________________________________________
Article Title: Ten Takeaway Tips for Using Authentic
Assessment in Your School
The Edutopia article, "Ten Takeaway Tips for Using Authentic Assessment in Your School", offers ten tips for teachers from the School of the Future (SOF) on using authentic assessment. SOF strives for its students to “demonstrate their comprehension and mastery of the curriculum in ways that are meaningful to them.” Student assessment should go "beyond getting the 'right' answers on tests." Following are the ten tips to help teachers move toward authentic assessment as they design their instruction and assessments.
- Break Down Skill Work into Small Steps
- Build a Community of Practice
- Work Backwards
- Have Fun
- Ensure Rigor
- Give Cards a Try
- Tap into Students’ Interests
- Use Tasks on Demand
- DYO: Do Your Own Assessments
- Use a Variety of Tracking Tools
While I appreciate all the tips, I included this article specifically for tips number 6, 8, and 9. Tip 6, Give Cards a Try, is a quick and simple freeze-frame of where students are in their learning at any given moment. I often use Exit Tickets for this type of assessment with no more than two questions, one closed-ended and one open-ended where students must give me the why behind their thinking. I've found this quick picture to be highly informative for tweaking my next day's lesson. Tip 8, Use Tasks on Demand (TOD), is a totally new idea to me but one I will definitely use as an assessment tool. TODs will prove whether my students can actually apply the concepts we've been learning. I especially like the idea of presenting students math problems with incorrect solutions already given and then having them tell me why this problem is wrong. This should show me their thinking behind their math computations. Step 9, Do Your Own Assessments (DYO), offers students time to reflect and explain their learning progress. This type of assessment can include explanations about specific skills, or students' opinions about concepts. All of this would provide valuable insight into students' learning for a teacher, plus potentially yield an increase in student ownership toward their own learning which is the ultimate goal of authentic assessment.
Article Link: http://www.edutopia.org/10-assessment-tips-for-class
"Ten Takeaway Tips for Using Authentic Assessment in Your School." Edutopia. 19 Oct. 2015. Web. 20 Oct. 2015. <http://www.edutopia.org/10-assessment-tips-for-class>.
Video Title: Illustrative Mathematics--Preparation for Fraction Multiplication
This is an excellent video on how a 5th grade math teacher from Anacortes, Washington, designed a lesson appropriate for all her students. While designing her instruction, she fully reflected her understanding of the math content and ensured that continuous assessments would occur. This particular lesson in on preparing her students for fraction multiplication.
In the video, the teacher starts with number talks on the floor where students will show they can do mental arithmetic but with conceptual understanding. After number talks, she introduces a real world situation, a fundraiser of selling square pans of cornbread. She gives 5 minutes of private think time toward the real world situation which she has introduced, and gives expectations to students to have something to share by the end of the 5 minutes, but doesn't necessarily expect a solution at the end of the think time. She then asks her students to give examples of what you might say if you haven’t developed a final solution yet when it's time to go through your share round with your table group. “You might say where you’ve started or what you understand and don’t understand,” replies one student. She has created a culture where their opinions, thoughts, and reasoning are valued, “even the missteps, flaws, and mistakes that you make are all valued because they are all learning opportunities.”
After their think time, the teacher has her students share their thoughts and work as a table to come to a final solution upon which all agree. Since they all must agree, she is compelling her students to verbally explain their reasoning to each other. The teacher uses this group time to observe and make notes on where her students are able to enter the problem or if they can find no access. As she observes, she’s also choosing pieces of work to have students share with the whole class, picking at least one that is similar to strategies they have been learning in class and then another example where a student might introduce a very different strategy to the class. Students then are given a new, more complex problem to apply the strategies they are learning. This offers practice but, more importantly, deepens understanding.
As I teach math, I am always looking for lesson plans that introduce a concept in an interactive, real-world way that lends itself to concrete, semi-concrete, and then abstract ordered learning. This was a pearl of a video find! This teacher developed a lesson that makes the students’ learning purposeful and memorable.
"Preparation for Fraction Multiplication." Teaching Channel. Web. 21 Oct. 2015. <https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/fraction-multiplication-intro-sbac>.
This is an excellent video on how a 5th grade math teacher from Anacortes, Washington, designed a lesson appropriate for all her students. While designing her instruction, she fully reflected her understanding of the math content and ensured that continuous assessments would occur. This particular lesson in on preparing her students for fraction multiplication.
No comments:
Post a Comment