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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Bildung
- Sprache: Englisch
From EL Education comes a proven approach to student assessment Leaders of Their Own Learning offers a new way of thinking about assessment based on the celebrated work of EL Education schools across the country. Student-Engaged Assessment is not a single practice but an approach to teaching and learning that equips and compels students to understand goals for their learning and growth, track their progress toward those goals, and take responsibility for reaching them. This requires a set of interrelated strategies and structures and a whole-school culture in which students are given the respect and responsibility to be meaningfully engaged in their own learning. * Includes everything teachers and school leaders need to implement a successful Student-Engaged Assessment system in their schools * Outlines the practices that will engage students in making academic progress, improve achievement, and involve families and communities in the life of the school * Describes each of the book's eight key practices, gives advice on how to begin, and explains what teachers and school leaders need to put into practice in their own classrooms * Ron Berger is Chief Program Officer for EL Education and a former public school teacher Leaders of Their Own Learning shows educators how to ignite the capacity of students to take responsibility for their own learning, meet Common Core and state standards, and reach higher levels of achievement. Video and other supplementary materials are not included as part of the e-book file, but are available for download after purchase.
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Seitenzahl: 516
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013
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Contents
Cover
Praise
Title Page
Copyright Page
DVD Contents
Dedication
Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgments
About the Author
About EL Education
Introduction
Chapter 1: Learning Targets
GETTING STARTED
IN PRACTICE
SCHOOLWIDE IMPLEMENTATION
WHAT TO EXPECT
COMMON CHALLENGES
Chapter 2: Checking for Understanding during Daily Lessons
GETTING STARTED
IN PRACTICE
SCHOOLWIDE IMPLEMENTATION
WHAT TO EXPECT
COMMON CHALLENGES
Chapter 3: Using Data with Students
GETTING STARTED
IN PRACTICE
SCHOOLWIDE IMPLEMENTATION
WHAT TO EXPECT
COMMON CHALLENGES
Chapter 4: Models, Critique, and Descriptive Feedback
GETTING STARTED
IN PRACTICE
SCHOOLWIDE IMPLEMENTATION
WHAT TO EXPECT
COMMON CHALLENGES
Chapter 5: Student-Led Conferences
GETTING STARTED
IN PRACTICE
SCHOOLWIDE IMPLEMENTATION
WHAT TO EXPECT
COMMON CHALLENGES
Chapter 6: Celebrations of Learning
GETTING STARTED
IN PRACTICE
SCHOOLWIDE IMPLEMENTATION
WHAT TO EXPECT
COMMON CHALLENGES
Chapter 7: Passage Presentations with Portfolios
GETTING STARTED
IN PRACTICE
SCHOOLWIDE IMPLEMENTATION
WHAT TO EXPECT
COMMON CHALLENGES
Chapter 8: Standards-Based Grading
GETTING STARTED
IN PRACTICE
SCHOOLWIDE IMPLEMENTATION
WHAT TO EXPECT
COMMON CHALLENGES
Conclusion: Transforming Schools
Appendix: Accessing the Bonus Web Materials
References
How to Use the DVD
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
USING THE DVD WITH WINDOWS
IN CASE OF TROUBLE
Index
More praise for Leaders of Their Own Learning
“Leaders of Their Own Learning points the way toward a dramatically better system for assessing the skills that matter most and motivating our students to achieve mastery. This important book should be read by every parent, educator, and policy maker.”
—Tony Wagner, Harvard University; author, The Global Achievement Gap and Creating Innovators
“Leaders of Their Own Learning represents nothing less than a sea change in how to think about the assessment process. Assessment is frequently seen as something done to teachers and students; this book puts the powerful tools of measuring progress back in the hands of the learners themselves. Chock-full of examples, tips, and video illustrations, this masterful book achieves the remarkable feat of being both a practical how-to guide for how students, teachers, and school leaders can use student-engaged assessment, and a visionary argument for how we can invert the school reform pyramid and put students in charge of their own learning.”
—Jal Mehta, associate professor, Harvard Graduate School of Education; author, The Allure of Order: High Hopes, Dashed Expectations, and the Troubled Quest to Remake American Schooling
“Student-engaged assessment practices are at the core of our school's success. Our graduates—100 percent of whom are accepted to college every year—are better prepared for college and life with the skills and attitudes they developed because of the strategies described in Leaders of Their Own Learning. Any teacher or school leader committed to every student being successful should read this book.”
