Assessment Practices

BLOG 3:

June 8, 2018

Assessment Practices:

How do you typically assess your students? your teaching? other learners (e.g. teachers)? How have your assessment practices changed over the years? How have they changed in your school? District?

I typically use formative and summative assessment in my classroom; the former through feedback and the latter through tests.  With assessment for learning (formative), I use practices such as providing comments and suggestions for improvements of students’ essays, for example - with the option of them revising and editing to hand back in to boost their mark and reinforce their learning. When doing assessment of learning (summative), I typically go over the expectations on the quiz a day or two before, going over each question in class that I am expecting them to know and understand, or sometimes merely the main concepts, depending on the type of test and the expectations.  We do brainstorming at this time and students provide several possible solutions to the outcomes.  I mainly assess my teaching through self-reflection and student feedback, either oral or written.  I look for indicators of “grow and glow” and adapt my teaching practices accordingly to fit the needs of each specific class.  I assess other teachers informally through dialogue, conversations, stories, and sometimes emails.  When I first started teaching, I probably over-assessed my students, as I took in virtually everything for marks.  Now I do much more assessment for learning and assessment as learning along the way.  My school’s assessment practices have remained quite consistent throughout the years, for example, we have decided as a staff long ago how much to weigh final exams, assignments, tests, etc.  

What research do you use to support your assessment practices? What evidence do you have that

indicates that your assessment practices help students achieve and be successful? What have been the challenges in changing your assessment practices?

My assessment practices mainly fall under the research of Drake, Reid, & Kolohon, in their book Interweaving Curriculum and Classroom Assessment, of 2014.  Melissa and I presented the topic of assessment based on their book and I learned that much of my practices are in alignment with chapter 3 in regard to backward design.  The authors emphasized the importance of the “know, do, and be,” creating rich performance tasks, creating assessment tasks and tools, using assessment for learning, and the advocacy of using rubrics.  I have been much more aware and knowledgeable about these practices and how to implement them in my classroom in the recent past.  I have seen better engagement and learning from students when I assess for learning and provide an assessment tool at the beginning of the task, for example, a rubric.  The rewards speak for themselves in terms of engagement and learning for students; the challenge for me as a teacher is to remember to start with the end in mind and create the assessment tool before I assign the task.  Although rubrics take more planning to create, they do make marking more efficient and clear.  Creating a rich performance task can be challenging, but for a project like a novel study, for example, I find it can also be quite enjoyable for me to create ideas for relevant assignments and tasks because I know my students and what may appeal to them.  It takes more time and thought, but in the end, it is worth it. 

What work do we still have to do as instructional leaders in this area to ensure that students are receiving the best assessment practices in our buildings/districts?

As instructional leaders, we need to make sure we are consistent in assessment, use the proper tools, and provide clear expectations for our students.  Letting them know the “target” right from the beginning helps in defining the goals and the expectations to reach them.  Using backwards design and relying on the latest research is also important.  Implementation of these practices for both short- and long-term success and dialogue with teaching peers is also fundamental to remain current, inspired, and educated.  

Instructional Practices:

Instructional Practices:

How do you typically instruct your students? other learners (e.g. teachers)? Have your instructional practices changed over the years? Why or why not? And if so, in what ways?

My usual instructional strategies include direct teaching, questioning, paraphrasing, indicating understanding with a thumbs up or thumbs down, think-pair-share, and peer interaction for particular lessons and units.  I normally ask one or two students to repeat back to me what they are supposed to do to check their understanding.  I use a lot of repetition when I am introducing the task, noting the highlights of the assignment.   I am cognitive of the fact that adolescents have a need to move after several minutes of seat-work, and incorporate some type of movement or shake-up of the lesson to maintain interest and engagement within our class time.  I try to access the students’ prior knowledge through questioning such as, “Have you ever?” or “What would you do if?”  I stimulate pre-task interest by asking a burning question orally or writing one on the Smartboard to get the students thinking about different ways to answer the question without being too specific and to leave a little mystery, and yet make the question relevant enough to the learning.  The burning question is more broad than the prior knowledge questioning and lends itself well to a focus throughout the assignment.  During a novel study, for example, about a biography of someone who created a world-changing organization, I would ask, “Have you ever had an idea so great you thought it could change the world?” to access prior knowledge, while asking as a burning question, “How does a hero affect change in a generation?”  

With teachers, I would instruct more by paraphrasing during sharing of information and then asking questions about their thoughts or opinions.  If I was doing a Professional Development session, however, I would be more formal and start with a burning question to tie into the learning as well.  I believe there is always value added when a person’s critical thinking is aroused which fuels a need for an answer.  I endeavour to light the spark of curiosity with an instructional strategy, no matter the age group.

As I look back over my years of teaching, I would say that my instructional practices have changed only slightly; they have remained within a range that hasn’t swayed too much.  I attribute that to excellent training in university, which I have heavily relied on since my first year of teaching.  Because of many types of instructional strategies practice since then, relevant to the middle-school genre, I have felt quite confident throughout my career to use the mainstays of peer-interaction, group work, and questioning consistently.  The slight variation would be the specific type of activities, for example jigsaw being one I hadn’t used for a long time, but the overall general instructional strategies have remained constant.

