Classroom assessment

Classroom assessment
 All the processes involved in making
decisions about students’ learning
progress.
 It’s more than just grades and tests!!

The role of assessment
There is a cycle of planning, teaching, and assessing that insures students are learning.

Plan

Teach

This is the cycle
around which I built
Assess my Educational
Psychology schema
(back in session 1)

Formative and summative
evaluation
 Formative evaluation: occurs before or
during instruction and is used to provide
feedback to students and to monitor their
growth.
 Summative evaluation: occurs after
instruction on a given topic and is used for
grading purposes.

How to remember formative vs.
summative
 Summative happens at the end—like a
summary.
 Formative happens while instruction is
taking place (while students’
understanding is still forming).

Types of Formative Evaluation
 Pretest: formative test for assessing
students’ knowledge, readiness, and
abilities.
 Diagnostic test: formative test to
determine students’ areas of weakness.

Why use formative
assessment?
 If you want your lessons to be in students’
“zone of proximal development,” then you
need to know what they know (pre-assess
or test) or where they are
misunderstanding (diagnostic test).

Why use formative
assessment?
 If you want to know the effect of a lesson
or series of lessons, then you can do a
pre-test, teach the lessons, and then do a
post-test in order to find out how well you
taught this group of students.

Formative assessment
 Remember that assessment is not just tests, so
you can do a “pre-test” that is not really a test.
For example, music teachers can have students
sight-read a new piece of music as a “pre-test.”
Math teachers can have students try out a
worksheet as a “pre-test.” A KWL (a
collaborative chart where students tell “what they
Know, what they Want to learn, and what they
have Learned) can be a formative assessment.

Measurement and Evaluation
 Measurement: the process of gathering
information about learning.
 Evaluation: the process of making
decisions on the basis of measurements.

These contribute to the planning phase of the assessment cycle.

Types of measurement
 Informal measurement is the process of
gathering incidental information about
learning progress during learning
activities and discussions with students.
 Formal measurement is the process of
systematically gathering information about
learning progress.
Good teachers are always “kid watching”—seeing what is going
on with individual students as they participate in classroom
activities. These teachers often make notes of what they
observe and use this information not only in lesson planning but
also in parent-teacher conferences.

Systematic assessment
 Students can get lost in the cracks. A
quiet student sitting in the back may not
attract your attention.
 You need to know what is going on with
each student in your classroom; this is
your responsibility as a teacher.
 You need to systematically collect
assessment information on every student.

Validity
 This is an indicator of the extent to which
an assessment actually measures what it
is supposed to measure.
 Is the measure aligned with your goals as
a teacher?
 Is the measure aligned with what
happened in the classroom?
 Is the measure based on students’ abilities
rather than on personality or likability?

Examples of invalid assessment
 Students have been learning music in major
keys. The teacher tests their sight reading with
a piece in a minor key.
 Inner city students have been learning about
writing. The teacher gives them a writing prompt
about “a day on a farm.”
 Students have been using manipulatives. The
teacher gives them a test where they cannot use
these aids.
 Learning disabled (with difficulty reading and
writing) students have been learning about the
Civil War. The teacher gives them a written test.
If you were the teacher, how would you improve the validity in each of these situations?

Reliability
 A description of the extent to which
measurements are consistent and free
from errors of measurement.
 A bathroom scale is useless
if it is not reliable
 So are measurements we use
in schools
Remember, reliability is not everything. A test of toe length
could be reliable but not particularly useful in the education
world.

Reliability on teacher-made
assessments
 Use a sufficient number of items or tasks
and look for consistency of student
performance across tasks.
 Ensure that directions are clear so
students know what is expected of them.
 Identify specific criteria to evaluate
students’ performance.
 Administer assessments in similar ways
for all students.

Traditional Assessment Strategies
 Patterns of assessment
 Constructing tests

Getting the Most from
Traditional Assessment
 Planning for Testing
 Objective Testing: multiple-choice, matching,
true/false, short answer, and fill-in tests; scoring
answers does not require interpretation.
 Essay Testing

Planning for testing
 When?
 Frequently
 Soon after material is learned
 Cumulative

Judging textbook texts
 Identify your objective first and then see if
the textbook test helps
 Feel free to adapt to the realities of your
class
 Tests from the text are less valid if you
make multiple adaptations.
 Make sure what gets taught matches what
gets tested.

Making tests
 Each item on a test should be valid—
students who know the information should
get the item right and students who do not
know the information should get it wrong.
 In the next few slides, we will discuss
some of your favorite types of test items:
multiple choice, matching, true/false,
completion, essays, and rubrics.

