BACKGROUND
Performance-based assessments include projects and other tasks that are summative in nature. In thinking like an assessor, teachers must ask themselves questions in order to articulate outcomes for your students. Some examples of these questions include:
“What assessments/tasks will help me to guide students’ learning–what will I have students do by the end of the unit to prove their understanding? What informal assessments can I use throughout the unit to help me to know if students are understanding?”
The following SMART lesson objectives were set forth during the backwards design mapping process for the following Common Core standard, excerpted from English Language Arts Standards:
Write arguments focused on discipline-specific content (Biology).
ASSESSMENT “AS” LEARNING
Using Formative Assessments to Gauge Understanding
According to an Edutopia article authored by Andrew Miller, he states,
“With all the education action around Standards-Based Instruction, Understanding By Design, Assessment for Learning, Grading for Learning, Project-Based Learning, Competency-Based Instruction and more, we need to have a frank conversation about formative assessment and grading … Formative assessment is practice. It is part of the journey. A grade is supposed to answer the question: “Did the student learn and achieve the learning targets or standards?”
With this idea in mind, a few formative assessments that could determine if learning is taking place include:
- Create a fictitious case study full of “research data” from varying sources. Encourage students to classify these as “credible” or “noncredible”. Share their opinion with a peer learner, then group share in class.
- Students to complete a “3-2-1” exercise where they record 3 things they learned about credible sources, 2 things that surprised them about noncredible sources, and 1 strategy they can employ to determine if a source is credible or noncredible.
- Create a mindmap that organizes criteria for credible and noncredible sources.
ASSESSMENT “OF” LEARNING
Using Project-Based Learning to Demonstrate Mastery
Project-based learning (PBL) is a student-centered pedagogy that promotes educational activities where students can acquire a deeper knowledge through active exploration of real-world challenges and problems. This instructional method continues to gain popularity in K-12 classrooms as it offers in depth authentic summative assessments that clearly demonstrate student mastery of a given standard, and, in turn, edifies teacher’s confidence that the student has learned that target.
An example of how PBL can be used as a summative assessment for identifying reputable research sources is as follows:
- Implement R.A.F.T as the framework for the summative assessment
R = Role as an individual or group. In this example, the student will take on the role of the “judge” of the research criteria.
A = Audience as related to the role. In this example, the audience can be the opposing party, or the ones that firmly believe in noncredible sources.
F = Format to present the findings. In this example, the format can be a two-column poster with source criteria with research classification, or decision tree that leads to the selection of credible sources.
T = Topic for review. In this example, the student evokes learner choice to select the topic of the claims/counterclaims research and filters the relevant sources through the source criteria.
REFERENCES
Common Core. (2017). English Language Arts Standards. Retrieved from http://www.corestandards.org/ELA-Literacy/WHST/9-10/1/
Edutopia. (2011, Dec 15). Courageous Conversation: Formative Assessment and Grading. Retrieved from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/courageous-conversation-andrew-miller
Valerie Scheidt 