40 Alternative Assessments for Learning When people think of assessment, pencils and bubble sheets may be the first things that come to mind. Assessment does not always have to involve paper and pencil, but can instead be a project, an observation, or a task that shows a student has learned the material. In the end, all we really want to know is that the skill was mastered, right? Why not make it fun and engaging for students as well? Many teachers shy away from alternative assessments because they take extra time and effort to create and to grade. On the other hand, once the assessment guidelines and grading rubric are created, it can be filed away and used year after year. The project card and rubric can be run on card stock (one on each side of the page), laminated, and hole punched with other alternative assessment ideas. Here are 40 alternative assessment ideas to get you started! Alternative Reading Assessments 1. Create a bookmark to match the theme of the last book read. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. Alternative Writing Assessments
DERN Personalised learning, reflection, collaboration and .critical thinking are highly valued in education, and classroom practices are changing towards learning as a collaborative activity. Exploration is encouraged and fostered; however, assessment is still following a traditional path – heavily dependent on summative assessment. A short paper, by Phillipa Whiteford, titled The times are a-changing: A New Model for Senior Secondary Assessment explores how a more ‘future-focused’ application of an ePortfolio can provide an innovative solution to the challenges facing current assessment practice in senior secondary education. The author builds a strong argument for the need to align assessment to teaching practices, referencing research on new teaching practices and assessment, and pointing out a need for integrative assessment which combines both assessment for and of learning based on continuous feedback, guidance and reflection (p.66). [1] Fullan, M. & Miles, M. (1992). Research Report:
Final Exams…a Tradition Worth Exploring I have been having many conversations this year with teachers about our practice of administering final exams for students. Although I cannot confirm with certainty, I recently read that the final exam process has been happening since the 1830s. With all the current research on effective assessment, how students learn and knowing that we are required to make decisions that have a student’s best interest as the primary consideration, I have to question why we are still doing this, this way. I watched a teacher work with a student the other day. At random I chose two well known universities, Harvard and Berkley, and googled their final exam procedures. As for real world application, other than school and my driver license I can’t remember writing a high stakes exam to demonstrate what I know.
Life After Levels – An Assessment Revolution? Over recent months I’ve been involved in interviews for a number of posts across the Multi Academy Trust. One of our favourite questions has been, “What will assessment look like once levels are dead?” The answers have on the whole been a bit confused. This post is based on a webinar I delivered for Optimus Education in March 2015. A Necessary Confusion Teachers and potential leaders are struggling to imagine life after levels, proposing that we keep with levels or that we produce our own levelling systems for Key Stage 2 or 3. Levels were removed in September 2014, with the introduction of the new National Curriculum, and will be reported for the final time in Summer 2015 for Years 2 & 6. New Horizons As the sun sets on the World of Levels, we need to lift our eyes to the horizon and make sure decisions about our new assessment systems are taking us in the right direction. Principle 1 – Assessment Must Support Learning Summative Assessment: Of Learning or For Grading? References Like this:
Free Resources and Tools for "Authentic" Assessment The key to innovations in assessment and curriculum planning are trust, transparency, and collaboration -- and providing the professional development and training teachers need to succeed. Credit: Tom LeGoff Note: The School of the Future is part of a network of New York schools that develops and uses its own assessment techniques, referred to as DYOs. The school also uses Tasks on Demand, or unannounced assessments that do not provide supports for the students, in order to measure their learning at regular intervals. Resources On This Page: Do Your Own (DYO) Assessment Examples, Rubrics, Data, and Data Analysis Examples of criteria used in authentic assessment Back to Top Skills Spirals and Tracking Sheets Ideas for moving curriculum into a circular pattern and tracking performance to expose students to a wide variety of topics over and over again as the material gets more challenging SOF's Instuctional Tools for Teachers Tools for Developing a High School Humanities Project -- Persepolis
10 Assessments You Can Perform In 90 Seconds 10 Assessments You Can Perform In 90 Seconds by TeachThought Staff Good assessment is frequent assessment. Any assessment is designed to provide a snapshot of student understand—the more snapshots, the more complete the full picture of knowledge. On its best day, an assessment will be 100% effective, telling you exactly what a student understands. This makes a strong argument for frequent assessment, as it can be too easy to over-react and “remediate” students who may be banging against the limits of the assessment’s design rather than their own understanding. It is a huge burden (for both teachers and students) to design, write, complete, grade, and absorb the data into an instructional design sequence on a consistent basis. Simple Assessments The word “simple” here is misleading. Then, due to their brevity, they’re simple to grade–in fact, you can grade them as exit slips–which makes taking the data and informing instruction (the whole point of assessment) a much simpler process as well.