Multiple choice
 Multiple-choice format is a measurement format
that consists of a question or statement, called a
stem, and a series of answer choices. The
individual responding to the items chooses the
correct or best answer.
 Distracters: the incorrect alternatives, so-called
because they are designed to distract students
who don’t understand the content being
measured in the item.
 Stem: the question part of a multiple-choice
item.

Stem and distractors
 Stem: should pose one question or
problem.
 Distracters: should reflect common
misconceptions. Should be grammatically
consistent with the stem—otherwise the
grammar will give away which distracter is
correct.
 You can assess higher-level thinking with
multiple choice questions.

Matching
 Matching format: a measurement format that requires learners
to classify a series of examples using the same alternatives.
 Content should be homogeneous (all material of the same
type).
 Use more statements than alternatives so students can’t use
elimination to get items right.
 Let students know that alternatives can be used more than
once or not at all (keeps students from guessing instead of
knowing).
 Keep the material all on one page—if you have material for
more than one page, break it up into two different groups.
 Don’t overload students’ working memories with excessively
long matching items—if you have more than ten possibilities,
break the item into two.

True-false
 True-false format is a measurement format that
includes statements of varying complexity that
learners have to judge as being correct or
incorrect.
 Don’t put both a true fact and a false fact in the
same item.
 “Most” is a hint that the item is true.
 “Never” and “always” are hints that the item is
false.
 Negative wording can be confusing.

Completion
 Completion format is a measurement
format that includes a question or an
incomplete statement that requires the
learner to supply appropriate words,
numbers, or symbols.
 It is very difficult to create completion
items where only one answer is correct.
 These items usually measure low-level
forms of thinking.

Essay
 Essay format is a measurement format that
requires students to make extended written
responses to questions or problems.
 They assess creative and critical thinking
 They measure progress students make in
creating and defending thesis statements.
 They change how students study and learn.
 Scoring them is a challenge.
 They can be ambiguous.

Rubrics
 A rubric is a scoring scale that describes the
criteria for grading.
 Rubrics help students to plan the material that
will be assessed.
 Establish criteria based on essential elements
that must be present in students’ work.
 Decide on number of levels of achievement for
each criterion.
 Develop clear descriptors for each level of
achievement.
 Determine a rating scale for entire rubric.

Commercially Prepared Test Items
 Carefully examine your goals before using
them.
 Select those items that are consistent with
your goals
 Revise items that need improvement
 Create additional items that help you
accurately measure your students’
understanding.

Alternative Assessment
 Direct examination of student performance on significant
tasks that are relevant to life outside of school.
 In other words: the assessment task is similar to or the
same as tasks students would be doing in the “real
world,” (as opposed to using a multiple choice test where
the assessment process differs significantly from real-
world performance).
 Performance Assessment: any form of assessment that
requires students to carry out an activity or produce a
product in order to demonstrate learning.
 Portfolios
Authentic Assessment: assessment procedures that test skills and abilities as
they would be applied in real-life situations.

Performance Assessment
 A form of assessment in which students
demonstrate their knowledge and skill by
carrying out an activity or producing a
product.
 Specify the type of performance.
 Select the focus.
 Structure the evaluation setting—making it
realistic but practical.
 Design evaluation procedures

Examples of Performance
Assessment
 Students find the area of a classroom in
order to figure out how much carpet will be
needed.
 Students write persuasive letters to the
editor regarding an issue of concern to
them.
 Students perform experiments to figure
out a science problem.
Pay attention to and assess not just the product the student produces but also the
process by which students create the product.

Evaluating Performance
Assessment Products/Processes
 Use systematic observation, the process of
specifying criteria for acceptable performance on
an activity and taking notes during observation
based on the criteria.
 Checklists are written descriptions of
dimensions that must be present in an
acceptable performance of an activity. These
help you to keep track of student performance.
 Rating scales are written descriptions of the
evaluative dimensions of an acceptable
performance of an activity and scales of values
on which each dimension is rated.

Portfolios
 A collection of the student’s work in an area,
showing growth, self-reflection, and
achievement.
 Portfolio assessment usually involves student
goal setting and showing how the items in the
portfolio demonstrate the achievement of goals.
 Portfolios provide an ongoing idea of student
work because they are a collection of items
completed across several weeks.

Using Portfolios
 Embed portfolios in instructional practice. Refer to them
frequently as you teach.
 Provide examples of portfolios when introducing them to
students.
 Involve students in the selection and evaluation of their
work.
 Require students to provide an overview of each
portfolio, a rationale for the inclusion of individual works,
criteria they used to evaluate, and a summary of
progress.
 Provide students with frequent and detailed feedback
about their decisions.

