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Super Bowl Play of Assessments
Article
Angie Ryg
The Super Bowl Play of Assessments
It is coming up in our school—another “Data Day”—the Super Bowl of Response to Intervention. It is a day where teachers, specialists, interventionists, and administration all will gather to go through the assessment data of students who fall below the 25% threshold with their MAP scores.
As easy as it may seem to just grab a graph and make a call, the “calls” on each child sometimes need a challenge flag to be thrown for a review:
• “This student scored 24%, but it is an outlier score. The rest of their prior assessments were above 40%.” • “Well, this student falls rights at the 25%, but they continue to struggle in class.” • “This student, who scored a 65%, should have scored a 15% - they don’t know their letters at all!”
Statements like these will go back and forth, each teacher wanting to do what is best for students while knowing what might be perfect may not always be feasible. Limited staff, limited resources, and even limited space to take a small group all tie into what is made available for these students who need intervention. As informative as summative assessments can be, teachers have started to adapt assessment processes to get a deeper look at student growth (Zimmerman, 2018).
Formative assessments are becoming the assessment used to track students more consistently, as they provide for more fluid interactions between teachers and students. These short snapshots of individual student performance can allow teachers to adjust their teaching as the student grows. Using the acronym of DAILY, this article describes how daily data can empower more schools to choose formative assessments versus summative assessments in five major ways:
Defined goals are established Using daily formative assessment allows for defined goals for each student, allowing the teacher to know each student, defining and tailoring instruction for each student in a diagnostic-prescriptive fashion. For example, a goal in writing may be as specific as “the student will use correct punctuation in their writing,” or as general as “the student will develop voice in their writing; making your personality come through your words.” Students feel a sense of self-worth and confidence as they progress at their own speed with teacher direction when needed. Furthermore, by limiting attention to a few goals at a time, the student is better able to concentrate goal while the teacher does not have to spend an inordinate amount of time on nonessential evaluating (Beaven, pg. 148). Academic and student rigor are present While summative assessments evaluate a compilation of what a child may have learned, formative goals can strengthen the rigor of the curriculum and allow students to be challenged on a dayto-day basis. How often has someone breezed through a course only to have to cram for the test at the end of it? (Or is that just me?) If students know they are being assessed in their daily work, they begin to hold themselves to a higher standard of learning. A student once asked me if we could meet every day for reader’s conferences because he wanted to see how he was doing on inferencing. That type of insight into a student’s growth cannot come from a single multiple-question test. Innovative learning experiences are
the norm
With formative assessments, there are fewer instances where a teacher will feel he or she is “teaching to the test.” The assessments come directly from the learning experiences. Because of this, there can be more variety in both the way the teacher shares the information as well as how the students go about gathering the information. Using formative assessments, students are more likely to display more problemsolving skills. “The concept development lessons are intended to build an
understanding of concepts and content, while the problem-solving lessons draw out student thinking and require students to apply concepts that they have previously learned.” (Holzer, 2015)
Learning is focused on individuals’
strengths or weaknesses
Formative assessments are just one part of a larger learning initiative known as adaptive learning. Adaptive learning encourages teachers and students to approach education from a flexible perspective, expanding the curriculum based on specific assessments that highlight students’ progress throughout the year (Zimmerman, 2018). Giving students choices in the classroom can “boost their engagement and motivation, allow them to capitalize on their strengths, and enable them to meet their individual learning needs’’ (Parker, 2017). With formative assessments, you can personalize student learning by giving choice, having each learning experience focused on a student’s strengths or weaknesses. Formative assessments can be adapted depending on what the child chooses to explore, yet the standards tested will remain consistent between students. You are actively looking for student
growth
As a teacher looks for growth over perfection, he or she allows the child to see their growth as important. Formative assessments allow the teacher to not just see one letter grade and evaluate a child, but the educator can form educated decisions on the next steps for a student’s educational journey because of the consistent feedback and assessments they have been collecting. Furthermore, the teacher is involved in the whole process of the learning experience rather than an “assign and test” kind of attitude.
In Conclusion, Monitor Student Growth
There are a variety of ways you can implement formative assessments into your DAILY educational plan. Some areas are easy—having the children hold up a “Yes, I understand” card or a “No, I am unclear” in a quick survey check. A teacher can use Google forms for exit tickets to evaluate understanding or they can have the students doodle their answer rather than writing it. Another
idea is to use whiteboards to see what the children have learned without having to answer out loud. Class discussions or one on one conferences are important ways to gather information about the metacognitive process that a student uses while they are learning.
In all these examples, the important aspect is the DAILY use of the assessment. With daily assessment, you can use the data to define goals which allow the teacher to start the whole process over, which is exactly what a teacher needs to do, ensuring the data obtain is relevant and usable for creating a personalized educational plan for each student. Using the DAILY plan is better than any isolated, single Superbowl play for students.
References
Beaven, M. (1977) Evaluation writing:
Describing, measuring, judging. NCTE. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/
ED143020.pdf#page=142
Holzer, T. (2015, February 3) Great
Activities for Formative Assessment and
Problem-Solving in Math.CollectEdNY.
http://www.collectedny. org/2015/02/great-activitiesfor-formative-assessment-andproblem-solving-in-math/
Parker, F., Novak, J, & Bartell, T. (2017).
To engage students, give them meaningful choices in the classroom.
Phi Delta Kappan 99 (2), 37-41.
Zimmerman, E. (2018, October 18). Data
Driven Instruction: How Student Data
Guides Formative Assessments. EdTech.
https://edtechmagazine.com/ k12/article/2018/10/data-driveninstruction-how-student-dataguides-formative-assessmentsperfcon
Angie Ryg is an international speaker who desires to encourage and inspire teachers with the truth that little lives are depending on them. With her master’s degree in curriculum and instruction, she loves to find out how students learn. She is a contributor to several books and best known in the educational world for her timely essay, “I Will Know How to Teach” printed in the Chicago Tribune during the pandemic. When she is not creating, connecting, or being curious (she loves alliteration), Angie can be found hanging out with her husband, four amazing kids, and one sweet Shihpoo named Maddie for movie night. You can connect with Angie on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook.
