Classroom assessment has received increased attention from the measurement community in recent years. Teachers can use assessment data to make judgments about. During project work-time, Ms. K conducts conferences with groups of students about their projects. In addition to optimal wait-time, it requires a solid understanding of the subject matter, attentive consideration of each student's remarks, as well as skillful crafting of further leading questions. However, this can only be done in light of the teacher's beliefs about how best to help students to learn. 0000017901 00000 n When she is not in discussions with students, she mills around the areas where her students work, moving from group to group, sometimes asking questions, sometimes just listening and observing before she joins the next group. We turn to this challenge in Chapter 5 and Chapter 6. When questioned several months later about those students ' progress, the teacher reported that they excelled and progressed more than their classmates. Show the class how you can change the pitch (how high or how low the sound is) of the sound. Box 3-4 illustrates a data sheet used by the students for the assessment activity, which provides prompts to record their experimental design and observations. 0000007359 00000 n One of the goals of the Standards is for all students to become independent lifelong learners. For example, both vocabulary and oral style differ among children so the teacher may communicate far more effectively with students from one socioeconomic or ethnic background than with those from another background. the development of important dispositions. What we assess, how we assess, and how we communicate the results send a clear message to students about what is worth learning, how it should be learned, and how well we expect them to perform. The ability to self-assess understanding is an essential tool for self-directed learning. Literature on classroom assessment … As Stiggins states, it is important that teachers have clear performance criteria in mind before they assess student work and responses. More than 30 years ago, Benjamin Bloom showed how to conduct this process in practical and highly effective ways when he described the practice of mastery learning (Bloom, 1968, 1971). Design experiments that will provide information to help determine which reactants are necessary to produce the heat in this reaction. Most of the assessments here should be given one-on-one. Teachers must use it to adapt their teaching to meet the needs of their students. Any classroom assessment system should assess and support growth in all areas. At the end, he makes an effort at chemical notation, though he uses an equal sign (=) instead of an arrow ( → ). 0000029963 00000 n To find the direction for best use of the assessment data, a teacher or student gathers data in the course classroom activity by asking questions, such as “What does this information tell me?” and “How can I use it to further learning and improve teaching? The primary audiences for this chapter are classroom teachers and teacher educators. 0000000676 00000 n As a class, they cycle back through the criteria that were established, deepening understanding by highlighting exemplars from past projects and just talking through what constitutes quality work. Ms. R had collected a variety of materials, which she now displayed on a table, including boxes, tubes, string, wire, hooks, scrap wood, dowels, plastic, rubber, fabric and more. When looking at work, it is important to ask critical questions, such as “For what does this provide evidence? 0000003093 00000 n such as discussing the forces involved as the same object sits in the student's hand, hangs from a spring, and as the object is pushed off the edge of the table. These are often informal and ongoing, though they need not be. Not a MyNAP member yet? Their responses, and the language they use to describe and explain observations and phenomena, suggest varying levels of understanding of the chemical and physical changes underlying the reactions. In the first vignette, Ms. K facilitates frequent conversations with her class about what constitutes good work. In a review of the relevant research in this area, Fuchs and Fuchs (1986) reported that student achievement gains were significantly larger (twice the effect size) when teachers used a regular and systematic method for recording and interpreting assessment data and providing feedback as compared to when they made spontaneous decisions. Following the example of Ms. K's class in the first vignette, students and teachers can become engaged in a substantive, assessment conversation about what is a good presentation, such as a good lab investigation or a good reading summary while engaging students in the development process of assessment rubrics. For example, after one of the discussions, she realized that the students in one group were not connecting algal blooms to possible sources of pollutants. She suggested they might want to look at the materials she had brought in, but they could think about other materials too. How like the instrument you wanted to make is the one you actually made? This is a good hypothesis, but not a valid conclusion at this point. Only if assessments in science classrooms can more closely approximate the vision of science education teaching and learning can they inform the teacher's work in trying to implement the emphasis in the Standards on students actively doing science. If content understanding is the goal, it is necessary to design an appropriate assessment that would tap into that dimension of their understanding. He first omits baking soda and determines that the phenol red and calcium chloride produce heat. These icons convey the same general meaning of traffic lights and are so labeled in the class. A more correct conclusion, based on the experiment results, is that phenol red does not cause the heat. However, she considers this in her final conclusion when she discusses the possibility that mixing phenol red and calcium chloride (which she didn't try) would result in heat. 0000008162 00000 n Even though help was provided to handle materials and supplies, the older students also could have been more vocal in the design and construction of the instruments. Thus for the students, the journals with the teacher 's comments added, serve as a repository for one form of feedback so they can maintain a continuing record of their work and progress. As groups of students conduct experiments, the teacher circulates around the room and questions individuals about the conclusions drawn from their data. Box 3-5, Box 3-6, Box 3-7, Box 3-8 through Box 3-9 offer samples of this type of student work along with teacher commentary. Messick states that dropping reliability as a prerequisite for validity may be “feasible in assessment for instructional improvement occurring frequently throughout the course of teaching or in appraisals of extensive portfolios ” (p. 15). Messick (1989) offers another perspective on validity. 