KARCHER STAFF BLOG
Karcher 2017-2018 School Calendar
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This week's article...
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Formative Assessment Action Plan
Chapter 1. Creating a Formative Assessment System
"I don't know how you're going to learn this, but it's on the test," said the professor of a graduate class on neuroanatomy that Doug was taking.
The teacher's words clearly articulated one perspective about education: Students should study and learn the content assigned to them. Her statement suggested that the teacher's job is to provide information and the students' job is to learn it, whatever way they can. When his teacher implied that the responsibility for learning rested solely on the students, Doug's confidence plummeted. Having looked at intricate pictures of the human brain, Doug was already questioning how he was going to learn this information. Now his teacher was telling him that she, too, didn't know how he (or any other student in the class) would learn it.
Understand that Doug was highly motivated to learn this content, and understand that his teacher was armed with the latest technology and instructional methods. The teacher was caring and passionate about her subject area, and, further, she had clearly communicated her high expectations at the outset of the course and summarized information weekly. Were these measures enough to ensure that Doug, and the other members of the class, reached high levels of understanding? Simply put, no. Even though high-quality instruction, innovative technology, motivation, high expectations, and passion are important in the teaching and learning process, they are not sufficient to ensure that learning occurs.
What was missing from this scenario—and from the entire class experience— was a formative assessment system. The teacher needed to establish learning goals, check for understanding, provide feedback, and then align future instruction with the students' performance. She needed an instructional framework that allowed her to feed-forward, not just provide feedback.
A Formative Assessment System
Feedback, when used as part of a formative assessment system, is a powerful way to improve student achievement. Feedback by itself, though, is less useful. As John Hattie and Helen Timperley note, "Feedback has no effect in a vacuum; to be powerful in its effect, there must be a learning context to which feedback is addressed" (2007, p. 82).
Hattie and Timperley propose a formative assessment system that has three components: feed-up, feedback, and feed-forward (see Figure 1.1). Feed-up ensures that students understand the purpose of the assignment, task, or lesson, including how they will be assessed. Feedback provides students with information about their successes and needs. Feed-forward guides student learning based on performance data. All three are required if students are to learn at high levels. Each of these three components has a guiding question for teachers and students:
- Where am I going? (feed-up)
- How am I doing? (feedback)
- Where am I going next? (feed-forward)
Imagine Doug's teacher establishing the purpose for one of her classes, perhaps something like this: To use cytoarchitecture to identify locations in the cerebral cortex. She might then check for understanding, maybe through an audience response system, and provide individuals and the class with feedback. For example, she might ask, "Do the various regions of the brain contain the same number of cellular levels?" This dichotomous question has an answer (yes), and students would receive feedback about whether they had answered the question correctly. Based on the number of correct and incorrect responses, the teacher could decide what to feed-forward. The performance data from the class might suggest that the teacher needs to provide additional information and instruction to the whole class. Alternatively, the data might suggest that the teacher needs to ask specific students to elaborate on their answers so that she can determine the source of their misunderstanding. Then again, the data might suggest that the class has a good grasp on this content and is ready to move on.
Figure 1.1. A Formative Assessment System
Source: From Visible learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement (p. 176), by J. Hattie, 2009, New York: Routledge. Copyright 2009 by Routledge. Adapted with permission.
When all three components of a formative assessment system are present, there is a give-and-take between teachers and students that facilitates learning. The absence of any one component places learning at risk. For example, when students do not understand the purpose of a lesson (feed-up), they are unlikely to demonstrate their best effort. Without a clear purpose, students are not motivated and do not see the relevance of the content they're expected to master. When students are not assessed or do not receive assessment results (feedback), they are unsure about their performance and assume that they are doing just fine. They are unlikely to make mid-course corrections in their learning processes and understanding. When teachers fail to plan instruction based on student performance (feed-forward), misconceptions are reinforced, errors go unaddressed, and gaps in knowledge persist. Teachers march through their pacing guides and continue to "teach" while students passively observe. Unfortunately, when this is the case, teachers remain oblivious to the lack of real learning their students are doing.