Portfolios across the curriculum
 Portfolios began in art. Professional freelance artists develop
portfolios of their work to show potential employers.
 The first book on the use of portfolios (Tierney, Carter, and
Desai, 1991, Portfolios in the Reading/Writing Classroom)
focused on the use of portfolios to show students’ literacy
development.
 Portfolios can also be used in other subjects. Students can
collect a variety of artifacts to demonstrate their developing
knowledge and skills.
 With technology, portfolios can be digitized and they can
feature a wide range of formats.
 Where possible (e.g., in music programs where the teacher
has the same students across several years) it would be very
useful to have portfolios that span several years and show
student improvement.

Exhibition
 A performance test or demonstration of
learning that is public and usually takes an
extended time to prepare.
 Examples: a music recital, an art exhibit,
a project that is presented to a class.

Evaluating alternative assessments
 Use a scoring rubric: rules that are used
to determine the quality of a student
performance.
 Students can contribute to the rubric.
When they do so, they often “buy into” the
process of assessment.
 Assessment can also include a student
component—students should learn to
assess themselves.

Reliability, validity, generalizability
 Alternative assessments may not be
reliable—two different teachers may give a
portfolio very different grades.
 Even validity may be a problem—there’s
not a lot of research that is helpful yet.

Diversity and equity

Professional orchestras used to be all male (except for the harpist, for some
odd reason). In order to counter this, orchestras began having blind
auditions—potential members tried out for the orchestra behind a screen.
This practice has led to a greater amount of diversity in orchestras.

Diversity and equity
 In terms of exhibition-type assessments, subtle “-isms”
can creep in when it is impossible to judge work apart
from the person who does the work. It is important to
keep this in mind when making judgments on students’
work.
 Also, it is important to remember what students have
access to at home in terms of the ability to work. Some
students have a lot of support at home for their
schoolwork (a computer, a private space for working,
social support for doing homework, etc.) and other
students do not. If there is a lot of out-of-class work that
goes into a portfolio or an exhibition, one needs to keep
these potential inequities in mind.

Informal assessments
 Ungraded (formative) assessments that gather
information from multiple sources to help
teachers make decisions.
 Good teachers are constantly observing
students and making informal assessments of
student understanding.
 Other ways to do informal assessment: student
journals, “exit tickets” where students answer a
question in writing before they leave the
classroom, checklists, rating scales, etc.

Self-assessment
 Alternative assessment can be just as
dumb and alienating as testing if it is
carried out in the wrong spirit.
 Most of the proponents of alternative
assessment call for student involvement in
assessment.

Self-assessment
 Truly, involving students makes sense; in
the world of work, we often have to assess
ourselves. This is part of taking initiative.
We can’t simply wait for the annual review.

Student-Led Conferences: A
Growing Trend
 For years parent-teacher conferences have been the primary
means of parent-teacher communication. But now, many
schools are trying something new -- student-led conferences
that communicate not only how a student's doing but also why.
 Parent-teacher conferences -- we all know how they go. Parents
troop into classrooms to talk with teachers about their children's
progress in school. Often, the process feels rushed, and parents
leave feeling vaguely dissatisfied, as if they didn't really get what
they came for.
 For years that process has been the norm, but now it is changing. In
more and more schools, students are leading conferences, and,
overall, the word is that they're doing a fine job.

http://www.educationworld.com/a_admin/admin/admin112.shtml

Growing Trend
 Many teachers themselves speak enthusiastically of the advantages
of student-led conferences over teacher-led ones. "We found the
[student-led] conferences most beneficial," said Keith Eddinger of
the Marcus Whitman Middle School in Rushville, New York. "From a
teacher's perspective, we were able to get a better picture of each
child. It forced us to sit down with each student and review strengths
and weaknesses. This conversation often told us the students
learned more than perhaps we had measured through conventional
assessments."
 Eddinger added, "Our post-conference reviews with parents and
students were overwhelmingly positive."
 John Osgood, of C. L. Jones Middle School in Minden, Nebraska,
found that "comments [about student-led conferences] from parents
and board members were very positive."


Growing Trend
 Another staff member, Dick Philips, said, "Most
parents listened to their child. It was interesting
listening to [children] explain low grades to their
parents. It did open the lines of communication."
 "Several parents really liked it because it gave
them an opportunity to see their child's work,"
said Sue Yant, another staff member. Yet "some
[parents] said they hoped we [would hold] the
traditional conference once a year."