—Stephen R. Mahoney, principal, Springfield Renaissance School, Springfield, MA
“With increasing emphasis on students leading their learning, EL Education has been consistently turning this lofty aspiration into proven classroom practice. Leaders of Their Own Learning is an essential guide for practitioners about how meaningful assessment processes truly are a valuable learning tool. This book uses experience and data to show how reaching college- and career-ready goals is accomplished by comparing individual performance to standards, not by comparing students to each other. While written for teachers and school leaders, this book will also be invaluable to policy makers seeking to implement the intentions of college- and career-ready standards.”
—Bob Wise, president, Alliance for Excellent Education; governor of West Virginia, 2001–2005
“Leaders of Their Own Learning stretches our educational thinking to tackle the most important issue for schools today: creating an assessment system that engages students in understanding and improving their learning. If we know we've been doing the wrong kind of teaching to the wrong kinds of tests, this book sets us on the right path to the right kinds of teaching and learning.”
—Milton Chen, chairman, Panasonic Foundation; senior fellow, The George Lucas Educational Foundation; author, Education Nation: Six Leading Edges of Innovation in Our Schools
“What if testing were not something done to our students but for and with them? What if student reflection, revision, and improvement were what teachers and school leaders were held accountable for? If more meaningful assessment is your aspiration, this is the book for you.”
—Barbara Chow, education program director, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
“In this remarkable ‘user's manual’ for student-engaged assessment, students and educators have given us the keys to the ample store of EL Education. What a gift!”
—Roland S. Barth, author, former school educator, faculty member, and director of the Harvard University Principals' Center
“Anyone interested in how to engage students more authentically and effectively in the assessment of their own learning will love this book. It is full of practical and respectful ways of increasing rigor and improving results by enhancing student agency. Thanks to Ron Berger and his colleagues at EL Education for leading us forward on this essential issue.”
—Nicholas C. Donohue, president and CEO, Nellie Mae Education Foundation
Copyright © 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Cover design by Jeff Puda Cover art supplied by Ron Berger Published by Jossey-Bass A Wiley Imprint
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.
ISBN: 978-1-118-65544-3 (paper); 978-1-118-65577-1(ebk.); 978-1-118-65581-8 (ebk.)
DVD Contents
On the DVD in the back of this book you'll find our Core Practices in Action video series. These videos—which we will direct you to at various points throughout the book—show key practices in action with students and teachers in schools throughout the United States.
To the students and staff in EL Education schools—past and present
Foreword
For too long the national education debate has been stuck in a series of perceived paradoxes: do we need more testing or no testing at all? Is the key to school change a culture set by principals or the engagement of the students? To get dramatically different results do we need teachers to change their practices or do we need districts to change their practices? Whose fault is it and what does it take for us to get better?
Positioned at the center of this debate are a series of school models posed as opposites—more structured direct instructional models in which students are sitting in rows and mastering facts, or school as we too often see it now where students are assigned low level tasks without knowing what they are doing, why they are doing it, or what they will know when it is over.
The problem is that too much of the national debate focuses on a series of false dichotomies: that we must either choose rigor or child centered instruction, but not both; that we must either focus on curriculum design or focus on results, but not both; that we must build systems that authentically engage students or systems that deliver authentic student results, but not both.
Enter EL Education, the refreshing antidote to that debate and an organization with a long track record of building and sustaining success with students of every age and background in schools across the country. From King Middle School in Portland, Maine to the Odyssey School in Denver, EL Education has succeeded by inspiring students, supporting teachers, and engaging parents.
Rather than more or less testing, the EL Education model insists on making testing useful, focusing on weekly and even daily assessment data that help teachers understand what students know and how to design instruction to best fill the gaps that remain.
As you'll see in the following pages, EL Education leaders have done all this by being deeply committed to gathering data on student performance and using it to guide instruction and accountability. Data is used to measure student progress and alter teaching techniques to enhance the learning experience on an individual level. That's matched with regular, descriptive feedback so students know exactly where they are succeeding and where they need to focus their attention.
Long before the nation began discussing Common Core standards, EL Education was working with thousands of educators to design learning targets that expressed clear, shared understanding for what students should know and be able to do. Long before the country was talking about building a curriculum with fewer, clearer and higher standards, EL Education was building expeditions that prioritized depth over breadth, and analysis over memorization. Long before the country began a debate about how grit, work ethic, and school culture drove individual and collective success, EL Education was committed to building school cultures that intentionally developed character traits, and in pioneering ways to evaluate and develop those characteristics in every child.
When students leave a school like Denver's Odyssey School, they are prepared to enter the most rigorous traditional high school programs available. They have not only learned, they have learned how to learn.
In the past, the schools that were more student-centered were not results-focused. That helped perpetuate a national debate that we could either have schools with rigor and structure or with freedom and mediocrity. EL Education has defied this by building school environments with real accountability linked to cultures intentionally built around student engagement.
