2.4 Assessment & Feedback

Attach to your lesson plan any rubrics, checklists or other assessment tools that you will use.

ASSESSMENT

Describe the tools/procedures that will be used throughout this lesson to monitor and measure learners' learning of the lesson objective(s).  (Multiple and varied assessments should be used in the lesson.)

“Assessment always has more to do with helping students grow than with cataloging their mistakes” (Tomlinson, 1999, p. 11). The assessment plan carefully describes how you will know if an individual student has met the intended lesson objectives and how your class as a whole has met the lesson objectives. You will  identify the specific evidence that will indicate that the students have met the intended learning objective(s) at the desired level of competency or mastery.

Identify the performance criteria or benchmark to be achieved

When thinking about assessment keep the standard and objectives of your lesson in mind. The assessment activity needs to align with the objective of your lesson. In other words, teach to the objective and assess what you have taught.

As you begin your planning, start with determining what students should be able to do as a result of the lesson and plan the assessment based on this (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005). Next, plan the lesson so that reaching this assessment plan is possible (Wiliam, 2011).

Questions to Consider:

• Does the assessment directly align with the objectives, standards, and goals?
• Have you determined what success with the objective “looks like” and how you will observe and document it?
• Have you determined what it looks like when the objective is not met and how you will document it?

Pre-assessment

Why are you planning to teach the content, strategies, and academic language you have placed in your lesson? Which of your students need this instruction? How do you know students need this instruction? These questions are answered through pre-assessment, which is often referred to as diagnostic assessment.

Pre-assessment may involve using data from a previous lesson or activity that indicates how students performed. Pre-assessment may also be a planned activity you have designed to gather information on what students know about the content you plan to teach. You will use the results of your pre-assessment to make decisions about selecting (or adjusting) your learning goal and objective(s).

Use of multiple and varied assessments

It is important to use multiple and varied assessments to evaluate students’ progress toward reaching the lesson objective. Research has consistently shown that formative assessment has the greatest impact on student learning (Wiliam & Black, 1998; Marzano, 2006). Formative assessment can be defined as “all those activities undertaken by teachers and/or by students which provide information to be used as feedback to modify the teaching and learning activities in which they engage” (Wiliam & Black, cited in Marzano, 2006). 

In your lesson planning, you will need to “describe the tools/procedures that will be used in this lesson to monitor and measure students’ learning of the lesson objective(s)”. Monitoring means to gauge students’ learning throughout the lesson with the use of formative assessments.

The following is a list of potential formative assessments:

• Listening to oral responses
• Practice problems or questions
• Reflection journals
• Lab annotations
• Exit slips
• Review games like Jeopardy or Kahoot
• Student self-reports

Assessment and Alignment

One of the parts of an effective learning objective is to identify the criteria or “how well”.  As you develop your assessment plan, you will want to align your assessments to the criteria suggested in the objective. Be sure to assess various levels of understanding of content. In this way, you will be able to monitor learning progress. In other words, what are the requisite skills that students must demonstrate in order to show overall understanding of the content and meet the identified objective(s) for the lesson(s)?

Use of multiple and varied assessments helps you understand the nuances of students’ learning. For example, students may understand part of the content but not all of it. They may be “on their way” to reaching the objectives but there are gaps in their understanding. Also, use of multiple and varied assessments gives your students the opportunity to demonstrate what they know. Some students may understand the content but may not be able to express it through writing but could do so orally or by creating a visual representation.

Clearly identified guidelines are necessary for evaluating students’ work. You may or may not be using a rubric to evaluate students’ work, but you still need clearly identified guidelines that answer the questions “what” and “to what degree” (levels of performance) have students met the objectives for this lesson.

Process and tools for assessment

Consider how you may use these to collect assessment data to understand how and when your students are meeting the lesson objective(s):

Include copies of all assessment tools (prompts, quizzes, tests, exams, and so on) by attaching them to your lesson plan.

Assessment Examples

Pre Assessment: On the day before the lesson, I will have the class play a Kahoot game that assesses their familiarity with the academic language needed in the lesson.  The results of the game will help me determine how much scaffolding of academic language I will need to do in my lesson.

