Making Assessment Strategies Work for You

1. Making Assessment Strategies Work for You By Colin Slingsby, Luis Gamez, and Melissa Deutsch

2. Learning Targets • MIT teachers will know how to create authentic summative assessments. • MIT teachers will understand three ways students can effectively use self assessments to become engaged in their own learning. • MIT teachers will understand three ways teachers can use efficient assessments to gauge student learning.

3. Authentic Assessments • What is it? • A form of assessment in which students are asked to perform real-world tasks that demonstrate meaningful application of essential knowledge and skills -- Jon Mueller • What does it look like? • Selected Response • Constructed Response • Product • Performance

4. How to create authentic assessments: • Questions to ask • Standards: What should students know and be able to do? • Authentic Tasks: What indicates students have met these standards? • Criteria: What does good performance on these tasks look like? • Rubric: How well did the students perform?

5. Tips to think about before you begin: • Choose ONE big project per unit that you would be willing to spend time grading. • Allow student choice. • Make sure there is a variety of topics covered. • Have clear expectations. Share your rubric.

6. Making it easier • Writing groups. • Break up the project. Have checkpoints along the way that accumulate into a final synthesized product. • Consider cooperative learning for a group grade.

7. Portfolios • A portfolio contains a purposefully selected subset of student work. "Purposefully" selecting student work means deciding what type of story you want the portfolio to tell. • Portfolios provide an excellent vehicle for consideration of process and the development of related skills. • 3 Types of portfolios: • Growth-to show change over time. Identify strengths and weaknesses. • Showcase-to showcase accomplishments over time. • Evaluation-document progress toward standards.

8. Self evaluation • What is it? • Students judging the quality of their work, based on evidence and explicit criteria, for the purpose of doing better work in the future. • Benefits? • Self-evaluation is a potentially powerful technique because of its impact on student performance through enhanced self-efficacy and increased intrinsic motivation.

9. Self Evaluation Chain

10. Nameless Voice • Ask students to anonymously submit sample work to share with the class. • Sample paragraphs on the overhead, a visual vocabulary card, or a ticket out the door quick write can all be samples of student work that the class or individual students can use. • Ask students to write or discuss how the nameless voice is similar or different to their understanding.

11. Learning Contract • Ask students to create and agree to a learning contract at the beginning of a unit. • The learning contract can define the learning goals, the "photo album" of evidence of learning, and agreed upon activities. • At numerous times during the unit, ask students to revisit the contract, record new learning or muddy points and to get feedback from you or other peers.

12. Letter to a Future Student • At the conclusion of a unit, ask students to write a letter to a future student in the class explaining what they've learned in a unit or what to do when a text is difficult or what I've learned about my own learning that might help you, etc. • Regardless of the topic, the medium provides useful feedback on student thinking and learning while promoting reflection on learning.

13. Assessment Techniques • We looked for strategies that met three criteria: • Serves as an assessment of student learning. • Allows the teacher to gauge student knowledge/comprehension of the material. • Can be graded efficiently.

14. Progressive Quiz • A one-two question quiz on reading assignments given at the beginning of each class period. • The instructor takes up the papers after the first quiz; returns them for the next one, etc. • All questions/responses are kept on the same sheet(s) of paper. • The aggregate score could be used as a test grade at the end of the semester. • (This is also a good way to take attendance without calling roll. Anyone who is not there to pick up his/her paper is marked absent and gets no chance for make-up.)

15. One Sentence Synthesis • This strategy requires a higher level thinking skill. • Ask the students at the end of a class to synthesize the content of the lecture or discussion into one sentence.

16. Class Starter Questions • For this to work successfully, it needs to be a standing assignment for each student to bring in a 3x5 card with a question already formulated as his/her admit to class. • The teacher can quickly sort the cards and begin class by addressing key issues. • This gives the instructor a good idea of what learning has transpired prior to the class and what still needs to be addressed.

17. Pro and Con Grids • This simple exercise can give an instructor a quick overview of a class’s analysis of the pros and cons, advantages/disadvantages etc. of an issue of concern. • Good for classes that don’t necessarily deal in absolutes.

18. Student Disposition Rubric

19. So now what do you know? • Get into groups and talk. • Share ideas. • Any further questions?

20. Resources • http://www.cdl.org/resource-library/articles/self_eval.php • http://www.readwritethink.org/professional-development/strategy-guides/promoting-student-self-assessment-30102.html • http://www.park.edu/cetl/quicktips/effectiveassess.html • http://jalt.org/test/car_1.htm • http://jonathan.mueller.faculty.noctrl.edu/toolbox/index.htm