One of the best examples of this is the passage presentation, a high-stakes assessment that requires students to do far more than successfully pass a standardized test; it requires that they reflect on what they learned and why they learned it, apply that knowledge to other content, and answer real time questions from adult professionals about their learning process and product. A process not unlike what most students experience before a doctoral dissertation defense, this process is in place for EL Education students from the elementary level to the high school level and has helped build a culture of intense intellectual discourse, high-stakes accountability, and student-centered instruction all in the same space.
Using data, requiring accountability, giving feedback, creating daily assessments, letting students guide themselves as appropriate, celebrating learning and turning education into a journey—it all seems so simple, yet the concepts have eluded so many.
From an early belief that students should learn by doing, EL Education developed in-depth explorations of specific content that would help students focus on how to apply learning rather than how to recite it. In the years that have followed, EL Education has grown into a comprehensive model—that engages students in learning through connecting their own passion to new content, that provides explicit focus on character and culture, that sets high expectations and high levels of support for both students and teachers—and has shown the country that there is a way out of these educational paradoxes; it just requires that we look longer and deeper in the right places.
Let what follows serve as your guide to EL Education, a concept so successful but so simple that you will wonder aloud why it isn't universally available for those kids who would benefit from it most. Hopefully these pages inspire you to take some small steps to make sure that it is.
Mike Johnston Colorado State Senator
Denver, Colorado
September 2013
Preface
Leaders of Their Own Learning is a practical, practitioner-created book. The stories, resources, strategies, and techniques described here come from the classrooms of EL Education schools across the United States. These classrooms are animated by the belief that when students and teachers are engaged in work that is challenging, adventurous, and meaningful, learning and achievement will flourish. For twenty years we have worked side by side with teachers and school leaders to create classrooms where teachers can fulfill their highest aspirations, and where students can achieve more than they think possible.
Two years ago, we made a commitment to making our approach more accessible and widely available to teachers beyond our immediate network. We saw the adoption of the Common Core State Standards and the growing national call for higher student achievement as an opportunity to reenvision teaching, learning, and assessment around a new definition of student achievement: one that marries mastery of rigorous academic content to equally important outcomes such as critical thinking, effective communication, collaboration, and the ability to reflect on one's learning, agency, and character.
We chose student-engaged assessment as the focus of our first book because these practices are the foundation for building a culture of engagement and achievement in any school. Student-engaged assessment develops student ownership of learning, which makes learning in any subject area, at any grade level, and in any kind of school richer, deeper, and more fulfilling. One young student, a sixth-grader, at Grass Valley Charter School in California, summed up the power of student-engaged assessment when she responded to a question about the usefulness of rubrics with this: “If I didn't get one, I'd create a rubric in my head, so I could set my goal and try to achieve it.” When students take responsibility for their learning, they see themselves as the key actors in their own success.
We believe that teachers are innovators and creators. In that spirit, this book provides strong models of teacher and student work that can be used to develop student-engaged assessment practices and provoke conversations about what good teaching looks like. We present concrete tools—case studies, protocols, and videos—to help teachers implement these proven practices in their classrooms.
Teachers and school leaders in all kinds of schools—urban, rural, and suburban; district and charter; and at all grade levels—will be able to see themselves and their students in these pages and the accompanying videos. There are entry points to student-engaged assessment for every teacher, in every setting. With growing demand for new levels of rigor and engagement in our nation's classrooms, we have an opportunity to reimagine our profession and reconnect with the reasons we became teachers in the first place.
Scott Hartl President and CEO, EL Education
New York, NY
September 2013
Acknowledgments
If you've ever tried to write a book in collaboration with twenty-five other people, you'll know that it's no easy task. The only thing that can make it easier is when those twenty-five people are some of the smartest and most dedicated you can find. We lucked out in that department—we found the very best. We owe a debt of gratitude to the following EL Education staff and teachers who gathered the stories from the schools that fill this book, and countless others who contributed in small but important ways. They all helped document the practices that make student-engaged assessment so transformational for students and their families:
Stephanie AbergerTony AltucherMary Pat AmentDale BergerhoferMarcia DeJesús-RueffChris DolgosLiza EatonCyndi GueswelSymon HayesLucia KaempffeCaitlin LeClairSteven LevyDirk MatthiasJill MirmanLily NewmanSharon NewmanDeborah PintoSuzanne Nathan PlautCindy RiceMeg RiordanSheri ScarboroughCorey ScholesKippy SmithColleen StanevichSpecial thanks to our videographer, David Grant, whose value to this project is indescribable. His technical video skills, combined with his sixteen years as an EL Education educator, bring student-engaged assessment practices to life in a way that no one but David could achieve.
