Assessment Methods Guide PDF

Assessment should...  Focus on stated curriculum goals and objectives  Be used to improve curriculum and instruction  Measure both content and process  Be chosen for instructional, diagnostic, and prescriptive purposes  Reflect a high degree of fairness to all peopl...

Assessment should...  Focus on stated curriculum goals and objectives  Be used to improve curriculum and instruction  Measure both content and process  Be chosen for instructional, diagnostic, and prescriptive purposes  Reflect a high degree of fairness to all people and groups. Types of Assessments  Rubrics – Identify teacher's expectations of what students will learn from the experience that is about to take place. Learning and evaluation are seamless.  Practice Tests- Used to teach test-taking skills. Can give students an alert about important material. This can happen PRIOR to the instructional process.  Assessment Progress Reports - Teachers provide feedback to students at different points or benchmarks during a project.  Informal Feedback - Part of the daily routine, as simple as "Give me a thumbs up or a thumbs down.". More formal documentation may be needed depending on student responses.  Discussion - Whole class, teacher centered discussion is crucial to assessment because it allows the teacher to evaluate students' ability to apply logic to issues and to support value decisions based on a coherent structure of facts and concepts. Alternative Assessments – graded by rubrics  AUTHENTIC  Products created by students (essays, maps, timelines, graphic organizers)  PRODUCT  Portfolios – collection of student work (posters, journals, letters, pictures, etc...)  PERFORMANCE  Observation heavy (behavior, demonstrations, routines, discussions, etc...) Traditional Assessments ESSAY  Advantages: easy to construct, eliminate guessing, require recall, support language arts goals   Disadvantages: longer to score, more subjective, longer to administer  Advice:  Create a rubric  Score 1 question at a time, NOT 1 student at a time  Take off points for grammar, spelling, handwriting (I WANNA KNOW YOUR THOUGHTS!!!!!) SHORT ANSWER  Mixed Vocabulary Approach – teacher provides about 10 vocab words in alphabetical order and students are to weave a story or response out of them.  Short Answer  Lead Phrase Approach – You begin the response.  Evaluation Leads: "The best event was..." Or "The worst event was..."  Synthesis Leads: "What if..." Or "I wonder..."   Analysis Leads: "It's like..." Or "Compared to..."  Application Leads: "Based on..." Or "If..., then..." Fill-in-the-Blank and Complete Texts Items  Advantages: Easy to construct, eliminates guessing, requires recall, supports spelling  Disadvantages: More time to administer, and to score than T/F tests  Advice  Create a rubric  When doing vocab – put term in question and require definition  No more than 2 blanks per question  Take points off for spelling and handwriting errors (THOUGHTS?????)  DO NOT COPY SENTENCES FROM TEXT. TRUE – FALSE TESTS  Advantages: They can cover a lot of material in a short period of time, easy to score, quantitative data  Disadvantages: Encourages guessing, can be poorly phrased, confusing, fact based   Advice:  No more than 1 concept per question.  Avoid double negatives (too confusing).  Avoid giving clues.  Don't take wording from the text. Multiple –Choice Tests  Advantages: Work well for concepts with closely related potential correct answers, reduce guessing possibilities  Disadvantages: Require little recall because key terms are included as options, time and skill needed to construct plausible wrong answers  Advice:  Stems (the phrase before the possible answers) should be either question or incomplete statements.  Make sure there is only one correct answer.  All options should be plausible (Do not use, "All of the above" or "None of the above".  4 possible answsers is a good amount. Matching Tests Advantages: Focus on key ideas, reduce guessing possibilities, require less paper Disadvantages: Require little recall, creating columns takes time Advice:  Number the left column and use letters for the right column  Make sure there is only one correct answer  Keep the test to 1 page (no more than 15)  Keep responses short What is the Purpose of Common Core?  A list of rigorous learning standards that prepare students for college and careers.  Two major goals of the CCSS:   To achieve national consistency in standards  To develop adequate literacy skills in students  A plausible third goal of the CCSS that has not been extensively explored is the enhancement of teachers’ formative assessment (FA) practices.  Formative Assessment: “a process used by teachers and students during instruction that provides feedback to adjust ongoing teaching and learning to improve students’ achievement of intended instructional outcomes.” (McManus 2008, 3)  Connecting Social Studies and Literacy Using Formative Assessments  he connection between literacy and social studies (Ciardiello 2004; Henning et al. 2008; Paquette and Kaufman 2008) is grounded in the principle that reading, writing, listening, and speaking are crucial tools in exploring and  understanding the content of different subject areas.  The FA model embodies three goals that teachers must reflect on as they implement FA:  (1) to establish where students are in their learning  (2) to establish where students are heading  (3) to establish how students can close the gap between what they know and what they are supposed to know Depth of Knowledge  When teachers ask “What does depth of knowledge look like on these new, more rigorous assessments? How do we prepare students for this kind of thinking?” they are often referred to well- known models like Bloom’s Taxonomy, with its six cognitive process levels—remember, understand, apply, analyze,  evaluate, and create (Armstrong, n.d.).  