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Practice: Incorporating Formative Assessment Strategies in Lesson PlansGENERATION READY FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT

ASSESSMENT FOR LEARNING

Instructional Conversation Guide:

Formative Assessment

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Planning Your Meeting ................................................................................3

PART 1: Background Knowledge ..........................................................5

PART 2: Practice .......................................................................................6

PART 3: Reflection and Review...........................................................12

PART 4: Action Plan ...............................................................................13

References..................................................................................................16

APPENDIX A: A Framework for Formative Assessment ........................17

APPENDIX B: Action Plan Template ..........................................................19

APPENDIX C: Self-Evaluation – Impact on Teaching and Learning ......................................21

Practice: Incorporating Formative Assessment Strategies in Lesson Plans



PLANNING YOUR MEETING

Overview:

In this session participants will analyze classroom scenarios using what they know about summative and formative assessment. Next, they will apply this knowledge by creating or revising a lesson plan to use in their own classrooms and identify the student work products they will collect and share.

Professional Learning Objectives:

Participants will be able to:

1. Develop a lesson plan that includes formative assessment techniques

2. Identify student evidence of the effectiveness of the techniques used in the lesson

Audience:

Teachers, teacher leaders, coaches

Preparation time: 30 MINUTES

Prior to the meeting facilitators should:

1. Preview the Instructional Conversation Guide and highlight questions that might be particularly important for the group

2. Determine if the entire instructional conversation will be completed in one meeting or spread out over a number of days or weeks

3. Preview any videos

4. Make copies of materials for participants

5. Set up computer and projection equipment (if needed)



PLANNING YOUR MEETING (continued)

Description and estimated time for each part of this activity: 90 MINUTES TOTAL

Times may vary depending upon the needs of your group.

Part 1. Background Knowledge (5 MINUTES):

Participants identify key elements for effective formative assessment that they want to focus on in their teaching and lesson planning.

Part 2. Observing and Analyzing Models (50 MINUTES):

Participants analyze a classroom scenario and identify how and where formative assessment strategies could have been incorporated. They then revise or design a lesson incorporating formative assessment strategies to try in their own classrooms.

Part 3. Reflection and Review (10 MINUTES):

Participants share and review the lesson plans they developed with the group.

Part 4. Next Steps (15 MINUTES):

Participants work together to identify an action plan to implement in the classroom that incorporates their learning. They will bring evidence of the efficacy of the implementation to the next session.

Materials and resources you will need:

1. Copies of this Instructional Conversation Guide (1 per participant)

2. Computer with high speed internet connection

3. LCD projector and screen

4. Evaluation (located in the Appendix)



PART 1: BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE (5 MINUTES)

INSTRUCTIONS:

1. Individually, read the two Formative Assessment Descriptors.

2. Mark or highlight key points that you want to focus on more in your teaching and lesson planning. (i.e., Distinguish between what you already do and what you would like to emphasize more.)

3. Keep these points in mind as you develop your lesson plan in Part 2.

Formative Assessment Descriptors 1. Formative assessment is

a. Students and teachers

b. Using evidence of learning

c. To adapt teaching and learning

d. To meet immediate learning needs

e. Minute-to-minute & day-by-day

(adapted from Wiliam & Thompson, 2007)

2. Formative assessment consists of

a. Clarifying goals, and criteria for success (including models of what “good” work looks like) so that students have a clear idea of what they need to do to succeed

b. Creating effective classroom discussion, questions, and learning tasks that elicit evidence of learning

c. Providing feedback that clearly communicates what students did well, what they need to improve, and how to go about making the improvement in order to move learning forward

d. Helping students own their learning, e.g., giving them 2nd and 3rd tries to correct their mistakes

e. Activating students to be instructional resources for one another.

(adapted from Wiliam & Leahy, 2007)



PART 2: PRACTICE (50 MINUTES)

Step 1: Looking for Evidence of Formative Assessment (5 minutes)

INSTRUCTIONS:

Individually, read one of the two class scenarios below.