Our heartfelt thanks and admiration goes to all of the EL Education teachers and school leaders whose work has helped us codify these student-engaged assessment practices, particularly those who welcomed us into their classrooms to learn from them and their students. Finally, thank you to the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation for their financial support and visionary leadership for the Deeper Learning outcomes that can transform our schools and ensure that our students develop the skills, knowledge, and competencies they will need to succeed in college, in their careers, and as global citizens.
About the Author
Ron Berger is chief academic officer for EL Education, overseeing resources and professional learning for schools nationally. Berger works closely with the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where he did his graduate work, and currently teaches a course that uses exemplary student work to illuminate Common Core State Standards. Prior to his work with EL Education and Harvard, Berger was a public school teacher and master carpenter in rural Massachusetts for more than twenty-five years.
Berger is an Annenberg Foundation Teacher Scholar and received the Autodesk Foundation National Teacher of the Year award. His previous books include An Ethic of Excellence and A Culture of Quality. Berger's writing and speaking center on inspiring quality and character in students, specifically through project-based learning, original scientific and historical research, service learning, and the infusion of arts. He works with the national character education movement to embed character values into the core of academic work.
Leah Rugen has worked as an educator and writer for more than twenty years. Beginning her career as a high school English teacher, she went on to be part of the founding staff at EL Education. Rugen previously worked at the Center for Collaborative Education for twelve years as writer and editor, school coach, and program director of the national Turning Points network. She is the author of several books including Understanding Learning: Assessment in the Turning Points School and Creating Small Schools: A Handbook for Raising Equity and Achievement.
Libby Woodfin is the director of publications for EL Education. Woodfin started her career as a fifth- and sixth-grade teacher, and went on to become a counselor at a large comprehensive high school before arriving at EL Education in 2008. Throughout her career Woodfin has written articles, chapters, and books about important issues in education. Her first book was Familiar Ground: Traditions That Build School Community.
About EL Education
EL Education is one of the nation's leading K–12 education organizations committed to creating classrooms where teachers can fulfill their highest aspirations and where students can achieve more than they think possible. For more than twenty years, EL Education has helped new and veteran teachers—in all types of school settings—strive for a vision of student success that joins academic achievement, character, and high-quality work. Our approach is grounded in respect for teachers and school leaders as creative agents in their classrooms. We build their capacity to ignite each student's motivation, persistence, and compassion so that they become active contributors to building a better world and succeed in school, college, career, and life.
The EL Education model is characterized by the following:
Active instructional and student-engaged assessment practices that build academic skills and students' ownership of their learningRigorous academic projects connected to real-world issues that meet state and Common Core standardsA culture of learning that builds persistence, collaboration, critical thinking, problem solving, communication, and independence in every studentEL Education offers a comprehensive suite of professional development, coaching, Common Core curriculum, publications, and online tools to support schools to be engaging environments where kids love to learn and teachers love to teach. For more information, visit www.elschools.org.
Matthew, a shy sixth-grade student, approached my desk on a June morning looking very nervous. “I don’t think I’m ready,” he said. In a few hours he would be presenting his portfolio of work to a panel that included the superintendent, school board members, community members, and visiting educators. He would have a presentation partner—a friend—supporting him, but it was really up to him. He had to present and reflect on evidence of his learning in order to graduate. This was Matthew’s first year in the school and he had come with some significant weaknesses in academic skills. He knew he had to address this honestly. We had done a great deal of preparation and rehearsal, but he was still terribly nervous.
All of my students had been nervous since the first day of school in September when they learned about the presentations. I worked with them to turn their apprehension into anticipation. I knew that if students felt nervous, it meant that they cared about the outcome. This kind of energy, harnessed and focused, drove them through their sixth-grade year. Knowing these presentations were coming, students worked hard all year, with high standards for the work they produced. They would have an audience for their work—was it good enough? They would be questioned by a panel—did they understand their disciplinary concepts well enough to explain them? They had strengths and challenges as learners—could they describe them well? They were on a yearlong mission to prove that they were ready and that they had work that was worthy.
Over the course of two days, every sixth-grader presented portfolios of work in academics, arts, fitness, and character. They shared final drafts and early drafts, rubrics and charts, quantitative and qualitative assessment data, writing and math samples, journals and reflections. Some of them gave live performances of readings, drama, music, or dance. They shared their achievements, challenges, and goals and gave evidence of why they were ready for promotion.
Some of the students were natural presenters. Others overcame shyness, language challenges, physical and cognitive challenges. They all succeeded. One student with cerebral palsy had a particular challenge in presenting, and needed her presentation partner to voice her reflections about her work for her and to carry documents to the panel. Though her speech was difficult to understand, the words her partner spoke for her were hers, the work was hers, and the success was hers.