Feedback Alone Is Not Enough
We have argued that formative assessment is a system with three inter-related components and that no one component alone is sufficient to ensure student learning. We want to take that one step further and focus on the ways in which feedback by itself is problematic. We have already noted that feedback should not be used in a vacuum. In part, this is because feedback is external to the learner; it is "external regulation," meaning that a student is responding because of something happening to him or her from the outside, rather than responding intrinsically or internally (Ryan & Deci, 2000). Although students may occasionally use external feedback in their internal regulations, it takes more than feedback to ensure that internal regulation occurs.
External regulation is not the only reason that isolated feedback is ineffective. Another reason is that it transfers responsibility for further learning and performance improvement back to the learner. Consider the ubiquitous research paper. Students typically work on these projects for an extended length of time, maybe even getting peer editing and feedback. Finally, the due date arrives, and the teacher takes the stack of papers home to grade. Some days later, the papers are returned with feedback. What do students do with this feedback? Anyone who's been in school knows that students either recycle the paper or, if required, make the noted changes and resubmit the paper for another round of review. The teacher has likely spent a great deal of time writing comments, but this time seems wasted when students throw away their work or simply correct the mistakes the teacher identified for them. They haven't really learned from their mistakes.
The problem bears repeating. Feedback reassigns responsibility back to the learner. Think of a recent project on which you have received feedback. After you received the feedback, did you realize that it was, once again, up to you to figure out the next steps? Were you frustrated with this experience? Did you say to yourself, "Now I have to create another one, only to be judged again? Why can't she just tell me what she wants?" If this has happened to you, you've experienced the abrupt shift of responsibility that we're talking about.
This is not to say that we don't want students to assume increasing responsibility; we do. It's just that increasing responsibility should be planned, based on student confidence and competence. We don't want students to suddenly be responsible for the first time when they make mistakes. Rather, a sophisticated formative assessment system built on a solid instructional framework should be in place from the beginning.
This article will continue next week. Please discuss in team time.
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Kudos
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- Kudos to our staff for a great first day of student led conferences! Thank you, Ryan Heft, for covering and taking care of the library in order to free up our staff to be available for individual conferences. Looking forward to another great turn out on Tuesday!
- Kudos to Jon Nelson and the high school wrestling team who competed this past weekend at team state. It was a heart breaking loss to miss finals by one point but what a great season! Kudos to the coaches and student athletes!
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Information/Reminders...
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- Social Studies... it is your week to provide students with a stem in order to email their parents/guardians about what has been taking place in your classes for the past 5 weeks!
- Monday, March 5 - BLT in the conference room from 2:40 - 3:30.
- Monday, March 5 - Band-O-Rama @ 7:00pm in the BHS gym.
- Tuesday, March 6 - Student led conferences from 4:00 - 8:00
- Student Plans/Template
- This LINK is the form for the parents to sign up for conferences.
- Parent/Guardian sign-up responses.
- Tuesday, March 6 - Our admin team will be discussing the March 14 student walkout that is spreading among schools across the nation. We will know more as to how Burlington will be handling this after we meet on Tuesday and will share once we know more.
- The book fair will be open throughout the school day this week Monday - Wednesday in the Lab. It will also be open during conferences on Tuesday night!
- Students can purchase items with cash or check!
- If there are any books of interest to assist with your curriculum and instruction we do have funds available. Please get any book titles and the number of copies you need to Patti Tenhagen ASAP if there is something of interest!
- Wednesday, March 7 - Essential Skills PLC
- Friday, March 9 - Our Academic Bowl students will be competing at Washington-Caldwell. Students will be leaving at 8:00 with a return time of approximately 1:15.
Looking ahead:
- Monday, March 12 - Special education aide meeting from 2:40 - 3:00 in the conference room.
- Monday, March 12 - Secondary Curriculum Committee Meeting from 3:30 - 5:00 in the Karcher library.
- Tuesday, March 13 - Sing-a-bration @ 7:00pm @ BHS gym
Pictures from this past week!
Student led conferences!
Student led conferences!
