Site Created Mid-Trimester Frequent Formative Assessment Options

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1 Escondido Union School District Educational Services At-A-Glance English Language Arts Assessment Menu: Grades 1-5 Skill Area Entry/Diagnosis Formative Progress Monitoring * District Writing Assess (Gr. 1-5) - District Reading Assessments - Jerry Johns - Celebration Press - Rigby Leveled Reading Tests - DIBELS - Houghton Mifflin Emerging Literacy Survey - Site Selected Assessments - Results Reading Assess - AR STAR Reading Comprehension & Word Analysis Writing Conventions, Strategies & Applications -Spelling inventory -High Frequency Words Assess. -NWEA MAP (select schools) - Houghton Mifflin Emerging Literacy Survey - HM Leveled Reading Passages - DIBELS - District Reading Assessments - Jerry Johns - Celebration Press - Rigby Leveled Reading Tests * Avenues Assessments - Site Selected Assessments - Results Reading Assess - AR STAR - HM AR Reader Assess - HM Theme Assessments: (All or sub-test sections) - HM Alternative Assess (all or subtest sections) (Gr.1) - HM Selection Assess (Gr.2-5) - HFW Assessments - HM Theme Assessments -NWEA MAP (select schools) Site Created Mid-Trimester Frequent Formative Assessment Options - On-Demand Writing Prompt - Grade-Level Developed Tests Based on Learning Targets - Quizzes/Tests Created from Edusoft/ OARS/Test Banks - Project/Problem-Based Products, Reports, -Technology Projects e.g. (Video, Pod casts, PowerPoint) - Oral Presentations - Portfolios (using a rubric to assess) - Fluency Assessments e.g. (Leveled Reading Passages, Read Naturally) - Practice Book Activities - Graphic Organizers Summative Benchmark * Houghton Mifflin California Summative Assessment * District Writing Assess (Gr. 1-5) - DIBELS - District Reading Assessments - Jerry Johns - Celebration Press - Rigby Leveled Reading Tests *Avenues Assessments - Site Selected Assessments Results Reading Assess AR STAR - HM AR Reader Assess -NWEA MAP (select schools)

2 Quick Checks for monitoring understanding and informing instruction -Written Response e.g. (Journals/Quick Writes/ Daily Writing/Interactive Writing, dictation) - Entrance Slips - Exit Slips - Observations/Anecdotal Records -Oral language responses e.g. (Think Alouds, Retells, Question/Response, Think Pair Share) -Response indicators, e.g. (White boards, Signal cards, Thumbs up/thumbs down, Fist of Five, Choral Response) -Graphic Organizers e.g. (KWL, Thinking Maps, Story Boards, Foldables, Venn Diagram, Sentence Frames, Close Passages) - Interactive Writing * Bold- Required District Assessments Please note that all grade level teams must identify, administer and analyze the results of the agreed upon common mid-trimester assessments within the formative assessment windows indicated on the pacing guides. The analysis of the assessments will be used by all grade level teachers in order to monitor students progress toward standards-based learning targets and to inform subsequent lesson/unit planning in order to best address the students next steps in learning. See Protocol on the following pages

3 Using Common Assessments To Improve Student Achievement There are many strategies currently in place to improve student achievement and assist in the efforts towards continuous, ongoing, student improvement for ALL. Many of the educational experts that we have studied including, Dufour, Stiggins, Popham, Reeves, Wiggns and McTighe, as well as others, express that there is great value in using common formative assessments as a cornerstone for student improvement. Furthermore, we know that the research done by Black and Wiliam confirms that focused, frequent formative assessment increases achievement for all students but provides the greatest gains for our most struggling students. (1.0 Standard deviations, which equates to and upward movement of one CST level or 100 SAT points). There are a number of steps that we in EUSD have used to strengthen our practices so that student learning becomes the focus of our work. These steps include ongoing professional development in the area of assessment, Professional Learning Communities, analyzing student work and analyzing data as well as the development of Power Standards and Learning Principles. Below you will find a protocol adapted from the work of Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey that addresses aligning curriculum, instruction and assessment so that we can become experts in the use of formative assessments. Step 1: Establish Grade Level Common Pacing Guides- Each grade level team will meet to collectively to decide on the timeline and sequence of content instruction. The district developed pacing guides identify the Power Standards addressed in each Theme/Unit of study and provides a structure for teachers to engage in this work as a professional learning community. The Pacing Guides also provide the district expectations for when benchmark assessments and mid-tri formative assessments should be administered and the results analyzed. The Pacing guides do not address a specific timeline for the teaching of each selection or which particular curricular resources, or instructional strategies will be used and when. We know that students must have access to instruction that is aligned with grade level standards and we have determined through the collective development of the EUSD Power Standards the specific standards that provide students the essential understanding and skills needed to be successful at that grade level. The Power standards

