Using Assessment to Inform Instruction

Learning Outcomes

1. Describe the role that formative assessment plays in the learning process.

2. Explore new ideas for formative assessment.

3. Define various components of learner profiles.

4. Expand our lists of data sources for creating learner profiles.

5. Prepare for student re-teaching.

What is formative assessment?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPWz91t-wm4&list=PLIZK2t3fOcXyyGEViU_4MboNystcwHBGU&index=5

Formative vs. Summative Assessment

What is the purpose of formative assessment?The goal of formative assessment is to m o nito r s tud e nt le a rning  to provide ongoing feedback that can be used by instructors to improve their teaching and by students to improve their learning. More specifically, formative assessments:help students identify their strengths and weaknesses and target areas that need workhelp teachers recognize where students are struggling and address problems immediatelyFormative assessments are generally lo w s ta ke s , which means that they have low or no point value.

Formative Assessment Attributes Informal and continuous Ongoing through personal communications:

Questioning: try to question all students Observing: move around the room, have a room

chart and make notes Discussing: with the whole class, group, or

individual Writing: Quick Writes, Quick Draws, Exit Tickets,

etc.

Planning for Instruction

Standards →

Learning Targets (What will students know, understand, be able to do?) →

Assessment (How will we know what the students know, understand, are able to do?)→

Instructional strategies

Formative Assessment Examples

Teacher Observations Questioning Group Discussion Graphic Organizers Peer/Self Assessments Visual Representations Individual Whiteboards Four Corners Quick Quizzes Think-Pair-Share Exit Tickets Dry Erase Boards Hold-up Cards

Formative Assessment Examples

One-minute Paper Three questions you still have•The Muddiest Point3-2-1 (Three things you learned, two things you could explain, one question you still have)3-Ws (What did we learn? So what? (relevancy, importance) Now what? (how does it fit into what we have been learning?)

Write a letter about today’s lesson to…

An absent student A parent A student in preschool/kindergarten/first

grade A younger sibling

Learning logs

Useful prompts:I learned...I'm wondering...I have a question about...I'm beginning to understand...I want to know…I feel…I think…I understood…I was surprised that…I would still like to know more about…Today’s lesson reminded me…I am still confused about…This lesson was valuable because…

More ideas Double Entry Notebook

Create a two-column table. Use the left column to write down 5- 8 important quotations, facts, or ideas. Use the right column to record reactions to information in the left column.

Twitter Post

Define _______ in under 140 characters.

• Color Cards (cups)

Red = "Stop, I need help." Green = "Keep going, I understand." Yellow = "I'm a little confused."

Use Formative Assessment to Empower Learners by…

Ensuring that students are aware of learning targets.

Providing immediate, specific feedback on formative assessments that are clearly related to the learning targets.

Encouraging students to assess and reflect on their own learning.

Collect data!

Collect, sort, categorize and summarize student data.

Identify patterns of similarities and differences among students.

Monitor student progress by noting results of ongoing assessments.

Keeping track of data

Use a seating chart to log questions/responses

(Can be as simple as +/-) Have students keep a response sheet to

questions and collect/check at the end of the lesson/day

Clickers/eLearning automated responses Sticky notes, index cards Digital notes (Simplenotes, Just Notes)

Create Checklists

Use data to create learner profiles"Teachers often do not start with "where children

are" but with the requirements of a predetermined, time-allocating curriculum." 

The Culture o f The Scho o l a nd The Pro ble m o f Cha ng e   -by Seymour B. Sarason

Learner Profiles: 3 Components

1. Readiness

2. Interest

3. Learning Preferences

Readiness is a student’s entry point relative to a particular understanding or skill. To help a student to grow, we must begin where the child is. Some children, particularly those who have had early learning opportunities, begin school with well-developed skills and considerable understanding of various topics; other students arrive as true beginners and need basic instruction and additional practice.

Interest refers to a child’s affinity, curiosity, or passion for a particular topic or skill. The advantage to grouping by interest is that it allows students to attach what they have been learning in class to things that they already find relevant and interesting and appealing in their own lives.

Learning profile has to do with how students learn. Some are visual learners, auditory learners, or kinesthetic learners. Students vary in the amount of time they need to master a skill or learn a concept.

Carol Ann Tomlinson/ Diane Heacox

Readiness:Begin with pre-assessment What do my students know before my

teaching begins? How will I pre-assess my students’ prior

knowledge and readiness levels? What does the information generated by my

pre-assessment tool tell me about my students’ entry points to learning the new information?