I did not get to watch Matthew’s presentation that morning. I was back in the classroom teaching and helping students prepare. That evening I watched his presentation on video and I couldn’t have been more proud. He opened with these words: “The first thing I would like to share with you is that this was my first year at this school. . . . It’s been a challenge for me fitting in and making friends. But, I did. I came to this school with some strengths, but also some weaknesses. Some of my weaknesses were that I wasn’t that strong in writing, and in math I was about two years behind grade level. But, in the first few months of school I worked really hard and I caught up to grade level. And by now I have actually passed it. As you can see here in my math work . . .”
Matthew went on to describe his work and growth with candor, insight, and pride. My wife was sitting next to me on the couch and turned to me, amazed. She asked, “Could you have done that in sixth grade?” I thought, no way. I didn’t understand myself as a learner; I didn’t own my learning.
—Ron Berger
Students as Leaders of Their Own Learning
The presentations mentioned in the chapter-opening vignette are just one part of a larger assessment system. This system has unique power—it puts students at the center and students in the lead. It is more than a framework for evaluation. It is a framework for motivation and a framework for achievement. When students succeed in school and life one doesn’t usually assume that their success is fueled by smart assessment. But it can be. This book describes a system of assessment—student-engaged assessment—that does just that.
Student-engaged assessment involves students in underst anding and in vesting in their own growth. It changes the primary role of assessment from evaluating and ranking students to motivating them to learn. It empowers students with the understanding of where they need to go as learners and how to get there. It builds the independence, critical thinking skills, perseverance, and self-reflective understanding students need for college and careers and that is required by the Common Core State Standards. And, because student-engaged assess ment practices demand reflection, collaboration, and responsibility, they shepherd students toward becoming positive citizens and human beings.
Student-engaged assessment encompasses a wide array of practices that bring students into the process of assessing their growth and learning. They gain a deeper sense of their progress and ultimately become more independent learners. Through student-engaged assessment, students learn the language of standards and metacognition, set academic goals and monitor progress, identify patterns of strengths and weaknesses, become self-advocates, and assess their own work with a striking degree of honesty and accuracy.
This is assessment at its best—when students know what is expected of them and when teachers are precisely attuned to support them to meet academic standards. Yet, assessment can be more than a measure. The right set of assessment tools can also motivate students, provide models for high-quality work, lead students to discovery, serve teachers as forms of instructional feedback, contribute to a sense of classroom community, and invest school activities with a strong sense of purpose. In short, assessment not only measures growth but also has the power to stimulate it.
Student-engaged assessment practices equip teachers and students to use assessments—from frequent checks for understanding that occur multiple times throughout daily lessons to traditional end-of-unit tests—to monitor progress. Although assessment is most often seen as something done to students, the root meaning of the word assess is “to sit beside.” When schools adopt student-engaged assessment practices, teachers and parents will find themselves often sitting beside students, discussing with them the quality of their work and thinking, and their plans for growth and improvement.
Why Student-Engaged Assessment Matters: A New Way of Thinking about What Students Can Do
The most important assessments that take place in any school building are seen by no one. They take place inside the heads of students, all day long. Students assess what they do, say, and produce, and decide what is good enough. These internal assessments govern how much they care, how hard they work, and how much they learn. They govern how kind and polite they are and how respectful and responsible. They set the standard for what is “good enough” in class. In the end, these are the assessments that really matter. All other assessments are in service of this goal—to get inside students’ heads and raise the bar for effort and quality.
Student-engaged assessment is effective because it draws on these internal assessments that occur naturally for students. Unfortunately, students and teachers often don’t know how to tap into this level of assessment and learn how to capitalize on it. Students frequently have widely varying internal standards for quality and aren’t clear about what “good enough” looks like. Some students have internalized a sense that they don’t have a value or voice in a classroom setting and that anything they do will be inferior to the work of the “smart kids.” In other cases, they believe they have only one chance to do something and begin to work from a place of compliance and completion rather than working toward quality through a series of attempts.
Teachers frequently fall into the trap of simply saying, “try harder” without giving students specific targets, feedback, time to revise, and a purpose for doing quality work. What students really need are tools and support to assess and improve their own learning and the motivation to do so. Motivation is in fact the most important result of student-engaged assessment—unless students find reason and inspiration to care about learning and have hope that they can improve, excellence and high achievement will remain the domain of a select group. The following sections describe the key reasons why student-engaged assessment practices matter.