Other pre-assessment strategies include use of anticipation journals, entrance slips, concept maps, drawings, surveys/questionnaires, KWL or other graphic organizers, open-ended questions, predictions, discussions, student interviews, student work samples, teacher observations with checklists, teacher-prepared pretests, and review of student work.

Formative Assessment: The students will use a collection of common materials such as a paper tube, blocks, balls, tape, and small trucks to construct a structure to allow an object to move from one location to another without pushing or pulling the objects. I will observe the construction process and evaluate if the construction demonstrates the principle of cause and effect. I will record the observation as a work sampling note.

 Other formative assessment examples include use of individual or small group conferences, discussions, exit slips, self-assessment (self-report), practice presentations, questions, peer assessment, writer’s notebook, 3-2-1 (3 things you learned, 2 things you have a question about, 1 thing you want the instructor to know), summary paragraph, pair/share, and  online quiz games that provide immediate feedback.

Summative Assessment: The students will create a tourist poster that identifies five facts about their chosen state as well as a summary sheet about their research. I will use the attached five-point scale rubric to evaluate their work.

 Other forms of summative assessments include quizzes, tests, cooperative learning projects, lab experiments, oral discussions, debates, and writing in response to prompts. The purpose of a summative assessment is for students to show mastery of a learning goal, so it is important to align the assessment with the goal. Be sure to include your scoring criteria for your summative assessments.

FEEDBACK

Share your plan to provide specific feedback to learners on their progress toward reaching the lesson objective.

How will learners use the feedback to improve their competencies and knowledge?  (Describe the specific opportunity for their application of the feedback.)

You will need to provide feedback to students during and after your lesson presentation for the purposes of guiding and promoting their learning (Hattie & Timperley, 2007). It is important to plan how you will provide this feedback.

Feedback aligns directly to the learning objective. This feedback should tell each student specifically what he or she is doing to reach the learning objective and what he or she can adjust in order to reach the objective.  Feedback may also point learners toward reaching beyond the stated objective.

Identify how you will provide students with clear and specific feedback and when it will be provided at specific points in the lesson. In other words, what specific knowledge or competencies are you seeking to promote? How will you link feedback to the lesson objective?

Identify specific ways you will have students use the feedback you provide to improve their knowledge and competencies. Think about how students will use the feedback to improve their understanding and abilities verses making corrections to work you might hand back to them.

As you plan your lessons, consider what types of verbal, written, or digital feedback you would provide on formative assessments, tests, and oral presentations. Checklists and rubrics provide criteria for evaluation, but you need to provide additional feedback on individual students’ specific performance.

• In which area(s) did the student do well?
• In which area(s) should the student improve?
• What are the steps the student would follow in order to improve?
• What resources are available to the student to support their learning?

Feedback Examples

Example 1

At the beginning of the lesson, we will go over the answers to the five practice problems. After we go through the answers, I will give students the opportunity to ask clarifying questions about the problems in order to correct any errors in their process steps. 

During the guided practice section of the lesson, I will give verbal feedback to students as they practice their problems with a partner (We Do Phase).  This feedback is informal but immediate—noting what the pairs are doing correctly and noting any steps that contain errors in order to correct the error.

Example 2

During group time, we will be practicing how to listen and to wait to share. I have created a “thumbs up” card that I will show when the children are sitting and listening to their peers correctly. A second card shows a visual of our three listening reminders “Listening eyes”, “Listening ears”, and “Pretzel legs” that I can use when the students struggle with listening or sitting quietly.  I can use these cards to give nonverbal feedback during our group share time.

Resources: (These should go with the master list of sources)

Cambridge International Education (2020). “Getting started with assessment for learning.” Retrieved from  https://cambridge-community.org.uk/professional-development/gswafl/index.html

Black, P., Harrison, C., Lee ,C., Marshall, B.,& Wiliam, D.(2003).Assessment for learning: Putting it into practice. Buckingham ,UK: Open University Press.

Marzano, R. (2006). Classroom Assessment & Grading That Work. ASCD.

Black, P., & Wiliam, D.  (1998). Inside the Black Box: Raising Standards through Classroom Assessments. London: GL Assessment.