Growing Trend
 STUDENT PREPARATION "The format is important, but I believe the
success of a student-led conference is most determined by how well
students are prepared," wrote Laura Hayden, a seventh-grade
communications teacher at Derby Middle School in Derby, Kansas, in
Letting Students Lead Parent Conferences, an article published by the
National Association of Elementary School Principals in Middle Matters.
 The conference format at Hayden's school had students show parents some
of their work and explain their grades in a student-led conference. Each
team could conduct conferences a bit differently. Hayden's team used an
open house arrangement in which students and parents visited all team
members' classrooms, but other teams held the entire conference in one
classroom.
 The significance of format aside, Hayden focused her students on
preparation. At the beginning of the school year, she had students set up a
binder to contain a portfolio as well as graded work. She explained that
students had to keep their binders orderly because they would use them to
lead their conferences.


Growing Trend
 A week before the conferences, Hayden's team sent home a letter
informing parents of the conference and the fact that their child
would lead it. About three days before conferences, she had
students prepare portfolios of their work to date, including a special
project, a quiz, a homework assignment, and one assignment from
which they felt they had learned the most. Students also wrote a
reflection on their grades and study habits. They set goals for the
next semester and organized their graded work section.
 The day before conferences, teachers role-played, pretending to be
the student, with the student playing the teacher or the parent.
Teachers modeled, for example, how to explain a poor grade to
parents, and they gave students a checklist of what to cover in the
conference.


Growing Trend
 STUDENT RESPONSIBILITY
 "The preparatory time is worth it," Hayden wrote, "especially when you hear
a struggling student explaining what he or she learned from an assignment
and taking responsibility for the score he or she achieved."
 "[Students] need to understand that they are in control of their own efforts to
learn the material," said Barbara Rommel, superintendent of the David
Douglas School District in Oregon. (Source: "New Method Puts Student in
Charge," an article published in the Oregonian newspaper.)
 The Oregon Educational Act for the 21st Century requires students to meet
higher standards. By having students assess how they are progressing
toward those standards, educators say, students will know how far they've
come and how far they have to go to meet the standards.
 "It helps them accept responsibility for their learning," said Patti Kinney,
principal of Talent Middle School in Oregon.
 "I like being able to tell my side of the story," Josh Whitney-Wise of
Milwaukie, Oregon's, McLoughlin Middle School told the Oregonian.


Growing Trend
 ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES
 Educators acknowledge that there are disadvantages as well as advantages to
student-led conferences. Although parent attendance seems higher for student-led
conferences than for teacher-led ones, a parent's failure to attend a student-led
conference leads to a great deal of disappointment for a student who has worked
hard to prepare.
 Another disadvantage is that some parents want to spend more time with their child's
teacher, receiving his or her viewpoint. Nearly all schools with student-led
conferences will let parents make separate appointments to confer with teachers.
 For the most part, parents support the concept of student-led conferences, though
some support them with slight reservations. "My daughter was in a class that did
student-led conferences a couple of years ago," said one parent of a child at Jones
Middle School. "I think the object was to make the child feel a part of the whole
process, to get them in tune with their own progress. … As a parent, I felt like I still
needed some info from the teachers and wanted more. … But I do think the student
gets a new perspective on their grades. … Personally, I don't think it would be good
to do this often, but once a year is good. When you ask if they were 'beneficial,' I can
say yes and no. They were more beneficial to the student than to the parent."


Growing Trend
 But the advantages, say most teachers who
have participated in student-led conferences,
outweigh the downside. Student accountability is
mentioned again and again by educators as a
plus for student-led conferences. Another plus is
the way even a struggling student can produce
something positive for a conference, an art
project or an essay, perhaps, that wouldn't show
up in a report card grade. Overall, talks with
educators indicate, student-led conferences are
a growing trend.

Traditional vs. alternative
assessments
Traditional Alternative
 Tends to be low-level  Tends to be higher level
(memorization rather than
thinking)  Has real world application
 May not apply to “real  Reveals process as well
world.” as product
 Measure outcome rather  Based on constructivism
than process  Harder to implement
 Based on behaviorism  Less reliable
 Easier to implement
 Should involve students
 Reliable in goal setting and
 Does not involve students assessment

What to do?
 Students have to learn to deal with standardized
assessment, as that is the gatekeeper to college
and many careers. (How many standardized
tests have you taken across your school
experiences? How many more will you have to
take to achieve your educational and career
goals?)
 Yet students also need opportunities to
demonstrate skills and abilities that multiple
choice testing fails to assess.
 Good teachers make judicious use of both forms
of assessment.

