Skip to main content

Rick Wormeli: Formative Assessment and Feedback Part 2

In the second half of Wormeli's talk, we began looking at a definition of mastery. He argued that mastery requires nuance, and that their are multiple levels (Introductory and Sophisticated)
"Anyone can repeat information, it's the masterful student who can
break content into it's component pieces, explain it, and alternative
perspectives regarding it cogently to others, and use it purposefully in new situations."

He suggests that defining mastery would be a very productive team/department meeting. You must be able to define these before developing assessments.
Wormeli, who works with college professors on assessment, used examples from "Teaching the Large College Class", by Heppner to demonstrate "What we are really trying to assess?" At the post secondary level, assessments are being created and graded not by the professors, but of others, to filter out subjectivity. This will be moving to K-12.
We then moved into discussion of Differentiated Lesson Planning with steps to take:

Prior to designing the learning experience:
  1. Identify essential learnings (This may take weeks.)
  2. Identify your students with unique needs
  3. Design formative and summative assessments
  4. Design and deliver your pre-assessments based on summative assessments and objectives
  5. Adjust assessments and objectives based on further thinking.

While designing learning experiences:

  1. Design the learning experiences with all of your expertise as an educator brought to bear.
  2. Mentally run through the lesson sequence with the diverse students in your class in mind.
  3. Review your plans with a colleague.
  4. Obtain the materials needed for the lesson.
  5. Conduct the lesson.
  6. Adjust formative and summative assessments based on your experience teaching the lesson.

Steps to take after providing the learning experiences:

  1. Evaluate the lesson's success with students.
  2. Record advice on lesson changes for use in future years.

Colleges are screaming at K-12 because over a third of kids are retaking classes over due to lack of understanding.

Many of his ideas align very will with Understanding by Design.

Final Thoughts:

  • Don't take time to assess unless you will take action on what you discover.
  • Is homework formative or summative in nature? Wormeli thinks it should be worth 0.
  • If a student does no homework, but aces every summative assessment, should they get an A?
  • If a student does all the homework, but doesn't do well on all summative assessment, isn't that a red flag as well?
  • Grades should be against standards not the route students or teachers take to get there.
  • Assessment OF Learning-Not a lot of feedback
  • Assessment AS/FOR Learning (Manitoba is using this.) Tons of feedback, lots of opportunities for student reflection.
  • Manitoba's Communicating Student Learning-Includes bennefits of student self-assessment.
  • Look for gradebooks that graphically represent student learning
  • Stop editing student work, put a code that represents it needs attention.
  • Write your objectives at the top of assessments with the assessment of each of those objectives.
  • He then shared several methods of formative assessment. This site has many he mentioned.
  • Great differentiated instruction is NEVER kept in the dark.
  • Successful assessment is authentic in 2 ways: Authentic to the real-world and Authentic to how the students are Learning (This is Mandatory).
  • Giving students the test ahead of time (At the beginning)
  • Portfolios with reflection are the most accurate pieces of assessment in the world.
  • There is no such thing as a perfect rubric.
  • Only give the fully written description for the standard of excellence (5.0).
  • 4.0 rubrics carry too much emotional baggage to be worth using.
  • Students will rally around the excellence.
  • Designing test questions: long on left, short on right.

Wormeli closed with a "Steve Martin" type explanation of video from "The Sound of Music" to demonstrate the goal, pre-assessment, ownership, "say-do", big picture, connected to personal lives, visual imagery, modalities and formative assessment, kinesthetics, natural learning environment, passion, contextural, complexity, tiering, meaning, engagement, and interdisciplinary teaching.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Nos Chemins vers la paix: Award Winning Video!

Valley View Middle School French Imersion teacher, Heather Palmer created this award winning video, Nos Chemins vers la paix , for the Tel.A.Vision " Vision For America " Contest. Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com Powered by One True Media , Tel.A.Vision.tv allows students to create videos that share their vision for the future. Heather wanted to use this video to promote the Wiki she and her students created for "6 Billion Paths to Peace." On the wiki, Palmer states: Our project was inspired by the program " Six Billion Paths to Peace ", an initiative of the Shinnyo-en foundation. We like the challenge the program offers us: commit to making a difference in this moment, in this day, in this lifetime! Palmer received her award last week at the National Service Learning Conference, in Nashville, TN. Way to go, Heather! NOTE: A few weeks ago while looking at the copyright free music available on the site, I notice a cover of the "Spinal

TIES 2012: Kathryn Smith: Innovative Spaces Support 21st Century Learning

Kathryn Smith , former Bemidji State professor, presented on Innovative Spaces Support 21st Century Learning. Her presentation slides can be found here . Today, learning can happen anywhere, anytime, and on any device.  She started by using PollEverywhere to ask about the status of mobile technologies and school learning environments. She thinks that the TPACK model is a good one to use when implementing professional development around 21st Century learning. We are using this model in our BYOD professional development. Smith notes that the National Educational Technology Plan , is a great road map for change. Research has shown that the appropriate use of technology and the appropriate design of learning spaces is having a significant positive impact on learning. The learning spaces today are not that far removed from 19th Century classrooms. She showed this video from the University of Michigan on research on design of learning environment. Here are more videos fro