Motivating Students to Care
Nothing is more important in fostering growth in students than the degree to which they care. Recent research suggests that student perseverance, grit, and self-discipline correlate strongly with academic success (Blackwell, Trzesniewski, & Dweck, 2007; Duckworth & Seligman, 2005; Dweck, Walton, & Cohen 2011; Good, Aronson, & Inzlicht, 2003; Oyserman, Terry, & Bybee, 2002; Walton & Cohen, 2007). This will not surprise teachers or parents—it is common sense. But these “noncognitive” strengths are entirely based on the degree to which students care about their learning and their growth. If students don’t care, they are not going to work hard.
The apathy, disconnection, or lack of self-esteem that causes students to disengage in school—to stop caring—is not inherent. It is learned behavior. Kindergartners come to school excited to learn. In the course of their schooling, however, some students lose touch with their ability to thrive in a school environment. School becomes something that is done to them, something that they are not good at. They may feel they are good at sports, music, or video games, but school is just not a place where they succeed. Their test scores and grades make this clear. Student-engaged assessment puts students back in the driver’s seat, in charge of their own success. It makes clear to them that hard work and practice pays off—just as it does for them in sports, music, or video games—and that the immediate, clear feedback they get in these other pursuits can also guide their academic progress.
Most important, student-engaged assessment supports students to do work that they are proud of, which motivates them to step up to challenges. As Mike McCarthy, principal of King Middle School in Portland, Maine, puts it in chapter 6, “Anytime you make the work public, set the bar high, and are transparent about the steps to make a high-quality product, kids will deliver.”
Changing Mindsets
Student-engaged assessment requires and inspires students and teachers to change their mindsets about intelligence, effort, and success. As they experience success and track actual progress, their positive mindsets strengthen. They recognize the connections among their attitude, effort, practice, and increased achievement.
It doesn’t mean an easy ride, as the story of a third-grader struggling with reading in chapter 3 illustrates. Her teacher, Jean Hurst, underscores the role of student-engaged assessment in changing her mindset: “Although she’s still not at grade level, she’s made two years of progress, and making that progress visible through the use of data has helped Jacelyn to become a more motivated and informed reader.” Rather than getting stuck with a view of herself as a “poor reader,” she realized that with effort and support she could and would catch up.
Student-engaged assessment helps students see the connection between effort and achievement.
Engaging Students as Leaders of Their Own Learning
As students are given the tools to understand and assess their own strengths and challenges, their ability to take ownership increases. In very concrete ways, students become leaders of their own learning—understanding learning targets, tracking their progress, using feedback to revise their work, and presenting their learning publicly—and partners with their teachers. In our video series you will see students looking directly into the camera, explaining how student-engaged assessment practices work and how they have benefited. Their comments are genuine and unrehearsed.
Teaching Reflection
Skillful reflection is at the core of becoming a self-directed learner and thus is essential for college and career readiness. Student-engaged assessment builds reflection into every step of the process, ensuring that students develop the skills to reflect deeply and concretely, beyond vague statements of preferences, strengths, and weaknesses. This process can begin in kindergarten. As kindergarten teacher Jane Dunbar describes in chapter 4, “I then ask the group, ‘What would you do on the next draft if this were yours?’ And ‘What would you change?’ I challenge them for details.” Imagine the power of building this ability to reflect on drafts over years of practice.
Building a Culture of Collaboration, Trust, and Evidence
A strong schoolwide and classroom culture is both a requirement and a result of student-engaged assessment. First, students need to know that their teachers care about and respect them. In the context of a collaborative and trusting culture, student-engaged assessment practices produce tremendous results for students—their ongoing reflection on evidence of their learning leads to increased achievement and growth.
Within a school culture that respects students and teachers and explicitly focuses on their capacity to grow and improve, a different concept of evidence develops. Instead of relying almost entirely on a single source of evidence—a yearly test—to assess students and teachers, evidence is collected, cited, and used everywhere, all day and all year, to promote growth. Teachers and students collect qualitative and quantitative data and analyze those data to understand the trends of their strengths and struggles in order to help them improve.
Strengthening Home-School Connections
Student-engaged assessment engages families in their children’s learning at many levels. When student progress is reported clearly and transparently, and standards are made accessible and understandable, families are reassured. They gain confidence in their relationship with the school. Nothing is more powerful for a family than witnessing their child’s self-confidence and joy in learning as they present and share their work in student-led conferences, celebrations of learning, and passage presentations.
What the Research Says
Our work in student-engaged assessment draws heavily on the work of Rick Stiggins and his colleagues at the Assessment Training Institute, pioneers in the field of assessment (Stiggins, 2005; Stiggins, Arter, Chappuis, & Chappuis, 2006). Their work has brought assessment for learning strategies (formative assessment) to classrooms around the country, helping teachers and students see the power of assessment as a tool to support improvement and further learning, rather than just a way to measure learning at a fixed point in time. You will see many formative assessment strategies throughout our student-engaged assessment book; however, our approach widens the focus from the instructional strategies that are at the center of formative assessment to strategies that improve school culture, elevate leadership roles for students, engage families and communities, and deeply affect curriculum.