4 help us to focus our efforts so that we can deepen our students understanding and ability to transfer their knowledge across content and for use throughout their lives. It allows teachers to concentrate on Big Ideas, sometimes referred to as essential understandings rather than a laundry list of discrete skills. Each member of the grade level team will need to carefully examine their students current achievement levels in relation to their grade level content standards to determine their common grade level version of the pacing guide. The agreed upon pacing guides ensures that everyone can come together with the purpose of engaging in collective discussion and planning focused on student learning results. Step 2: Instructional Planning including the use of instructional materials- After teachers have established their grade- level-pacing guides the next step is to engage in collaborative lesson planning. Teachers identify the specific learning targets to be addressed and then together the teachers review the core materials along with the supplemental resources available to select instructional strategies that will help the students achieve the pre-identified learning targets. Remember that the goal is to keep the core materials as a centerpiece of the instructional program. The discussion during this phase of the protocol is for teachers to work together to make purposeful decisions about what they will use to teach the knowledge and skills that students must acquire during the particular unit of study. Teachers should also share any instructional approaches that they have found successful. This is a good time to tap into and reflect on strategies learned through the sites book study, professional development trainings, personal experiences and individual team member s areas of expertise. The Learning Principles should also be considered as you plan for instruction. It is important that the team members are able to correctly identify what students know and don t know and their level of achievement before they plan their lessons. As you plan, be sure to remember to keep the Big Four in our minds. What do we want students to learn? How will we know they have learned it? What will we do if they learn? What will we do if they don t? Remember, the instruction provided by the teacher as well as the descriptive feedback provided to the student has an enormous impact on how well a student learns.

5 Step 3: Common Assessments Common assessments provide teachers with the ability to begin with the end in mind (Covey, 2004). It is in this step that the power of the Big Four questions is most evident. As teachers think in this backward design fashion they are able to convey to not only their grade level teammates but more importantly to their students the exact expectations for What it is they want them to know and be able to do? What specific learning target(s), what specific Power Standard are we focusing our efforts? Planning with the end in mind, teachers will collectively decide on an assessment that will best enable them to answer the question: How will we know that they have learned it? As you begin to engage in this type of work, grade level groups may feel most comfortable choosing a pre-existing assessment (See At A glance Assessment Guides found on the Ed Services Wiki page). It is important that the assessment you choose matches the intended learning target(s). Is the target asking for the mastery of knowledge, or are we asking students to reason, is it a matter of mastering a specific skill or are we asking them to create a product? (Stiggins 2005) What type of assessment is going to give us the best information, most accurate assessment of what you taught and what your students were expected to learn? It is important that the group agrees on how and when the assessment will be administered as the expectation is that everyone will come together following the administration of the assessment to analyze the student work. Some groups may feel comfortable creating their own formative assessments. We have provided some ideas for that as well (see the above Site Created Mid-Trimester Frequent Formative Assessment Options). Remember that all grade level teams must identify, administer and analyze the results of the agreed upon common midtrimester assessments within the formative assessment windows indicated on the pacing guides. The analysis of the assessments will be used by all grade level teachers, students, and administrators to monitor students progress toward standards-based learning targets and to inform subsequent lesson/unit planning in order to best address the students next steps in learning. It is important to note that none of this information be kept secret from the students. The students should know exactly what to expect prior to the administration of that assessment. They should be afforded plenty of penalty free practice and have been provided extra support when needed. This is accomplished when teachers embed assessments into their regular instruction; provide not only clear up front explanations of each lessons objective but also provide systematic and frequent checking for understanding. (See Quick checks for monitoring understanding and informing instruction).

6 Step 4: Consensus Scoring and analysis The common assessment chosen must allow for the results to be disaggregated revealing areas of growth and areas of weakness. After the assessment has been administered the team will need to come together to analyze the results. Teacher teams need to use the information gained from the formative assessment experience to celebrate successes, communicate learning goals to their students, inform their own instructional practices, identify and discuss achievement gaps and plan for intervention. In order to do this effectively it may be necessary to utilize specific protocols in order to look at the work results efficiently (e.g. EUSD Looking at Student Work protocol). It may be necessary to develop a rubric or checklist. Teachers may need to determine percentages that determine that the student has demonstrated proficiency. The power of this step in the process is once again in the collective discussions that occur as a result of looking at the student work and the follow-up discussions about the impact of the results and how it will effect our future instruction. Step 5. Revising Pacing Guides, Reviewing Assessments, Re-teaching and Interventions This step provides the opportunity for the team to create a cycle for continuous improvement. As a result of the common formative assessment data, along with summative data, and daily checking for understanding; teachers respond by revising pacing guides when necessary, re-teach when necessary, form flexible groupings, plan for interventions, refine their instructional practices, and make better use of their instructional time, materials, and human and fiscal resources to ensure that all of our students are afforded powerful instructional practices.