3 Classroom Tools to Measure Student Learning Formative assessment is vital to teachers in any classroom environment. Teachers have been formatively assessing students for years, because we must know what our students know in order to help them understand what they do not know. Do you know what I mean?! Fortunately, many classrooms are charging into the 21st century with technology initiatives. Whether your technology program has created a 1:1 environment, a BYOD system, or you have access to only a few devices in your classroom, these three tech tools will help you engage your students while simultaneously gauging their understanding of concepts. Kahoot! Kahoot! When ready to begin the game, the teacher simply posts the game pin on the whiteboard. We've used Kahoot! Formative As its name implies, Formative, is another wonderful formative assessment tool. Teachers can assign these assessments by sending students a link or creating classrooms through a process nearly identical to that of a learning management system. Padlet
Refocusing assessment on teaching and learning This post is sponsored by Curriculum Associates. Assessment. It could almost be considered a “bad word” in the education world. With varying opinions, bringing up the Common Core State Standards or discussing state tests can sometimes feel like opening the ultimate can of worms. But all of that aside, I think we can agree that measuring student growth and giving school leaders and teachers the insight they need to improve instruction and guide resource decisions is vitally important. Can we achieve these goals by using assessments in smarter ways? I recently had a chance to sit down with Ken Tam, executive director of personalized learning at Curriculum Associates to get his thoughts on assessment and where it is headed in the future. Why has assessment become a “bad word” in some circles? There has been too much focus on high stakes assessment for purposes like accountability. What is the purpose of assessments? I think this is a false choice. Yes, I think so. So What’s Next?
6 Types Of Assessment Of Learning 6 Types Of Assessment Of Learning by TeachThought Staff If curriculum is the what of teaching, and learning models are the how, assessment is the puzzled “Hmmmm”–as in, I assumed this and this about student learning, but after giving this assessment, well….”Hmmmmm.” So what are the different types of assessment of learning? 1. One way to think about it: Assesses a student’s strengths, weaknesses, knowledge, and skills prior to instruction. Another way to think about it: A baseline to work from 2. One way to think about it: Assesses a student’s performance during instruction, and usually occurs regularly throughout the instruction process. Another way to think about it: Like a doctor’s “check-up” to provide data to revise instruction 3. One way to think about it: Measures a student’s achievement at the end of instruction. Another way to think about it: It’s macabre, but if formative assessment is the check-up, you might think of summative assessment as the autopsy. 4. 5. 6.
Going Gradeless: Student Self-Assessment in PBL I like reading professional material. I would posit that most teachers do. Professional reading (OK, all reading, really) allows our thoughts to constantly shift, transform, and travel to currently uncharted mental territory. I was provided such a moment when I read Mark Barnes’ Role Reversal: Achieving Uncommonly Excellent Results in a Student-Centered Classroom in the spring of 2015. My Goal It was my intention to simultaneously promote mastery learning as well as increase students' ability to metacognitively assess their work against a given set of standards. Remove grades from the daily equation.Have students reach learning mastery using narrative feedback loops (Mark Barnes’ SE2R model).Students would self-assess their work in a 1:1 conference with the teacher at the end of the quarter, at which time student and teacher would agree upon a final grade. My Plan Use the SE2R model to provide feedback on our two PBL projects per quarter via documents created on Google Classroom.