A personal take on standardized
assessment
 When I applied to get a Ph.D., the
department to which I applied required the
GRE. At the time, I was working for a
leader in the area of alternative
assessment and I therefore was very
much aware of the criticisms of
standardized testing. I decided that I
needed to take a stand on the GRE.

So…
 I went to the library and in about 30 minutes I
had a small array of research articles that
showed that the GRE is biased and that the
Educational Testing Service has a checkered
past (it was founded by eugenicists—people
who shared some of Hitler’s ideas about race).
 I wrote a letter to the department that stated that
it was against my principles to support
something that was biased and to pay money to
ETS. I said that I would be willing to provide a
portfolio of my writing for them to assess.

What happened next…
 The department wrote back and said that
they would accept my principled stand
against ETS and would review my
materials without the GRE. They also said
that they would also consider waiving the
GRE requirement for any other potential
student who had the same concerns (this
was OSU, Dept. of English, in case you
are interested in testing this out).

But then…
 All during my teaching, I refused to have anything to do with
standardized testing and the kind of teaching that supports it.
My idea of being a teacher who made a difference in people’s
lives was through using whole language and other student-
centered approaches.
 Then I volunteered for a year at an African American Christian
school, where the point of the school was to make differences
in students’ lives. The principal there explained that since the
Proficiency Test in Ohio was a gatekeeper, one that has been
biased against her students, she felt the best thing to do was to
prepare students as best she could to beat the gate.

An example of bias on the Ohio proficiency test: a few years ago, one of the writing
prompts was about taking a camping trip. Urban teachers were frustrated—many of
their students had never traveled more than a few miles from home, much less had the
experience of being in the wilderness and setting up a tent.

So…
 This altered my teaching profoundly. As much
as I dislike ETS, I have learned that it is my job
as a teacher to prepare my students to beat the
gate. It is also my job to speak up against ETS
and its biases. I can simultaneously be an
advocate for alternative assessment and
prepare my students for the realities they will
face. I can also let my students know that as
voters, citizens, and students, they can influence
state and federal laws and university practices
that allow ETS its monopoly on assessment.

Effective Assessment Practices:
Instructional Strategies
 Plan systematically
 Prepare students
 Administer assessments under optimal
conditions
 Analyze results to make sure
assessments are accurate and valid

Planning for Assessment
 Make sure assessment is in line with
goals.

Preparing students for assessment
 Give students opportunities to practice assessment
procedures.
 Help students with test-taking strategies.
 Give students strategies to reduce anxiety.
 When using a test, give students practice with the type
of item that will be on the test.
The above is what your book says. Here are my 2 cents. Consider using tests for
curricular items that will be tested through state and locally-mandated tests. You are
using your tests to help students practice for the BIG test. Use non-testing means of
assessing everything, as well, for two reasons: 1. tests are anxiety-producing and often
require and reflect low-level thinking. They turn struggling and bored students off from
learning. Well-planned alternative assessment is interesting and engaging. 2. many
students do not do well on tests, so you really have no idea if they are learning or not
unless you do some kind of alternative assessment. If they know the material but still do
not perform well on standardized-style testing, then you know you need to teach test-
taking strategies.

Test-Taking Strategies
 Use time efficiently and pace yourself
 Read directions carefully
 Identify the important information in
questions
 Understand the demands of different
testing formats
 Find out how the questions will be scored.
Oh, boy. If only it were that simple. If you are good at taking tests, this list would affirm
and summarize what you know, but if you struggle, this list is worthless. Please look at
the powerpoint and the word file on test taking strategies for better information.

Reducing Test Anxiety
 Test anxiety is a relatively stable,
unpleasant reaction to testing situations
that lowers performance.
 Symptoms: increased pulse rate, dry
mouth, headache, feeling of dread and/or
helplessness, going blank, worry about
failure.

Reducing Test Anxiety: strategies
for teachers
 Use criterion-referenced measures to minimize the
competitive aspects of tests (these measure student
against material to be learned rather than student against
student).
 Avoid social comparisons, such as public displays of test
scores and grades
 Increase frequency of quizzes and tests
 Discuss test content and procedures before testing
 Give clear directions, and ensure that students
understand the test format and requirements
 Teach test-taking skills
 Use a variety of measures, including alternative
assessments, to measure the range of students’
understanding and skills
 Provide students with ample time to take tests

More strategies (not in your book)
 Think about: what will make it possible for this student to
succeed (really succeed in demonstrating his/her
knowledge, really succeed in learning how to deal with
testing)?
 You may need to break the process of testing down for
some students—for instance, if the proficiency test is
mostly multiple-choice, then work with them only on
multiple-choice (in your tests), showing them how to
analyze the questions. They may need lots of practice in
this area. You could create multiple-choice homework.
This is a lot of work, but it is what is necessary for
students to succeed.
 You may need to reteach critical information to your
struggling students. This means figuring out how to
manage a review of information for one or two students
while other students work on other things.