Grade 3: Class scenario for a lesson on folk tales1

1. Lesson Objectives:

a. Students will know how to write a story with folk elements

b. Students will know how to produce a story that with a beginning, middle, and ending

c. Students will use revising and editing strategies

2. Posted on the bulletin board is a review of vocabulary terms with definitions:

a. Folk – belonging to the traditions of ordinary people

b. Oral – spoken, not written (‘oral report’)

c. The Moral – the lesson taught by a story

d. Sultan - an emperor or ruler of some Middle East countries

3. Also posted are the 6 characteristics of a folk tale that students learned during the prior class:

a. Does not have one known author

b. Began as an oral story, has different versions in print

c. Has some characters who are “totally bad” or “totally good”

d. Unrealistic or unbelievable things happen in it

e. Has a lesson or moral

f. Is set in the misty time of “long ago”

4. Overview of the lesson:

The teacher asks students to recall the characteristics of folk tales and words commonly used to begin telling a folk tale (“Long, long ago…” “Once upon a time…”). The teacher helps students locate the Middle East and the countries of Iran (Persia), Arabia, and Egypt on a wall map of the world. The teacher then asks students to recall images they remember of the film Aladdin, which most but not all had seen.

1 Adapted from “TALES FROM ARABIA: Lessons in Literature and Character,” by Wendy Hyndman, Retrieved March 20, 2010, http://teachingcontent.org/CK/resrcs/lessons/03_3_TALESARABIA.PDF).



PART 2: PRACTICE (continued)

The teacher tells the class one version of the tale “Scheherazade” and then the students listen to a different version of the same tale called “Arabian Nights.”

The second time the students listen to “Arabian Nights,” they draw a picture of the Sultan in the story. Students then draft their own version of the folk tale of “Scheherazade and the Sultan.” During the closing minutes of the lesson, students who have completed a draft are instructed to start revising and editing.

At the end of class this draft goes with the drawing into their writing portfolios. At the conclusion of the folk tales unit, students will choose one piece of writing to revise and edit into publishing shape. All of these final student papers will receive the same formal assessment from a Rubric Scoring Guide.

Grade 10: Class Scenario for a lesson on interpreting primary source documents2

1. Lesson Objectives:

a. Students will know that interpretations of history depend heavily on available primary source documents such as original records of events, newspaper accounts, photographs, speeches, and letters.

b. Students will know how to operate like historians, developing an understanding of the past by examining and interpreting documents.

c. Students will practice asking the kinds of questions historians use when they examine and interpret documents.

2. Students were given the following Graphic Organizer:

Graphic Organizer for Interpreting Primary Sources

Title of document, if titled:

Type of document: is the document a letter, an article, an ad, or a government piece?

Author of document: Who wrote the document? What do we know about the writer?

Date of document: When was it created? Source of document: In what city, town, or country was the document created?

Style of document: What is unusual about the language?

Point of view of document: Is the doc written in the first or third person?

Main idea of document: What main point is the writer presenting?

Impact of document: What feelings does the document bring up in you, the reader?

Questions raised by document: What do you want to know more about? What is still unknown?

Further research: What are some other documents worth looking for and reading?

2 Adapted from Ogle, D., Klemp, R., & McBride, B. (2007). Building literacy in social studies: Strategies for improving comprehension and critical thinking. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. 128-33.




3. Overview of the Lesson:

Students read an Ohio editorial on women’s suffrage and determine who wrote it and for what purpose. In pairs or small groups, student use the questions to interpret the document. Students report out when all are finished.

The teacher then distributes copies of the Graphic Organizer for Interpreting Primary Sources. Students also receive copies of a letter from Christina Kallstrom to her brother in Sweden in the late 1800s. In the letter Christina asks her brother to tell her daughters still living in Sweden to come to the United States if they have the chance because they will have a better life in terms of work and living conditions.

Students work in pairs to answer as many of the questions as they can on their individual copies of a graphic organizer. Then the whole class shares responses, beginning with ‘Who wrote it?’ ‘For what purpose?’ ‘What does it tell about the U.S. in the early part of the 20th century?’ ‘Why might a historian find this document interesting?’

Next, students individually apply what they have learned about reading primary documents to a recently-read chapter in the textbook and fill in the graphic organizer to record notes. Finally, the whole group shares what they learned.

Step 2: Partner/Small Group Discussion Questions: (15 minutes)Working with a partner or your table group use the Framework for Formative Assessment (located in Appendix A) from the last session—Models: Looking at Formative Assessment in Action—as a guide to answer the questions below.