There is ample evidence that formative assessment increases student achievement, improves the quality of instruction, and increases motivation. In the most prominent study, Black and Wiliam (1998) found that gains in achievement associated with formative assessment nearly doubled their rate of learning. In Advancing Formative Assessment in Every Classroom, Moss and Brookhart (2009) survey a range of research that supports the powerful effect of formative assessment on teacher efficacy. “In a very real way it flips a switch, shining a bright light on individual teaching decisions so that teachers can see clearly (and perhaps for the first time) the difference between the intent and the effect of their actions” (p. 10). A similar transformation occurs in the motivation of students when they are taught that intelligence is malleable and growth comes through effort (Dweck, 2006; Vispoel & Austin, 1995). Thus, formative assessment can be used to build confidence and empower student ownership over learning and growth (Yin, Shavelson, Ayala, Ruiz-Primo, Brandon, & Furtak, 2008).
Student-Engaged Assessment and the Common Core
The Common Core State Standards usher in a unique moment in US education—an opportunity to raise the bar for rigor, critical thinking, problem solving, and communication skills. The standards themselves, with their precise technical language, are not typically inspirational for students or, for that matter, teachers. However, they represent educational ideas and capacities that can be genuinely inspiring. The standards have the potential to catalyze fundamental improvement in teaching and learning across the country.
The standards will not live up to their potential, however, if teachers do not know how to transform their instruction to meet these new goals. The standards demand a different type of teaching and learning. Essential to the new Common Core classroom is a sophisticated and sharp system of assessment that continually checks for understanding. And—the standards are explicit about this—a system that involves students in critiquing, reflecting, and revising. The skills embedded in student-engaged assessment—reflection and self-assessment, use of feedback, goal-setting, revision, and presentation—are integral to meeting the rigorous demands of the Common Core State Standards.
The math and literacy standards prioritize students’ ability to work independently, to problem solve, to communicate ideas with evidence, and to critique the ideas of others. They demand a system of assessment that does not put students in the role of being passive recipients of information but rather active agents in monitoring, communicating, and promoting their own growth. The strategies described in this book provide teachers with the ongoing, daily information they need to adjust lessons and provide students with effective support so that they can all meet the demands of the Common Core. Just as important, the strategies and structures help students learn to self-assess, set meaningful goals, and take ownership of the journey toward reaching standards.
Beyond Individual Practices to an Integrated System
This book is for teachers and school leaders who wish to implement a student-engaged assessment system in their schools. Although there are many possible entry points, and many practices may be implemented by a single teacher working with his or her students, the ultimate goal is to create an integrated schoolwide approach to student-engaged assessment. Each chapter offers how-to advice for teachers and school leaders interested in developing a strong and comprehensive system of student-engaged assessment that will help students meet state and Common Core standards and raise student achievement. These practices require substantial commitment from teachers and school leaders who must be willing to work collaboratively to restructure classrooms and schools.
Indeed, to fully implement a student-engaged assessment system requires a mindset that goes beyond “how-to” and represents a new way of thinking about assessment. Schools must rethink the nature of class tests and report cards, rethink how the data from class, school, district, and state assessments can be understood and used by students and teachers together to contribute to student growth, and rethink the notion that some students will succeed in school and others will fail.
The rewards for taking on this work are extensive. The schools we work with that have fully adopted student-engaged assessment have found strong results, evidenced in high test scores, high graduation and college acceptance rates, high-quality student work and thinking, and community understanding and pride (see figure I.1). This book draws heavily on the experiences of students, teachers, and school leaders in our schools around the country. You will hear their voices throughout the book. The stories and voices are not just seasoning, however. They are the heart and soul of student-engaged assessment.
Figure I.1 Student Achievement in Schools Implementing Student-Engaged Assessment Practices
It bears repeating that unless students care about learning, they will not make significant progress. When an eighth-grade student declares, “I know I understand the learning target when I feel the confidence to say, ‘I can,’ ” it reflects an uncommon investment and awareness of his role in learning. Jessica Wood, a sixth-grade English language arts teacher at the Springfield Renaissance School in Springfield, Massachusetts, reminds us that the purpose of student-engaged assessment is to reach each individual student: “It’s not just the recalcitrant rebel kid. It is also the quiet girl in the front row. For those children, the checking for understanding strategies [and all of the other strategies and structures] give them a voice.” Student-engaged assessment practices are transferable to any school environment in which educators are committed to igniting the capacity of students to take responsibility for their learning.