Specific test preparation
procedures
 Specify what will be on the test
 Give students a chance to practice test-
like items under test-like conditions
 Establish positive expectations

Administering Tests
 Make environment comfortable and free
from distractions
 Give precise directions about what
students need to do and what will happen
(especially, what early finishers should do
to avoid distracting late finishers)
 Monitor students while they are taking the
test

Analyzing results
 Grade tests quickly so you can give
feedback to students as soon as possible
 Go over items that several people missed
and reteach information that was clearly
not understood

Analyzing results
 Research shows that if students are told
they did well on a test, then they will tend
to do better the next time. Be positive.
(This is also an argument for setting
students up for success).
 Note on your copy of the test any
problems with questions or wording that
was unclear. That way you can edit the
test for next time.

Reducing bias in testing
 Carefully wording items
 Making provisions for non-native English
speakers
 Accommodating diversity in scoring

Carefully wording items
 Think about what the students do know and
have experience with and use that as much as
possible.
 For instance, you can use school experiences
that you know students have had instead of
home experiences that only some students have
had. “Tanisha has three pencils and Lamar has
two. How many pencils do they have together?”
rather than “Bob has a DVD player, a CD player,
and an I-pod. How many pieces of equipment
does he have?” (Okay, so I know the examples
are lame, but hopefully you get the idea).

Making provisions for non-native
speakers
 Modify test  Modify test procedure
 Simplify test language  Provide extra time to take
 Simplify test directions test
 Provide visual supports  Allow students to use a
 Assess students in their glossary and dictionary
native language  Read directions aloud (in
native language would be
better)
 Read test aloud and
clarify misunderstandings

These provisions would also work for students with learning disabilities.

Accommodating diversity in scoring
 Multiple-trait scoring: different dimensions
of a product are judged according to
different criteria.
 For example, grade an essay on both
content and grammatical conventions or
break down a task into three important
characteristics and score for each one.

Grading and Reporting: the total
assessment system
 What types of assessment will be used?
 How will you use traditional assessment?
 How will you use authentic assessment?
 How will you deal with homework?
 How will you deal with missed work?
 How do you represent affective dimensions
(cooperation, effort) in your assessment plan?
 How will you report student performance (grade,
percentage, description)?

Designing a grading system
 Your system needs to be clear and
understandable and in line with district/school
policies
 Your system should support learning by
gathering frequent data on students’ learning
 Grades should be based on hard data
 Grades should be fair to all students
 You should be able to defend your system to
parents & administrators

A comment from me…
 Just remember that evaluations not only
tell you what is going on with your
students but they are also potentially
evaluations of your teaching. If everyone
fails to answer a question correctly, then it
is possible that you failed to teach the
concept clearly. If everyone does well on
an evaluation, then give yourself a pat on
the back when you give the students a pat
on the back.

Other assessments
 Tests and quizzes
 Alternative assessments
 Homework

You need to think about the role each of these plays in your classroom.
How constructive are these as activities? How do they contribute to your
understanding of students’ performances? How do they contribute to
your planning of lessons from day to day? How motivational are these
activities? Are any of these activities a barrier to student learning? It’s
helpful to think about your own experiences in relation to these. Under
what conditions did these forms of assessment seem to work? When did
they not work?

Assigning grades
 Grades can be motivating or demotivating
 The challenge is to figure out how to
reduce the complexity of a student into a
single letter.
 What grade do you give the bright student
who puts out minimal effort?
 What grade do you give a student who
works very hard but has difficulty learning
the material?

My opinion…
 I think a lot about grades.
 Your grade in this class may influence your future: a good grade will help
you to get into graduate school and a bad grade may be a barrier to your
career goals.
 At the same time, if you don’t learn the material of this class, it’s not fair to
the students who do learn the material for you to get a good grade.
 I try to think about what the barriers are for learning and how I can remove
them. This is why I have tried to create materials to assist different kinds of
learners. I have tried to make learning the easiest thing to choose to do. I
feel if I have removed barriers as much as possible, then if a student
chooses not to learn, I can apply the consequences of that.
 I have also tried to create assessments that give every student a chance to
demonstrate their knowledge.
 Every year that I teach, I revamp my courses, often after considering the
issue of grades and assessment. I’m sure this course will look different after
a few more times of my teaching it.
 I share this with you hoping you will share this journey with me of constantly
analyzing and trying to improve one’s teaching. It is an exciting journey and
in all the years I have taught, I have never gotten tired of it.