Examples of Pre-assessment Strategies Word Splash Anticipation Guide Advance Organizer Frayer Model K-W-L Analogy or simile Brainstorming Circle Map Four Corners Quick Quiz

Learner Profile: Interest

Examples of addressing students’ interests

A biology teacher uses athletic teams, families and rock bands to illustrate symbiosis.

Students bring objects from home to illustrate symmetry.

Students may choose to create artistic expressions of a story, novel, or scientific concept.

Students may choose research topics related to culture, conflict, change, and interdependence during the American era known as Reconstruction.

Learning Preferences

Administer learning style and/or multiple intelligence surveys.

Use a variety of entry points to introduce skills/concepts: auditory, visual, kinesthetic.

Incorporate music, drama, visual art, and movement.

Provide opportunities for students to choose their modes of learning.

Empower learners by helping them to identify their preferred learning modalities.

Guidelines for Developing Learner Profiles

Select a few learning profile categories to emphasize in the beginning.

Help your students reflect on their own preferences.

Be a student of your students. Learn about your students by asking what works for them.

Tomlinson, 2001

What is re-teaching?

Re-teaching is an opportunity to provide additional support to those students who still do not understand key skills and/or concepts in spite of attempts to support them.

What do we re-teach?

Not everything being taught needs to be re-taught. Skills taught again in later units or “nice-to-knows” that are not essential to mastery may not be necessary.

Material that makes up a substantial part of the assessment content or skills requires remediation.

Skills/concepts that are critical to the next unit or later units of study must be remediated.

Who do we re-teach?

Continuous analysis of formative data helps to determine which students have deficits in their learning.

Students who are close to mastery may require minimal re-teaching.

Some students may need intensive remediation.

Learner profiles help determine whether students struggle with context(test structure) rather than content/skills.

Re-teaching strategies

Selecting effective remediation strategies requires that teachers find out as much as they can about why students are still struggling.

Students don’t have to be re-taught all the material; they probably have gaps in understanding that have prevented them from grasping key concepts.

Use student reflection

Have students review first assessments to analyze errors.

Determine and present probable causes of error.

Determine how to prevent this error in the future.

Students should present an error analysis before they can be assessed again.

Re-teach

Teach concepts the students don’t understand a different way.

Focus on only the key concepts and skills students need to know.

Re-teaching should occur shortly after a student’s assessment shows he/she did not understand the material.

Re-teaching should be different than regular instruction.

Re-teaching should not create “busy work” for students.

Additional practice

Not drill and kill! Practice should focus on helping students

develop fluency and proficiency. Practice should be distributed over a period of

time. Use several sessions. Should be meaningful Should be short. Should have immediate feedback.

Study habits

If student performance is due to poor learning habits, the remediation may need to focus on teaching these skills.

Work on learning strategies. Work on organization of notebooks, note-

taking strategies. Teach students how to use graphic

organizers. Allow students to retake the assessment after

they have applied these new strategies.

Instructional strategies…

Must match students’ best learning styles. Should be active and student-centered. Should be collaborative. Should break information down into small

learning targets in order to teach small chunks at a time.

Re-teaching is not simply going over the material more slowly. It is teaching concepts in a different way.

ReferencesCurriculum Differentiation. Retrieved from matok.wikischolars.columbia.edu/.../CURRICULUM%20DIFFERENTIATION

Carnegie Mellon. Retrieved from http://www.cmu.edu/teaching/assessment/basics/formative-summative.html

Dare to Differentiate. Retrieved from http://daretodifferentiate.wikispaces.com/Knowing+the+Learner

Developing Learner Profiles. Retrieved from http://education.alberta.ca/media/1233960/6_ch3%20learner.pdf

Duplin County Schools. Retrieved from www.duplinschools.net/.../Supporting%20Students%20After%20Instruction

Eberopolis: Teaching Reading and Writing with Technology. Retrieved from

https://docs.google.com/a/salem.edu/file/d/0B8y-ZrUhAbCnc05MZ0tUS01SeDJuU0NwU2hYR1B0Zw/edit?pli=1

Edutopia. Retrieved from http://www.edutopia.org/blog/dipsticks-to-check-for-understanding-todd-finley

West Virginia Department of Education. Retrieved from http://wvde.state.wv.us/search.html?q=learner+profiles&x=4&y=3

Exit Ticket

3--Three things you learned 2--Two things you could teach to someone

else 1--One question you still have