1. What would you do to ensure students understand the purpose of the lesson? What would students do or say to demonstrate their understanding?

2. Identify at least one on-the-fly assessment that you would have included in the lesson.

a. Where would it occur in the lesson?

b. What would be its purpose (check all that apply)

□ Identify the gap between student performance and learning goal □ Provide feedback

□ Actively involve students □ Specify next steps




3. Identify at least one planned assessment that you would have included in the lesson.





4. Identify at least one curriculum-embedded assessment that you would have included in the lesson.





5. Is there any indication in the overview lesson that the teacher would have stopped the lesson if he or she discovered the students were missing an important skill? For example, have them stop writing the folk tale and just focus on writing a “good beginning” or have them focus on 2-3 elements of a primary source document, such as who wrote it, when it was written, and the main ideas presented instead of 10? Why is this an important part of lesson planning?




Step 3. Building Formative Assessments into Lesson Plans (30 minutes)

This part of the activity requires participants to get into pairs to develop a lesson plan. You have options for how to set up the partner practice.

Option 1. If your group is small and/or comprised of people who know each other, they can partner with a colleague. They will most likely want to work with someone who teaches the same grade and content area.

Option 2. If your group is larger and/or comprised of people who are not familiar with each other, have each person write their content area and grade level on a name tag and then give them 5–7 minutes to find a partner who teaches a similar grade and content area.

INSTRUCTIONS:

1. Find a partner who teaches a similar grade level and/or subject area. If you can’t find a “like partner” in the group you can choose to work individually.

2. Think about an upcoming lesson or unit you will be teaching or a lesson you have taught that you would like to revise.

3. Use the Lesson Plan Graphic Organizer below to develop a lesson plan that includes formative assessments based on Appendix A: A Framework for Formative Assessment).




Lesson Plan Graphic Organizer

Grade Level or Subject Area: Concept or Topic:

1. Standards to be Addressed:

2. Lesson Objective - Specify what students will be able to do at the end of the lesson:

3. Instructional Plan - Specify steps included in the instruction:

4. Formative Assessment – What strategies will be used and where in the lesson?

5. Adaptations - What accommodations will be made for challenged learners?

6. Materials Needed:

7. Closure – How will the lesson be wrapped up?

8. Assessment – How will students demonstrate their learning? Remember to collect the student evidence to share with the group at the next session.



PART 3: REFLECTION AND REVIEW (10 MINUTES)

Review Your Lesson Plan

INSTRUCTIONS:

1. Have you planned any possible mid-course corrections if you have students who clearly do not comprehend the content you are teaching?

2. Have you included a technique or strategy that you have not tried before? If not, expand your repertoire by trying at least one new idea either from the techniques provided today or from a colleague’s suggestion.

3. If time permits, share a summary of your lesson plan with the rest of the group, including the techniques you have included in the lesson. Group members are invited to share additional ideas or suggestions for the lesson.



PART 4: ACTION PLAN (15 MINUTES)

Develop an Action Plan

INSTRUCTIONS:

• Based on your work and discussion about formative assessment determine how you will apply what you’ve learned in the classroom. A template is provided in Appendix B: Action Plan Template.

• Determine what evidence you will collect and share to evaluate whether or not the action plan is improving student learning.

• Another option is to use the action plan described below.

Example of an action plan:

Steps:

1. Identify a focus student(s). Select one or more students in your class for whom you will provide ongoing assessment and collect data.

2. Determine time frame. How long will you gather information (e.g., two weeks)?

3. Record Formative Assessment and Feedback Information. Use the Data Collection Log (or design your own) to record your formative assessment and feedback information, as well as how the focus student responded (include both written and oral descriptive responses).

4. Collect Data. Collect as much evidence as you can to demonstrate the impact of assessment on student learning and your teaching. Bring the evidence (student’s application of assessment, anecdotal notes of oral reactions, etc.) to share with the group in the next session (Impact: Assessing the Impact of Formative Assessment on Learning).

5. Analyze. At the end of the designated time frame, analyze the effectiveness of assessments you have tried, by answering the second page of the Data Collection Log.



