The team reserves time for silent reading of their chapter with an emphasis on highlighting and annotating ‘aha’ moments and items you would like to share with fellow educators on your team AS YOU READ.

Be sure to have three ideas to share with your group (in case the first two get taken, you want to have an idea ‘in your pocket’ to share with your colleagues.)

After the silent reading (~ 20 mins –  please re-read the content if you have already read it ), exchange key ideas one at a time making sure you provide the page and paragraph location (page Z, paragraph Y).   Then the group will begin to compile ideas to share with the entire faculty — both on large flip chart paper and on this blog (under the post with your chapters number / title on it.) Again be sure to put the page and paragraph location of the information you have chosen to share with your colleagues.

At 3:30 we will begin to share out — you will have ~5 minutes to share your key points as participants — use either the butcher block paper or an electronic overview of your content as a focusing aid– have several voices share the key takeaways — it builds capacity when each person has  multiple opportunities to engage in content.

The blog posts will serve as an electronic record of what each team thought was worthwhile to share with the entire faculty!  The user name and password to edit the existing posts are the same — we will reveal them during the face to face session 1/26/10.

Key Concepts

Four main assessment types — selected response, extended written response, performance assessment and personal communication (p 90 -93)

Food for Thought:

Involve students in as many of the five stages as possible!

No assessment method is superior to any other.

Key Concepts:

• The importance of the target – method match (4 main types of assessment with different purposes, strengths and weaknesses).  (p 125)
• Table comparison of selected repsonse types  for use, strengths and weaknesses (p 138)
• Using selected response for the assessment of learning (p 152-157)

Food for Thought:

No one picking this chapter is a powerful statement!
Students can be involved in the documentation of their results! (p.161)

Key Concepts

I.     When do we use extended written response assessment? to access chunks of knowledge that interrelate
p.167

II.    How do we use extended written response assessment? use words like describe and explain

III.   How do we create an extended written response assessment? follow the following stages:
pgs.171-182

Stage 1:  create a plan
Stage 2: devise exercises
Stage 3: critique the assessment
Stages 4 and 5: revise as needed and ask yourself…
Where am I going?
How will I know?
How can I close the gap?

IV.     Summary: extended written response assessments are excellent for assessing extended bodies of knowledge!
p. 186

Food for Thought

1.  There are several contextual conditions to consider:

* students need to be proficient in writing English to write extended written responses and therefore this assessment
may not work well for primary students, English language learners, and students with other special needs.

* extended written response is time consuming to score well

* extended written response exercises require consistency in scoring

* extended written response is good in assessment for learning

Key Concepts: Performance assessment is assessment based on observation and judgement.  Performance assessment is well suited to evaluating reasoning, skill, and product learning targets. page 191

The 4 traits of a rubric are content, clarity, practicality, and teaching quality/fairness.  page 202-203-Figure 7.3

6 Steps for developing a rubric: 1) establish a knowledge base 2) gather samples of student work 3) sort by high/low quality 4) cluster features by traits 5) illustrate examples of each level 6) revise rubric as it is used.  page 244 (paragraph 4)

Rubrics allow students to be involved in the learning process and allows the teachers to teach the nature of quality work.  Portfolios allow students to be involved in their own assessment, which makes them feel like have control over their learning and increases motivation. page 199 (paragraph 3)

Food for Thought: How do we eliminate bias?

Key Concepts

Difficult means of assessment for any student with personality or performance challenges, i.e. Speech, ESL, shy.p.254

High Quality Rubrics and good questions are key. p.255

Call on volunteers and non-volunteers in discussion .p. 256

Sufficient wait time for answers draws out those less likely to answer.p. 257

Use non-recall questions with reasoning verbs like compare, and predict.p.257

Use other strategies such as Think/Pair/Share, asking for elaboration of student response, and paraphrasing.p .257

Important to model the question and response techniques.p.258, 259

Journal writing is effective if specific guided instruction and a careful rubric are involved. p.266

Food for Thought:

• keep the students as your primary audience and keep open communication with parents on progress – details beyond just grades (P279)
• assessment for is practice and evidence of progress (student centered); while assessment of is work that contributes to the final grade (report cards)
• practice without penalty is a more useful motivator than grades (P283)
• narrative feedback on assessments and student achievement conferences are preferred versus test scores (P295-296)
• provide more detail of grades such as, create parent friendly-language curriculum guides (P296)
• a teacher’s goal should be consistent and profound improvement, not grading

Food for Thought:

• Great points, but where do we find the time to conference with 21 students x 5 minutes per assessment?
• Requiring 9 grades per subject (5) each nine weeks amounts to a graded assignment everyday of the nine weeks, where do we fit in practice, conferences, student assessment, and narrative feedback?
• How do you teach a student to self-assess? For example:  today’s writing prompt – we asked students if they checked their work, indented, and check spelling – of course, they all said “yes” however the majority did not with an accompanying checklist (some checklist were not even checked).

Key Concepts (with page and paragraph locations)

*Think about why we grade, what to include,  and how do we combine to get a true picture of the student.

*Grading practices reflect standard based instruction.

*Teachers need to try to avoid or control unintended negative impact on learning.

Food for Thought:

*Written comments are very important especially if you are grading a student on their level.

*Note specific strands when you can in areas of difficulty.

*Punish for behavior should not affect grades (ex: think about zeros and how it changes the accuracy of the student’s grade).

Key Concepts

Two purposes of Conferences Page 363

1. Summative - share information about learning that occurred
2. Formative - Give or receive feedback to help formulate goals and create indiviudalized plans for students

Five conference options – Page 364

1. feedback – strengths and areas for improvement
   
2. goals setting – long & short term goals
   
3. intervention – area of concern
   
4. demonstrations of growth – improving learning target/growth over time
   
5. communicating achievement – level of achievement
   

*See – Fabulous table on PG. 364

Food for Thought:

Our Ideas for Goals setting

#1 – develop a student checklist for goal setting

#2 -  incorporate conferencing & goals setting activities into work stations or morning/daily routine

#3 -  include student in the parent/teacher conferences

Please reflect on the following excerpt on page 21 in the CASL book:

A learning team is not a book group…the discussion that occurs during team meetings is a means to the end, and not the end itself.  If we don’t commit to trying things out between team meetings, nothing different will be happening in our classrooms…

• As a grade level team, what are some balanced assessment strategies you have been using this year?

• How are these strategies impacting student learning and achievement?