Assessment of/for Learning Through Differentiation

1. Assessment of/for Learning Through Differentiation First District RESA July 2007

2. Our Legacy: Assessment for Student Motivation • To get students to learn, you demand it • Play on student anxiety • Use assessments as intimidation • Manipulate assessments as rewards and punishments • Provide a rank order of students • Promote competition

3. Results Confidence Learn Responsibility Character Lifelong Success Grows How to succeed Internal Compliant Learner Winners

4. Result Confidence Learn Responsibility Character Lifelong Failure Wanes No hope External Rebellious Search for success Losers

5. New Mission: Build Competency • Honor reality that students learn at different rates • Establish clear targets, worth achieving, and within reach • Driving force of collaboration and success • Number of students who can succeed is unlimited

6. Results Confidence Learn Responsibility Character Lifelong Credible success Confidence grows I can succeed Within me I am responsible Confident learner Winners

7. Assessment for Motivation • Clear, student friendly targets • Accurate assessments • Effective communication

8. Three Types of Needed Assessments • Preassessments – Design this after summative assessment • Formative – Identify these last • Summative – Design this first

10. What is Mastery?

11. Mastery is… • more than knowing information, but manipulating and applying that information successfully in other situations. • defined by the Center for Media Literacy in New Mexico, “If we are literate in our subject, we can access (understand and find meaning in), analyze, evaluate, and create the subject or medium.”

12. Grade 4 ELA: ELA4R1: For literary texts, the student identifies the characteristics of various genres and produces evidence of reading that :a. Relates theme in works of fiction to personal experience; b. Identifies and analyzes the elements of plot, character, and setting in stories read; f. Makes judgments and inferences about setting, characters, and events and supports them with elaborating and convincing evidence from the text. ELA4R3: understands and acquires new vocabulary and uses it correctly in reading and writing.

13. ELA4W2: The student produces a response to literature that: a. Engages the reader by establishing a context, creating a speaker’s voice, and otherwise developing reader interest; b. Advances a judgment that is interpretive, evaluative, or reflective; c. Supports judgments through references to text, other works, authors, or non-print media, or references to personal knowledge; d. Demonstrates an understanding of the literary work; e. Excludes extraneous details and inappropriate information; f. Provides a sense of closure to the writing. ELAW4: consistently uses a writing process to develop, revise, and evaluate the writing. ELA4C1: demonstrates control of the rules of the English language, realizing that usage involves the appropriate application of conventions and grammar in both written and spoken formats.

14. Three Types of Needed Assessments • Preassessments – Design this after summative assessment • Formative – Identify these last • Summative – Design this first

15. Culminating Project: I’m Your Biggest Fan! We all have our favorite authors, and now you have the opportunity to share your enthusiasm with the world! Your task is to create a mini-book that will detail the life and works of the author you have selected. It will be displayed in the media center, available for use as a resource for the fifth grade author research papers. Each section that you create should be titled as your chapters to the book. The book must have the following chapters: Chapter 1 – Write a short biography of your chosen author to include a short summary of important dates and events in the author’s life. Chapter 2 – Write at least three plot summaries (each one about a different work by your author). Be sure to identify each of the works that you are using by including the title in each of the plot summaries. Chapter 3 – Discuss/analyze one text by your author. Your analysis must include character development and theme, supported by quotes and examples from the text, personal connections to the text, an evaluation of the effectiveness of the setting, and your opinion of the text with justification. Chapter 4 – Explain what you would change about a work by this author and why (must be one of the three works used for plot summaries in Chapter 2) Chapter 5 – Write a “found” poem—a poem created by selecting 8 words or phrases from any of the three chosen works that you find appealing and organizing the phrases into a “found” poem. You may share the poem with the class. You may give each of the five chapters a title that somehow relates to what you are putting in that chapter. Chapter 6 – In this chapter, you will explain the significance of each of your chapter titles, and how they relate to the author and his works.