What research do you use to support your instructional practices? What evidence do you have that indicates that your instructional practices help students achieve and be successful?

The need for social interaction and physical movement in adolescents researched by the works of Nancy Kolodziej, Richard DuFour, Rebecca DuFour, Robert Eaker, and Thomas Many have supported my instructional practices.  Whether advocating professional learning communities (DuFour et al, 2006), or Learning Station Models (Kolodziej, 2010), the theme is ultimately about socialization and physical movement during the middle-school years for student success.  This understanding about adolescents is crucial to support them in their learning journey.  The evidence that I have witnessed in junior high is a much more engaged student body in general when they are working cooperatively and collaboratively.  Students who excel in one area are able to showcase their talents more effectively when the work is divided up into a group and they agree on how to split up the tasks.  Many students perform better in a group and their marks reflect this.  I see more consistent on-task behavior when peers are able to interact with one another towards a shared goal.

What work do we have to do as instructional leaders in this area to ensure that students are receiving the best instructional practices in our buildings/districts?

As an instructional leader, my best practices include keeping current with research.  This is largely accomplished through professional reading, my Master’s program in the course study and peer exchange of ideas, and ongoing professional development at my school.  The students themselves are also a very good indicator of whether or not they are receiving quality instructional practices.  If they exhibit deeper understanding and learning from the lesson or unit we’ve just covered, then success has been accomplished.

Curriculum and Planning:

Curriculum and Planning:


How will we plan and prepare ourselves, our teachers, our parents and our students for curriculum redesign?

With a major shift in educational thinking, teachers will need to stay current with developments in technology and events shaping our province and our world. Looking at the past may be a strong indicator of how to handle future changes. What has worked or not worked in the past in preparation for new curriculum? Part of the preparation process will include a self-reflection of our own practices coupled with a willingness to embrace change and improvement that is relevant to our classrooms and schools. We must be intentional in all that we think, say, and do as teachers. I think preparation will best take place by being flexible, open-minded, inclusive, and patient. We will have to communicate with each other about our concerns regularly. I concur with David Warlick’s quote, “We are not preparing children for our future, we are preparing them for their future.” Their future will definitely look different than ours did; we have to remember that.

In our district, we are expected to have our year plans outcome-based and ready in the fall. I base my year plans on the general curriculum and then fine-tune my daily lesson plans with more specific outcomes per unit and lesson. I ensure enough flexibility to allow for differentiation in terms of allowing more time, asking fewer or different questions, utilizing alternate formats of reaching the outcome, and planning enrichment activities for those who need them. I will need to continue to focus on a more student-centered, constructivist approach to learning to meet educational expectations in the future, as the need for them is very real in every grade I teach. These key practices from Dewey, Piaget, and Montessori have produced great success in my classroom, but I know I need to further develop differentiation.

As Stephen Covey said, “Begin with the end in mind.” What is the purpose of education? To well prepare our youth for successful futures. Because youth are dynamic and the future is uncertain, change will be always be inevitable, so it should be viewed as positive and be embraced. In order to prepare parents and students for curricular change, I must be the change-agent role-model, promoting it and helping them to not feel threatened by it. I need to be emotionally and academically ready myself to prepare them. How I accomplish that is to remember that I will still use familiar frameworks such as UBD, CCC, UDL, and PBL in my teaching, I will still plan around the 8 Cs and the 3 Es, and I will still teach the curriculum. Those are my constants. My destination (student success) has not changed - only my road map (delivery) has. Remembering that quells fear, which is a major part of a teacher’s job.

For me personally, I will prepare myself through keeping current with technology integration, continuing to self-reflect on best practices, checking with students for understanding, and relying on the Master’s program to help develop my skills in leadership.

How might this change our current planning practices and those of our colleagues within our school district?

John Dewey said, “If we teach today’s students as we taught yesterday’s, we rob them of tomorrow.” This statement screams change. Current planning will transform from content to skill-based objectives to prepare students to be 21st-century learners and doers. Instead of subject-based content, I predict we will be exclusively teaching authentic, real-world outcomes and plan more projects, field trips, discovery-based learning through driving questions, complete integration of technology, full inclusion, extensive differentiation (perhaps tailor-made per student), and more experts and presenters at schools to promote awareness and questioning of current issues and topics as they arise. In a nutshell, planning may be as streamlined as asking a driving question such as “What pollution exists in our city and how can we reduce it by 50%?” and let the students discover the answer using the educational frameworks and resources necessary.

What work do we have to do as instructional leaders in this area?
Administrators need to lead the change we want to see in our children. We need to keep in mind the “No child left behind” policy and lead student-centered education through researched practices in our schools, provide the resources to accomplish that, and drive the passion behind the process to ensure success for all learners. We need to regularly monitor the results and ask, “Is it working?” We need to measure the results to make sure we stay on track. My recommendation is to keep our focus on our goal (learner success), our tool (education through competencies and curriculum), and our proof (engaged, ethical, entrepreneurial learners).

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” Nelson Mandela