grades, scores, or comparisons

to others

Act On EvidenceResponsive action

● How far along are students towards mastery?

● Who needs additional support?

● Have my daily assignments supported students to meet the learning goals?

Contingent teaching & learning

● How can I adjust instruction?

● What content/skills require additional coverage?

● How can I assist students in selecting appropriate learning strategies?

Collaborative Classroom Culture

● Teachers and students are partners in learning

● Students feel comfortable taking intellectual risks

● Students are active agents in their own learning

Formative Assessment in Action!

https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/criteria-for-success

Assessment as a Continuous Cycle

A Balanced, Comprehensive Assessment System

Unpacking the Assessment System

● Learning focus

● Interpreting evidence

● Purpose of eliciting evidence

● Method of eliciting evidence

● Purpose of assessment

● Acting on evidence

Personalized Learning

Formative Assessment Practices

“Personalized learning is a progressively student–driven model where students deeply engage in meaningful, authentic, and rigorous challenges to demonstrate desired outcomes.”

- Zmuda, Curtis & Ullman (2015)

The Four Attributes of Personalized Learning

In personalized learning, every student is seen as a respected and valued participant.

Empowerment comes from an environment in which students recognize the power of their own ideas and recognize the shift that can happen by being exposed to others’ ideas.

Co-Creation

The student works with the teacher to

● develop a challenge, problem, or idea, clarify what is being measured (learning goals),

● envision the product or performance (assessment) and

● outline an action plan to be successful on that performance to achieve the desired results (learning actions).

Students assume a significant design role in the development of the idea, challenge, problem, or inquiry. They are being invited to the design table to co-create a personalized plan using “backward design” principles.

Self- DiscoveryStudents need to know enough about themselves to be able to make wise decisions as they navigate through the turbulence of a rapidly changing environment.

Being educated is more than being knowledgeable about a series of topics and fluent in key skills; it also is having students come to understand themselves as learners and know more about what they want to do both in the world as well as in future learning.

Our ultimate aim is for students to become self-directed learners who know how to manage themselves in a variety of situations.

Social Construction

Students build ideas through relationships with others as they theorize, investigate, and develop in pursuit of a common goal.

There is real power in feeling that you are not alone, a sense of camaraderie when you are working to cause a change, create a performance, or build a prototype.

1. Goals2. Inquiry/idea generation3. Task and audience4. Evaluation5. Cumulative demonstration of learning6. Instructional plan7. Feedback

For teachers looking to create a learning community that provides opportunities for voice, co-creation, social construction, and self-discovery, there are seven key elements to address:

Debrief

● What elements of personalized were present in this PBL classroom?

● How did the formative assessment process support their work?

● What natural entry points do you see for your work?

"We care that students develop the capacity to evaluate their depth of content knowledge, skill development, conceptual understanding, and overall satisfaction within and beyond their school performances."

-Kallick & Zmuda, Students at the Center