Assessing Students’ Understanding and Ability to Apply Their Learning in Relevant, Meaningful Ways

Authentic Performance Tasks

Assessing Students’ Understanding and Ability to Apply Their Learning in Relevant, Meaningful

Ways

To develop a rationale for using authentic, performance-based assessments

To understand the context for authentic performance tasks as part of a balanced assessment system

To recognize the qualities of a high-quality, authentic performance task

To develop performance-based assessments that provide opportunities for students to demonstrate what they know, understand, and are able to do

Session Goals

Enduring Understandings: There is a direct connection between

curriculum and instruction and student performance

High quality curriculum is designed to develop student understanding by uncovering complex ideas which involves students doing authentic practice

Providing students with the opportunity to work like professionals will ensure true understanding of the content and provide relevance

How might we ensure that students see the relevance of what we are teaching?

To what extent can the use of authentic performance tasks assess students’ understanding and ability to apply their learning in meaningful and relevant ways?

In what ways can we ensure that students are provided with rigorous work that mirrors the work of experts?

Essential Questions

Know: Assessment for understanding must be

grounded in authentic performance-based tasks Authentic performance-based assessments

provide opportunities for students to work like experts in a given field

Performance-based assessments must be aligned with K-U-Ds developed in Stage 1

Understanding is revealed in performanceDo: Use the GRASP tool to design a PBA Analyze performance tasks in order to

understand authenticity

KUD – Know , Understand, and Do

Strategic ObjectivesObj. 1 All teachers will engage every student in meaningful,

authentic and rigorous work through the use of innovative instructional practices and supportive technologies that will motivate students to be self-directed and inquisitive learners.

Obj. 2 VBCPS will develop and implement a balanced assessment system that accurately reflects student demonstration and mastery of VBCPS outcomes for student success.

Obj. 4 VBCPS will create opportunities for parents, community and business leaders to fulfill their essential roles as actively engaged partners in supporting student achievement and outcomes for student success.

VBCPS Outcomes for Student Success:Our primary focus is on teaching and assessing those skills our students need to thrive as 21st century learners, workers and citizens. All VBCPS students will be:

Academically proficient; Effective communicators and collaborators; Globally aware, independent, responsible

learners and citizens; and Critical and creative thinkers, innovators

and problems solvers.

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8

Think about an assessment exercise that significantly contributed to your learning (in school or out).

What features characterized your experience?

What factors in the assessment (and how they were used) most contributed to your learning?

Generalize “Assessments promote learning when…”

“Best Assessment” Exercise

Jay McTigheBalanced Assessment for Improved

Learning

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1. Identify desired results

2. Determine acceptable evidence 2. Determine acceptable evidence

3. Plan learning experiences & instruction

3 Stages of (“Backward”) Design

VBCPS: Office of Gifted Education

Based on the work of Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe

Analyze the two tasks provided

How are the tasks similar in nature

How are they different

Which task is more authentic

What are Authentic Performance Tasks?

Key Terms

Performance Tasks- A task that gives the student the opportunity to illustrate, perform, or demonstrate what they know, understand, and can do.

Authentic Performance Task- A task that gives the student the opportunity to illustrate, perform, or demonstrate what they know, understand, and can do through a real-world challenge so that they are working like an expert in the field.

Performance Assessment- Involves more than a single test of performance and might use other modes of assessment such as surveys, interviews of the performer, observations, or quizzes.

Authentic Assessment- An assessment composed of performance tasks and activities designed to simulate or replicate important real-world challenges. Authentic assessments ask students to use knowledge in real-world ways, with genuine purposes, audiences, and situational variables.

Understanding by DesignGrant Wiggins and Jay McTighe

Authentic Performance Tasks

•Provide complex challenges that mirror the issues and problems of adults

•Are open-ended

•Engage students in doing the work of experts in the field

•Are naturally more rigorous than traditional assessments

•Require the application of knowledge and skills

•Are aligned with the identified KUD’s from Stage 1


Designing Performance Tasks•Structure performance tasks so that there is not one right answer or one right approach to arriving at answers

•Ensure that even if there is a “right” answer you are looking for, that arriving at the answer follows sound reasoning and a supported argument or approach

•Students should have to consider when to use which approach and which facts

•Ensure that the task involves transfer

•The performance should require students to figure out which knowledge and skills are needed in order to efficiently and effectively arrive at a solution

•Limit the amount of cues or prompts that are offered when framing the task.

•Establish evaluative criteria and performance standards that are appropriate to the task and known by the students in advance


Six Facets of Understanding

UbD Facet Facet Description

Facet 1: Explanation

Sophisticated explanations and theories

Facet 2: Interpretation

Interpretations, narratives, and translations

Facet 3: Application

Use knowledge in new situations and contexts

Facet 4: Perspective

Critical and insightful points of view

Facet 5: Empathy Ability to get inside another person's feelings

Facet 6: Self-knowledge

To know one's ignorance, prejudice, and understanding

McTighe and Wiggins Understanding By Design, 2005Understanding by DesignGrant Wiggins and Jay McTighe

Key Implications of Facets

•Understanding is composed of all six facets

•The facets should permeate among all three stages of backward design

•The facets help us clarify the desired understandings, necessary assessment tasks and learning activities that will most likely advance student understanding

•Good design will make clear the idea that the learner must make sense out of what the teacher teaches

•Students learn to move beyond taking in what is covered to uncovering what lies beneath the surface of facts and to ponder their meaning Understanding by Design

Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe

A tool used to design authentic performance tasks

Each letter of GRASPS corresponds with a task element

When using the prompts for each part of the acronym, it is not necessary to respond to all questions

Consider creating at least one core performance task for assessing understanding in a major unit of study

GRASPS


G- What is the Goal in the scenario?

R- What is the Role?

A- Who is the Audience?

S- What is your Situation (context)?

P- What is the Performance challenge?

S- By what Standards will work be judged in the scenario?

GRASPS- A tool used to design authentic performance tasks.


Performance Task Example

Examine the task Compare the GRASPS tool with the

written task to see how the tool was used to create the task

Where do you see the Facets of Understanding embedded in the task?

Allow students to step into the role assigned to them by defining what the expert does

Focus their understanding on the skills, language, and products of an expert in the field

Sample Frame

Kaplan’s Frames of the Discipline

Identifying Clear Criteria for Student Understanding

Why do we need clear criteria?— Address the fact that understanding within open-ended

prompts and performance tasks is subjective

— Allow students to demonstrate varying degrees of understanding

— Allow for consistency in grading

— Highlight most revealing and important aspects of the work--not just those easy to see or score

— Let students know up front what is required to be successful

— Derive criteria from established goals (i.e. EU & EQs)

Understanding by Design Professional Development Workbook by J. McTighe and G. Wiggins, 2004.

Understanding by Design Expanded 2nd Edition by J. McTighe and G. Wiggins, 2005.

Assessment in the classroom: the key to good instruction. by C. Callahan, 2006.

The Case for Authentic Assessment by G. Wiggins, Eric Digests, 1990.

Resources

Office of Gifted Education 23

Performance Tasks Ticket-Out-of-the-Room

Name: _____________________

Questions Comments, Suggestions, Ideas, & Questions

In what ways did the content and activities of today’s workshop enhance your understanding of performance assessments?

What questions do you have as a result of today’s workshop?

Documents

Assessing Students’ Understanding and Ability to Apply Their Learning in Relevant, Meaningful Ways