Authentic Assessment

One of the conversations I feel most passionate about having with teachers is about authentic assessment. It's important to me because it isn't just good for students, its so freeing for educators to be given back some of the decision making power. Below is a multi-flow map I created to reflect what I see in much of my work. 

Because this is the reality, it is with intentional clarity that I aim to shed light on what we can count as assessment. Margaret Heritage's book, Formative Assessment in Practice: A Process of Inquiry and Action, she brings it down to a statement I find myself repeating everywhere I go; "evidence of mastery can be found in anything that students say, do, make and write"

 
Of course the conversation about how evidence of mastery is proven and the various types of assessment is not always a simple one. But I would argue that it is within our talking about assessment that we grow as teachers and assessors.

In effort to support your conversations, here are some facets of assessment that are helpful to discuss as you plan new assessment activities and evaluate those you have been using for a while. These facets and the subpoints are a synthesis of my work and research, and are evolving as I continue the journey towards more authentically assessing students.

Practical writing instruction

One of the things I hear most often from teachers is about the struggle to find time for everything and make it all "fit together." I realize this can be difficult when special events and timed-to-the-minute daily schedules are the the norm, but I see it a little differently. One of the things I have committed to doing with my students a lot is low-risk-high-interest writing. And I am continually surprised by how often we can "fit it in." 

 For example, during our social studies unit on Citizenship, we studied many different current and historical figures that are examples of compassion, curiosity, commitment and community involvement. My students collected information about them in whatever way they would like in some research packets I created. The information was to be organized into those four C categories I just listed... but it didn't matter to me if they drew with labels, wrote full sentences, made a flow map of events or recorded important dates...just as long as it made sense to them.

After all the note-taking, it seemed like they still had a connection to these people, and in some cases lingering questions. Enter----letter writing opportunity! I took one day to show, study and explain a few letters (including the format of the one from MLK to JFK from the previous post) before sending them off to write one of their own. They were able to choose which person to write to and had only the following expectations;

• Follow the letter format (greeting, body, salutation)
• Identify one of the four Cs that the "Great Citizen" showed and the evidence
• Ask one question
• Thank them for their example

The results were wonderful as you can see, they really loved the chance to channel what they learned and write with purpose about something they had studied and cared deeply about. And the best part is, I thought of it in the car on the way to school, took 20 minutes to teach them how and 45 minutes to let them work...we got a lot out of that hour and 5 minute learning experience :)

        

Using primary source documents in primary grades

During my time at the Teacher's College Reading and Writing Project Institute last winter, I was reminded of the importance of sharing real pieces of history with our youngest learners. As we practiced deep thinking and literacy practice with primary source documents at the institute, I began to image what I could do in my classroom.
This winter, as my students began studying great citizens and we dove head first into content are literacy centers, I was delighted to go back to the Library of Congress website to retrieve a couple great pieces to share with them. If you haven't visited their site, you should! There is a classroom materials section and collections of primary source documents by theme.
Since most of great citizen study began with Martin Luther King Jr. I was immediately drawn to a letter that he wrote to JFK, just after he was inaugurated. It became the focal point of my "Write Around Center" and I was not disappointed by the engagement and conversations it sparked!

Martin Luther King Jr. Day

Content Are Literacy Centers

Standards-based portfolios = life saver!

As a result of my commitment to standards-based instruction and formative assessment, I went ahead and decided to use google docs to organize evidence of my students mastery of the standards. I started by making a folder for each of them, as pictured below....

In each of their folders I made a folder for each content area, just for my own sanity and organization for when I'm retrieving the documents and images later...

While my students are working throughout the day, after I've graded important papers or as I'm listening to them read, I use the google docs app on my ipad to quickly snap pictures and upload to the individual folders by selecting the "use camera" option from the upload drop-down menu. It might seem a little clunky but I'm getting really fast at it :)

Then within the folders I have evidence of learning within that content area, as pictured below....

Which I later link to another document organized by learning target, like this...

The reason I have this secondary document is because I can more easily see who has mastered the standard and who has not...easier differentiation and grouping when I'm planning intervention and extension. 

As a side note, I want to mention that some of the "I can" statements were provided for me and some of them I designed on my own because my district hasn't gotten to that content area in their learning target development. Everything is work in progress but these folders are setting me up for more success than I could have imagined :)

Content Area Centers...with an elementary twist!

While at Teachers College back in February, I learned about content area centers for middle schoolers and fell in love with the idea. For those of you who have been teaching primary grades, centers are not new for you. But when my learning happened the examples I was provided all had to do with middle school and to be honest, the task cards were a bit overwhelming, so I starting thinking through how I would tweak them for elementary, and here is the resulting post :) 

 What if instead of cracking open social studies textbooks or jumping into science experiments from our FOSS or EIE kits, we had a day or two set aside for centers? K-8 teachers, I want to challenge you to think about some of these compelling reasons to engage in this type of teaching for the purpose of increasing your student's learning. 

Centers are: An opportunity for students to engage with content in a variety of the ways, many "access points", Requires deep thinking about content, rather than "sit and get, Students learn from conversation with one another, defending opinions, justifying thinking  with text evidence, Allows for differentiation in task, support, and thinking, Great chance to generate and answer "big questions", Lends to  thoughtful CCSS connections, Builds independence and ownership of learning, Here are some ideas for centers that could become part of your instruction regardless of the center;

Here is the link to the Teachers Pay Teachers product

Of course students need to know what your expectations are for the centers, and that does take time. Once students know what the expectations are for the photograph center however it doesn't matter if the photos are of the civil rights movement, science content, or even a math diagram, they know what to do. 

Comparing and Contrasting 2 texts (standard 9) in preparation for Social Studies Centers

Whole Class Instruction to Support Comparing and Contrasting Sources of Information Related to Immigration (3-5) from TC Reading and Writing Project on Vimeo.