But guidance based on such models has often been too general in nature, and sometimes even misleading.  Level 1: Recall and Reproduction Tasks at this level require recalling facts and locating information in the text to answer questions about who, what, when, where, why, and how.  Students either know the answer or they don’t. The answer is either right or wrong.  Sample multiple-choice assessment items reflecting this level include:  What is the meaning of trudged as it is used in paragraph 10 of the folk tale?  Which sentence from the folk tale helps the reader understand the meaning of trudged? Recall and reproduction are components of all depth-of-knowledge levels because all reading comprehension must be based on textual evidence. Depth of Knowledge Level 2 – Skills and Concepts  Assessment tasks at Level 2 ask students to make some decisions about how to approach the problem or activity.  Questions still tend to have one correct answer, although for openended questions the responses might be stated in different ways.  Assessment items at this level might include:  What is the meaning of the quote, “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”?  Which words best describe the character ___? The rigor for students at Level 2 lies in achieving independence with the skill. It’s essential, therefore, that teachers provide explicit instruction that gradually releases responsibility. Depth of Knowledge Level 3 – Strategic Thinking and Reasoning Assessment tasks at this level ask  students to use logic as well as evidence and to think more abstractly about a text. Questions have more than one  possible answer, and students must justify their responses. Examples include:    What is the theme (or main idea) of the passage? Use details from the passage to support your answer.  What effect does the author create by using the phrase ___? n What is the most likely reason the author included a map of ___?  Which details from the text are irrelevant to the author’s claim?  Students will need to do a lot of inferring.  For planning purposes, you may want to encourage students to look for the theme (or central idea) of a text right from the beginning, rather than waiting until they get to the last paragraph and then asking: “What’s the theme?” Teach students that a theme is evident throughout a text.  Students will need to think like an author, pondering why the author made particular choices in crafting a text: Why did the author repeat that line or include this flashback? This is what we mean by “reading like a writer,” and if you teach it well, it will improve students’ writing as well as their reading.  Students will need to understand both the external structure of a text (why it was organized in a  particular way, such as problem/solution or compare/contrast) and its internal structure (how various parts of a text fit together). Guide students to ask questions like, What is the purpose of this paragraph? Does it introduce a problem? Show a contrasting point of view? What is the author trying to show?  Students will need to think critically about what they read: What is relevant and irrelevant, what is the best evidence, and what could the author have explained more clearly? Teach students to become text critics: What works for them, and what doesn’t, as critical consumers of information.  Rigor for teachers lies in providing ample opportunity for close reading of complex text that’s rich in meaning as well as craft.  It’s about fewer worksheets and more conversations.  Are we making time for students to talk about texts in small groups  where the focus is on evaluating meaning through dialogue? Are we pushing students to explain how they arrived at a particular answer? For students, the rigor at this level is in the quality of their insights. Depth of Knowledge – Level 4 Extended Thinking  Assessment tasks at this level ask students to integrate information from multiple sources. Sample items include:  Explain what Source #1 and Source #2 say about ___, putting ideas into your own words to avoid plagiarism.  A central idea of these articles is ___. Provide two pieces of evidence from different sources that support this idea and explain how each example supports it.  Which source most likely has the most useful information about ___? Explain why this source is likely to be the most helpful.  Which source does a better job of explaining ___? Provide three pieces of evidence from the source to support your answer.  Compare and contrast the way the author develops the central idea of ___ in the two texts we read. Use details from both sources to support your explanation.  Explain how each of the selections you read about [topic] could be useful to someone writing about this topic.  To prepare students for mastery of this deepest level, teachers need to plan more lessons that ask students to make connections among different sources (which could include not only print materials, but also videos, audio recordings, illustrations, and so on).  For teachers, the rigor of Level 4 lies in inventing the best connection points to bring students to a deeper level of understanding.  For students, the rigor of Level 4 may be achieved when meaning leaps off the page and inspires a call to action: How can I use my new knowledge to help solve this problem?