PART 4: ACTION PLAN (continued)

Data Collection Log

Data Collected for the weeks of:

Name of Focus Student:

Learning Target:

1. What is the identified gap between students’ current performance and the learning goal?

2. Descriptions of ongoing feedback provided (include dates if given over time):

3. Descriptions of how the student involved in assessing his or her progress?

4. What next steps were specified?

5. Descriptions of the strategies used to gather information (on-the-fly, planned interactions, curriculum-embedded)



PART 4: ACTION PLAN (continued)

After the data collection period is over discuss the following:

About Students:

1. Overall, how did Framework of Formative Assessment work for students in your lessons? Was it effective? In what ways?

2. Overall, did you feel that this framework of assessment yielded the information you needed about the student(s) you were tracking? What did it help you discover about the student(s), overall?

3. Which specific formative assessment strategies were the most informative to you in discovering and addressing the main challenges experienced by the student(s)?

About Assessment and Your Practice:

1. Which elements of formative assessment, if any, are starting to become habitual in your work?

2. Which elements of formative assessment do you still have to be deliberate about choosing and applying?



REFERENCESWiliam, D., & Thompson, M. (2007). Integrating assessment with instruction: What will it take to make it work?” In C. Dwyer

(Ed.) The future of assessment: Shaping teaching and learning. Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Wiliam, D., & Leahy, S. (2007). A theoretical foundation for formative assessment. In J. McMillan H. (Ed.) Formative classroom assessment: theory into practice. New York: Teachers College Press.



APPENDIX A: A FRAMEWORK FOR FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT

A Framework for Formative Assessment

Establish the Learning Goals

It is important to note that becoming highly skilled in the use of formative assessment is not enough, if what is being taught and learned is not in alignment with what students are ultimately expected to know and do. Therefore it is a given that, “[t]eachers must know the concepts, knowledge, and skills to be taught within a domain, the precursors necessary for students to acquire them, and what a successful performance in each looks like” (Heritage, 2007).

Equally important, teachers must clearly articulate the learning goals to students in language they can understand. If students don’t know where they are going many won’t get there.

Four Essential Elements of Formative Assessment

Once the learning goals have been clearly established, teachers can begin to apply the elements of formative assessment:

1. Identify the gap between students’ current performance and the learning goal.

2. Provide ongoing feedback that tells the student where he is in the learning progression, where he needs to be, and the next step to move his learning forward. The feedback must be:

Clear and descriptive about where the student is: “You worked well on supporting your claims with evidence. Now work on making sure the reader can follow the main points of your argument.”

Clear and descriptive about where the student needs to go and why, including criteria for assessment: “Dividing the major points of an argument into paragraphs helps readers to grasp each point. Putting the paragraphs in logical order helps readers connect the points into a seamless argument.”

3. Actively involve students in identifying gaps and deciding on next steps; scaffold students in self- and peer-assessment.

Take out your “Stages of a Writing Process” guidelines. Use it to assess what stage your draft is in. Then partner with a classmate and share your “Stages” self-assessments with each other. Help each other decide on next steps, based on the “Stages” suggestions.

4. Specify next steps to close the gap in terms of success criteria (short-term goals) that are doable and manageable for the student.

Eventually you will be pulling all the ideas together into a research paper, but what I want you to work on right now is adding more detail to your outline by…”



APPENDIX A: A FRAMEWORK FOR FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT (continued)

Formative Assessment Strategies for Gathering Information

All of the elements above rely on continuously gathering information about students in order to gauge their learning progress, provide feedback, AND plan instruction. Strategies teachers use to gather information about their students’ needs can be categorized as follows:

On-the-fly: “On-the-fly” assessments are made mid-lesson. They might require teachers to, stop and do some corrective or additive instruction before continuing.

The teacher overhears a small-group math activity headed in the wrong direction and provides a quick lesson to redirect.

In a conference over a draft, the teacher is surprised that the writer’s grasp of paragraphs is weak despite whole-class instruction in the skill, so he reviews the basics of paragraphing with the student, watches the student take the next step by applying the lesson to a page of her draft, and sends her off to take further steps on her own, which he will quickly check later.

Planned interactions: Planned assessments are structured into a lesson in advance of class time; they simultaneously prompt active student inquiry into a topic and supply the teacher with ongoing information about levels of student understanding.