0000001551 00000 n One of the basic claims made by the researchers in this study was that the teacher fulfilled the “exceptional-promise ” expectation. The teacher decides that the class will revisit an earlier completed laboratory activity and, in the process, examine the connections between that activity and the discussion at hand. With a teacher's help, much useful work in student groups can start from assessment tasks: each member of a group can comment on another's homework, or one another's tests, and then discuss and defend the basis for their decisions. The chapter offers a guiding framework to use when considering everyday assessments and then discusses the roles and responsibilities of teachers and students in improving assessment. Their work should be less episodic and fractured than lesson-based science teaching. 97 19 It features examples, definitions, illustrative vignettes, and practical suggestions to help teachers obtain the greatest benefit from this daily evaluation and tailoring process. Switch between the Original Pages, where you can read the report as it appeared in print, and Text Pages for the web version, where you can highlight and search the text. The King School was reforming its science curriculum. The C.C. The type of classroom assessment discussed in this chapter focuses upon the daily opportunities and interactions afforded to teachers and students for collecting information about student work and understandings, then uses that information to improve both teaching and learning. Where groups had worked together on an instrument, one report was to be prepared. Share a link to this book page on your preferred social network or via email. Assessments that are different in form than traditional paper-and-pencil assessments. Thus, she is helping them to develop a clear view of what they are to achieve and where they are going. Rather, she states that calcium chloride needs a liquid to conduct heat. Concepts are what students know about a topic, and skills are what students can do. FIGURE 3-1 Considerations for designing, selecting, implementing assessment. One group planned to build a guitar and designed a special shape for the sound box, but after the glued sides of their original box collapsed twice, the group decided to use the wooden box that someone had added to the supply table. Clarity about the overall goals is only a first step. Classroom assessments fall into three categories, each serving a different purpose. Some designs were simple and easy to implement, for example, one group was making a rubber-band player by stretching different widths and lengths of rubber bands around a plastic gallon milk container with the top cut off. One teacher might carry a clipboard while circulating around the room to record comments and observations. They see this subjectivity as a threat to the validity of the assessment. √ using scientific notation to record experiments and results. Teachers need to understand the principles of sound assessment and apply those principles as a matter of daily routine practice. These problems of “disclosure,” and the broader problems of bias in testing have been studied from many aspects in relation to summative tests, especially where these are developed. ted, so there is ONLY one difference between the preliminary reaction and the comparison reaction. In helping her students to reach their goal, she bases her actions on multiple pieces of evidence that she gleans from activities embedded in her teaching and curriculum. A single type or form of assessment will not be able to capture all of the dimensions of scientific knowing and doing. Changed hot pink. Stiggins encourages teachers to devise classroom assessments of five different, but related, kinds of expectations: mastery of content knowledge, where mastery includes both knowing and understanding; the use of that knowledge to reason and solve problems; development of the ability to create products that meet certain standards of quality; and. On Friday, they were once again to draw and write about their instruments. Such discussions inevitably highlight the criteria for quality. From reading student responses and listening to discussion, Ms. K knows that some of her students are making deeper connections, and many are making different connections. complex, pedagogical challenge is heightened because the goals that embody the standards and the related criteria need to be understood by all students. They share examples of visual display boards, written reports, and models from other projects. ” and “What other types of data should I be looking for to help me make sense of this information?”. Lastly, assessments should be feasible. So the first and hardest part of treating students equitably is to try to treat all students with the same respect and seriousness. The students are expected to refer to their observations and the results of that first activity. However, she does not control variables in her next experiment, when she combines calcium chloride and water. is not really a heat maker all by itself or without C.C. She then chooses to mix calcium chloride and phenol red solution. The information she learns as a result of these conferences will guide decisions on time allocation, pace, resources, and learning activities that she can help provide. Based on experience, many teachers both intuitively and purposefully consider these questions every day. After first advising teachers to set clear and appropriate targets—or learning and performance goals—and convey these targets to their students, he stresses the importance of selecting appropriate methods and of taking care to avoid invalidity and bias. The usefulness of