16. Analyzing the Summative Assessment • Does your assessment match the mastery expectations? • Is the key vocabulary represented within the assessment or are other terms being utilized in place of the vocabulary of the standards? • Are there different ways that the student can show knowledge and understandings or is there a dominant form of questioning (true/false, matching, etc.)

17. How do we know that an assessment assesses what we want it to? • Do the task yourself • Circle the portions of your responses that elicit the essential and enduring knowledge and skills listed at the top of the unit. • Read each component of the essential and enduring knowledge and skills, and check off on the assessment where demonstration of that knowledge and skill is required. • Ask someone else to compare the lesson’s essential and enduring knowledge and skills to the assessment to make sure they’re in sync.

18. Three Types of Needed Assessments • Preassessments – Design this after summative assessment • Formative – Identify these last • Summative – Design this first

19. Examples of Pre-assessments for Readiness

20. Pre-assessment for 4th Grade ELA • Choose a familiar story and pretend that I have never heard of it. Explain the plot of the story (including the problem/resolution, setting, main events, characters, and theme). • What was your personal opinion of this story and why do you feel that way? • Give one example of written dialogue, as it may appear in a story. • What is the best way to figure out the meaning of a new word that you come across in a story that you are reading?

21. Your Turn… • Examine your summative assessment • Create a pre-assessment based on it

22. Analyzing the Pre-assessment • Create a checklist of what students are to know • Add to the checklist what students are expected to do • Compare to your description of mastery for this set of standards • Are there mastery expectations that are not covered in the pre-assessment? • Review pre-assessment for extraneous items that do not reflect the standards set forth for demonstration of mastery.

23. Pre-Assessment Checklist

24. Transition slide

26. Questions to guide in Assessment Analysis • How well did the pre-assessment and any accompanying rubric or other scoring guide work? How would you revise them? • What are the most common errors and misunderstandings shown on the student performance grid? Of these, which ones are the most important to focus on and why? • Which students have not reached the proficiency level and why? What assistance will you (and the school) provide for these students?

30. What Differentiated Instruction Is..... • Responsive, proactiveteaching • Qualitative rather than quantitative • Rooted in assessment • Fair

31. What is Fair?

33. Differentiating Process Making sense of the content so it becomes theirs......... • in a range ofmodes at varied degrees of complexityin varying time spans • with varied amounts of support • using essential skills and essential information in order to understand essential principles or answer essential questions

34. “Only when students work at appropriate challenge levels do they develop the essential habits of persistence, curiosity, and willingness to take intellectual risks.”

35. “Come to the edge,” he said. “We are afraid,” they said. “Come to the edge,” he said. THEY DID. And he pushed them, And they flew. -- Apollinaire

36. TEACHING WITH STUDENT VARIANCE IN MIND FRUSTRATION Zone of Proximal Development TASK DIFFICULTY BOREDOM READINESS LEVEL

37. THE CYCLE OF INSTRUCTION Establish curriculum priorities Plan and implement instruction and learning experiences Determine acceptable evidence

38. Insert video sample

39. Create on-level task first then adjust up and down.

43. 5 Steps to Tiering

44. Ensure that group membership is flexible.

45. Why use flexible groups? Insert video example • Change as needed • Increases participation and engagement • Improves achievement • Ensures all students learn to work independently, cooperatively and collaboratively in a variety of settings and with a variety of peers • Provides for individual differences • Increases the probability of student success by matching achievement levels and needs more of the time

46. Ensure that group membership is flexible.

47. Plan the number of levels most appropriate for instruction.

48. Plan the number of levels most appropriate for instruction.

49. Recognize that complexity is relative.

50. ELA4W2: The student produces a response to literature that: b. Advances a judgment that is interpretive, evaluative, or reflective; c. Supports judgments through references to text, other works, authors, or non-print media, or references to personal knowledge; d. Demonstrates an understanding of the literary work; e. Excludes extraneous details and inappropriate information; • Supports judgment through references to text • Advances judgment (must choose a side) • Interprets text, evaluates text, or reflects on text • Excludes extraneous details