The teacher plans a series of questions to ask during a whole-class lesson, or plans a classroom activity in which individual students will do observable work with new material while she walks around to check.

The teacher plans 3–5 minute individual student conferences to discuss work-in-progress during independent practice.

Curriculum-embedded: Curriculum-embedded assessments can be embedded in the curriculum either as activities always incorporated into selected learning processes—for example, at key points of writing instruction, lab report protocols, or research practices—or as integral features of the classroom routine.

Preliminary bibliographies for research papers are always turned in for assessment.

The teacher routinely collects and reviews student notebooks or portfolios.

The teacher frequently starts classes by reading aloud “Admit Slips” (2–3 minute anonymous comments written by students to answer a specific question on the board, and turned in) as a quick-check on learning, and corrects misconceptions.

Rough drafts of essays with peer feedback notes are routinely turned in stapled under final drafts so that the teacher can assess how writers used feedback to improve papers.

Thursdays are Thought Days, when at the end of class all students write and turn in 5-minute “exit slips” focused on specific learning targets for the week.

Adapted from Margaret Heritage (2007, October). Formative assessment: What do teachers need to know and do? Phi Delta Kappan, 89(2), 140-145.



APPENDIX B: ACTION PLAN TEMPLATE

Action PlanWhat will be tried in the classroom as a result of our focus? List the details of the action plan below.

1. What is the learning objective we want our students to master as a result of this plan?

2. Who is the targeted student group (i.e., will the action plan be used with one particular student? a small group of students? the whole class?)?

3. What will be the context (i.e., during what instructional period will the plan be implemented)?

4. How many times will you try the strategy (e.g., three times a week for a month)?

5. Are there specific instructional steps that the team should include in their implementation of the plan (e.g., a think aloud to model the strategy for students followed by a guided practice in the same lesson will be included in everyone’s plan; students will be asked to fill out an exit slip at the end of the lesson indicating their level of understanding.)?



APPENDIX B: ACTION PLAN TEMPLATE (continued)

6. What adaptations do you anticipate having to make for specific students (e.g., challenged learners, English language learners)?

7. What will be the evidence of student learning that will be brought back to the next meeting to be analyzed (e.g., samples of student work over the course of several lessons? samples from students that mastered the objective as well as samples from students who did not?) ?

8. Is there any additional evidence that should be brought to the meeting besides student work? (e.g., lesson plan, observation notes on students or the lesson, teacher reflection)

A follow-up meeting needs to be scheduled for the group to reconvene and analyze the evidence from the implementation of their action plan.



APPENDIX C: SELF-EVALUATION – IMPACT ON TEACHING AND LEARNING

Part 1. Impact on TeachingAs a result of learning about formative and summative assessments, I can:

1. Develop a lesson plan that includes formative assessment techniques. STRONGLY AGREE AGREE DISAGREE STRONGLY DISAGREE

Comments:

2. Identify student evidence of the effectiveness of the techniques used in the lesson. STRONGLY AGREE AGREE DISAGREE STRONGLY DISAGREE

Comments:

3. What did you value most from this professional development?

4. What will you implement in the classroom as a result of this session?



APPENDIX C: SELF-EVALUATION – IMPACT ON TEACHING AND LEARNING (continued)

Part 2. Impact on Student LearningAs a result of learning about formative and summative assessments, my students can:

1. Identify the gap between their current performance and the learning goal. STRONGLY AGREE AGREE DISAGREE STRONGLY DISAGREE

Comments:

2. Participate in self and peer assessment. STRONGLY AGREE AGREE DISAGREE STRONGLY DISAGREE

Comments:

3. Specify next steps to close the gap in terms of success criteria (short-term goals) STRONGLY AGREE AGREE DISAGREE STRONGLY DISAGREE

Comments:

Evaluating student learning is generally done after the group has completed all the Instructional Conversations in the series and/or an action plan has been implemented (e.g., using a strategy or technique in the classroom and analyzing student work).

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Practice: Incorporating Formative Assessment Strategies in ...readypath-learn.generationready.com/resources/pdf/fas_a_practice... · Practice: Incorporating Formative Assessment Strategies