Failure

Failure is the nemesis of the self-esteem
movement. Yet, in order to appreciate and
understand success, we need to experience
failure.

Failure

Some parents cannot stand for their
children to fail. Unfortunately, parents
cannot control what happens to their
adult children—and a certain amount
of failure helps young people learn to
cope with adult problems.

Failure is positive when…
 …students have the possibility of learning
from it.
 …when it helps students to take
responsibility for their own actions and
choices.
 …when its consequences are significant
for the student but not horribly life-
changing.

Failure
 Remember—allowing students to
experience and cope with small failures
can prevent large failures later on.
Allowing a student to deal with the
consequences of not studying by failing an
assignment is a lot better than giving a
student a false message of success and
then the student fails something large later
on (Ohio Graduation Test, for example).

The work ethic

No matter what kind of work people do, they need
a work ethic.

The work ethic
 People need to know how to work without
supervision.
 They need to know how to take initiative and
solve problems without direction.
 They need to be trustworthy.
 They need to take responsibility for their actions.
 They need to know how to work hard.
 They need to know how to motivate themselves
to work even when the work is not fun or
interesting.

How schools can help students
develop a work ethic
 It should take work to succeed in a classroom.
 The work should be do-able but it should be challenging.
This means that students with struggles should have
tasks that are challenging for them and students who are
gifted should have tasks that are challenging for them.
No one should get a free ride.
 Students should face consequences for not doing work.
 Students should be given strategies for working,
particularly when they are struggling with self-discipline.
 When a student fails, the student should be given the
message to try again and support for doing so. This
support includes problem-solving techniques to figure
out why the failure happened and what can be done to
prevent it in the future.

Feedback
 Providing constructive feedback to students is probably one of the most useful things for
student learning you can do as a teacher – and most likely to be appreciated by students.
 Feedback is an integral part of all teaching not just assessment. Feedback is constructive
observations and suggestions on work done, skills acquired, emerging capabilities, ideas for
directing further learning. Clearly these can be provided throughout a learning program.
 Feedback can be provided by peers and others not just the teachers. So, for example, in a
lecture you could ask a question, give time for students to write a brief response (2-3 minutes)
then discuss with their peers, before you discuss features of the question.
 Feedback is not just about weaknesses. Students will respond if you are encouraging as
well as allowing of mistakes. Positive feedback on the capabilities they have demonstrated
helps establish a culture where students seek feedback and take greater active ownership over
their learning.
 Feedback is a starting point for learning – not just confirmation for the students that they
were right or wrong. In particular, students will appreciate advice which helps them discover
and address their weaknesses. It is best seen as a trigger for active learning and therefore
feedback can be challenging, questioning, widening.
 Clearly timing is important to the value of feedback. It is vital to get constructive comments
back to students as soon as possible as part of student learning tasks. Consider too, a wider
view of feedback: 'helping my students taking stock of what and how they are learning in a
timely manner - to help them take constructive steps forward'. It is particularly useful for
formative assessment activities or during a drafting or development process.
 In summary, feedback is about students learning to self-evaluate, helping them to take greater
ownership of their learning and increasing the likelihood that they will come to direct their own
learning.

http://www.lts.rmit.edu.au/renewal/assess/faq3.htm

Feedback

This is the great violin teacher, Shinichi
Suzuki. One of the revolutions in music
teaching he created is the idea of being
positive with children. Before correcting a
student’s performance, Suzuki said that the
teacher had to find something positive to
say to the student about his or her
performance. It’s amazing how much more
motivated students are when their efforts
are recognized and feedback is given with
the clear purpose of helping the student to
improve.

Teacher: judge or advocate?

The right to assess can either be used as a means of judgment or it can be
used as a means to help students to improve their skills and abilities. Do
your best to be an advocate for students—to use your skills and abilities to
help them to learn and to grow.

Grading
 Norm-referenced grading: assessment of
students’ achievement in relation to one another.
 Criterion-referenced grading: assessment of
each student’s mastery of the course objectives.
 Grading on the curve: norm-referenced grading
that compares students’ performance to an
average level. (This is one version of norm-
referenced grading).

Norm-referenced grading

Grading on a curve assumes that a
classroom is going to be like a large
population: some people will do well,
some people will fail, and most people
will do average.