assessment does not stop at teachers collecting information in the course of their teaching and providing feedback. Thus there has to be a conceptual analysis of the subject goals, which also is complemented by analysis of the cognitive capacities of the learners. Click here to buy this book in print or download it as a free PDF, if available. Questions concerning these different forms of validity need to be addressed independently, although they are often related. In a few cases, the original design was abandoned, and a new design emerged as the instrument took shape. The chapter offers a guiding framework to use when considering everyday assessments and then discusses the roles and responsibilities of teachers and students in improving assessment. Do you want to take a quick tour of the OpenBook's features? endstream endobj 98 0 obj<> endobj 99 0 obj<> endobj 100 0 obj<>/ColorSpace<>/Font<>/ProcSet[/PDF/Text/ImageC]/ExtGState<>>> endobj 101 0 obj[/ICCBased 112 0 R] endobj 102 0 obj<> endobj 103 0 obj<>stream Ms. K's and Ms R's classrooms demonstrate the many ways assessment information can be obtained. Much as Ms. K and Ms. R do in the snapshots of their respective classes, captured in the vignettes, teachers continually make decisions about both the teaching and the learning going on in their classrooms. At the very beginning of the project, Ms. K and her students started conversations about how their projects would be assessed. Since teachers are primarily responsible for evaluating instruction and student learning, there is a widespread concern about the quality of classroom assessment. Making your classroom ELL-friendly will keep your EO students on track, too. The information collected by teachers and students while the students are at work can be used to guide their progress. They selected three topics that they knew they would be teaching the following year: life cycles, sound, and water. L׼Un@W%�E͊�2�hB8cUD�eӄ��) �j���SV��W�c�R���^m�I��X��_���4n���8eq��i �M=�����;�A-(((��@& ���. Ms. R asked the students to think particularly about what they knew about sound, what kind of sound. The information will be used to plan the next design activity. She also is able to note progress that occurs throughout the project, as well as from the last time she engaged in a similar activity with students. If data are collected and used to inform the teacher and student, assessment can play a significant role in all the decisions a teacher makes about what actions to take next. With large class sizes and competing priorities, some teachers may find it impractical to employ certain practices. The teacher can help to guide the discussions, especially during the times in which students have difficulty helping one another. startxref But since that time, the emphasis on assessments … �d�]\�j�!L� @U��+#4A:T�rF�cP3OP���&��Blb���� ����� �ET��49ި4�pld]��A:�ysȒO����hȨ"�@����)� >L^�/���La������%��҆ ��LO�. On a related note, students should be provided with multiple opportunities to demonstrate understanding, performance, or current thinking. What kind of instrument did you want to make? The quality of classroom environments is a central variable in determining behavioral and learning outcomes of students. When teaching the concept of force in his high school class, Jim Minstrell is aware that although students use terms like “push” and “pull” to describe “force,” the understandings they have for these terms and for the concept of force differs from those shared by scientists (Minstrell, 1992). To be effective as assessment that improves teaching and learning, the information generated from the activity must be used to inform the teacher and/or students in helping to decide what to do next. Thus, assessment serves not only as a guide to teaching methods but also to selecting and improving curriculum to better match the interests and needs of the students. What is important is that assessment is an ongoing activity, one that relies on multiple strategies and sources for collecting information that bears on the quality of student work and that then can be used to help both the students and the teacher think more pointedly about how the quality might be improved. Painting the broad landscape for the entire class will give those who are struggling to find a broader context for their work and sustain their inquiries, so she decides to create an opportunity to do so. Formative assessment refers to assessments that provide information to students and teachers that is used to improve teaching and learning. View our suggested citation for this chapter. After considerable research into existing curriculum materials and much discussion, the team decided to build a technology piece into some of the current science studies. Assessments • Classroom Sensory Environment Assessment (CSEA) – Reason: Promotes teacher–therapist collaboration, provides a means of understanding the impact of a classroom’s sensory environment on student behavior. 115 0 obj<>stream (p. 88), Sadler (1989) emphasizes the importance of student understanding of what constitutes quality work, “The indispensable condition for improvement is that the student comes to hold a concept of quality roughly equivalent to that held by the teacher...” (p. 121). I think that the water and the calcium chloride produced the heat. (p. 87). Box 3-2 provides operational definitions of several terms you will find in the assessment literature. Show the class how you can make the sound louder. The assessment … Class discussions around journal reflections provide important data for teachers about student learning and also allow students to hear connections others have made. This type of format allows the teacher to hear what the students are learning from the activity and offers other students the opportunity of learning about connections that they might not have made. Peer-design reviews, conversations, and other assessments were built into the activity of designing and building instruments so that students could draw from these to inform their design and construction of instruments. Summative assessment refers to the cumulative assessments, usually occurring at the end of a unit or topic coverage, that intend to capture what a student has learned, or the quality of the learning, and judge performance against some standards. 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