F D C B A

Norm-referenced grading (of any variety) assumes that only a
certain percentage of the class will do well. A’s (and the positive
message that accompanies a high grade) are a limited commodity.

Norm-referenced grading

But if we are to “Leave No Child Behind” and but our grading system
is based on a certain percentage of the class failing, then isn’t there
something wrong here?

Criterion-referenced grading
 The answer is to grade on mastery of the
material rather than comparisons of one
student to another.
 In this class, if you master the material,
you can receive an A. If all of you master
the material, then I will be really happy.

Percentage grading
 System of converting class performances to
percentage scores and assigning grades based
on predetermined cutoff points.
 This is the “90-100% is an A” type grading
system.
 The main problem is: which 80% of math is it
okay to learn and which 20% is it not okay to
learn? What is 80% of 8th grade math? This
system does not lead to mastery of the material
except for the folks who get A’s.

Contract system
 System in which each student works for a
particular grade according to agreed-upon
standards.
 In this system, the student has a lot of control.
You have to, as a teacher, figure out how to
create a contract you can live with. This
includes clearly-understood quality measures so
you don’t end up giving high grades that are not
really deserved.
 Rubrics can help you and students to deal with
quality of work issues.

Revise option
 In a contract system, the chance to revise
and improve work.
 Actually, this is a good policy to have. If a
student writes a poor paper and has a
chance to rewrite, a valuable learning
process can take place. This is part of
mastery learning.

Grading on effort and improvement
 When you include effort and improvement
in your grading system, you can challenge
all students. A very bright student who
doesn’t put much effort into anything
should not get a stellar grade—this
experience does not help the student to
develop a work ethic.

Individual learning expectation
 Personal average score.
 One way to give points for improvement is
to award extra points to students who do
better on a test or homework than their
personal average.

Halo effect

Did you ever notice how some kids, no
matter what they did, NEVER got in
trouble? Other kids, no matter how they
behaved were always in trouble. This is
the halo effect: the tendency for a general
impression of a person to influence our
perception of any aspect of that person.

The halo effect leads to unjustified grading practices. Watch out for it.

Grade pollution

If your directions weren’t clear and a bunch of
students therefore did badly on a project, that’s
grade pollution. If a student had poor reading
skills and your math test involved a lot of
reading, that’s grade pollution. Anything that
“muddies” the relationship between the
student’s learning and the grade is pollution.

Stop Grade Pollution!!! You don’t like it and neither will your students.

Communicating with parents

Don’t wait until something bad happens
to get in touch with parents. Try to find
reasons to make a positive phone call
for each student.


Document why you are giving the
grades you are giving. Your
documentation is your justification.
Be sure you document behavioral
information that leads to your grades
for deportment.

Documentation: A Reminder
 When you document a student’s behavior,
describe the behavior as exactly as possible,
using non-judgmental terms.
 “Sam was running in circles around the
classroom, shouting obscenities, and waving his
arms” is far more specific than “Sam was acting
crazy.” “Crazy” is a judgment on your part. A
parent will be more likely to accept the first
description because it is specific and
nonjudgmental.

Most of the time, if you have
made an effort to communicate
with parents when positive
things happen, if you
demonstrate that you care
about each student, and if you
share not only what your
grades for a student are but
WHY (including showing
examples of student work),
parents will accept your
assessment and will work with
you to help the student
improve.

 Once in awhile, you get a parent who is
not going to be reasonable. This person
may have mental health issues going on,
may be overly involved in his/her student’s
life, may be under a lot of psychological
stress for some reason or other, may have
had negative experiences with school him
or herself, or just may be an unpleasant
person in general.

 If you have a negative conference with a parent,
immediately tell your supervisor (before the
parent can call your supervisor). Ask your
supervisor to help you plan future conferences—
you may want to have someone from the school
administration present for future conferences.
Keep careful documentation on this student so
you can let your supervisor know what you are
doing with the student and why.

Technology and assessment
 Technology can be used in planning and
constructing tests.
 Test software can help you to analyze test
results.
 Software is helpful for maintaining student
records.

Technology and authentic
assessment
 Technology holds great promise for authentic
assessment.
 With scanning equipment, students can create and keep
their materials on electronic media (CD’s). They can
also create materials using the vast possibilities on the
computer (powerpoint, movie maker, etc.).
 Because of the ease of storage, student portfolios could
potentially span several years of their schooling.
Samples of student work across multiple years not only
demonstrate student progress but they also help to
reveal the areas of interest a student has developed and
maintained across the years.

Classroom assessment

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