Student voice is at the heart of student-engaged assessment.
About This Book: A Multimedia Toolkit for Teachers and Leaders
This book contains chapters on eight key practices that will engage students in making academic progress, improve achievement, and involve families and communities in the life of the school. Each chapter describes a practice, gives advice on how to begin, and explains what teachers and school leaders need to put it into practice in their own classrooms and schools. The chapters include descriptive text, resources, advice, and stories from schools successfully using the practice. The written text of the book is supplemented by the Core Practices in Action video series—found on the accompanying DVD and pointed to throughout the book—which takes key strategies and animates them in real schools with real students, to serve as models, to raise questions, and to stimulate discussion. Also accompanying the book is a suite of appendixes to support and enrich implementation of these practices, which can be found on our website: www.elschools.org/leadersoftheirownlearning.
Although all of the practices have an impact on the day-to-day teaching and learning occurring in the classroom, chapters 5 through 8 also focus on communicating learning and achievement with an outside audience. Each of the distinct communication structures represents a significant moment in time when students and teachers reflect on progress and understanding, describe achievements and challenges, and mark important transitions.
Chapter 1: Learning Targets
Learning targets are the foundation of a student-engaged assessment system. They translate state and Common Core standards into learning goals for lessons, projects, units, and courses, and are written in student-friendly language that is concrete and understandable. Because learning targets must come from teachers’ deep understanding of the standards they need to teach, they are the foundation and the connective tissue of a student-engaged assessment system. All other practices refer back to them. Learning targets, which begin with the stem “I can,” are posted in the classroom and tracked carefully by students and teachers. Because learning targets are written for and owned by students who are striving to say, “I can . . .,” they are an essential ingredient in the engaged part of student-engaged assessment.
The learning targets chapter will help teachers write quality learning targets based on state and Common Core standards; develop the supporting learning targets that guide daily lessons; align standards, learning targets, and assessments; and create character learning targets that help students track their progress toward good work habits and citizenship. This chapter also supports school leaders on the key decisions and actions necessary to work toward schoolwide implementation of learning targets.
Chapter 2: Checking for Understanding during Daily Lessons
Checking for understanding embeds assessment into instructional practice. It includes all of the minute-by-minute ways that a teacher checks to make sure that students understand the content of a lesson. Checking for understanding strategies help students monitor and articulate their progress toward learning targets and guide teachers toward adjustments in instruction to ensure that all students understand the material and are able to meet state and Common Core standards. As with the other components of the student-engaged assessment system, checking for understanding strategies produce useful, immediate feedback for teachers and students.
This chapter guides teachers toward structuring lessons to maximize opportunities to check for understanding and offers numerous concrete strategies to do so, ranging from strategic questioning and observation to quick-check strategies such as go-arounds, exit tickets and human bar graphs. This chapter also supports school leaders to set manageable schoolwide priorities for implementing the practice and building a culture of strong practice.
Chapter 3: Using Data with Students
Reflective teachers and school leaders collect and analyze data to understand student achievement, assess teaching practices, and make informed decisions about instruction. However, if students are to be primary agents in their learning, they also must learn to make sense of and use data related to their performance.
This chapter focuses on classroom practices that build student capacity to assess, analyze, and use data effectively to reflect, set goals, and document growth toward mastery of state and Common Core standards. These practices help students learn to use their classwork and interim assessments as data sources that help them analyze their strengths, weaknesses, and patterns in order to improve their work. In this way, even standardized test data can become useful evidence of learning and feedback with which students can engage. School leaders and teachers will be guided in developing a culture in which students understand that intelligence is malleable and that they can improve with practice and persistence.
Chapter 4: Models, Critique, and Descriptive Feedback
When the quality of student work is weak, it’s usually for a very simple reason—the students have never seen a good example of the work assigned. Whether the assignment is a persuasive essay, a geometric proof, or a history report, most students have never analyzed what a strong model of that work actually looks like. Many teachers offer verbal or written descriptions of their expectations, and sometimes rubrics, but without models of quality work, those descriptions are just words. They don’t create a vision of quality in students’ minds. This chapter guides teachers to use strong models of work and analyze them during critique lessons with students to collectively create a vision of quality.
We distinguish between descriptive feedback, in which a teacher or peer provides an individual with specific and helpful feedback to help him or her improve a piece of work, and critique lessons, in which a whole class uses models of strong and weak work to identify the criteria for quality work that will guide a lesson or project. Both require students to engage in discussions of what makes quality work and how they can use their knowledge, skills, and resources to improve and grow.
This chapter will help teachers and schools build cultures that are conducive to giving and receiving feedback, develop protocols for critique lessons, and provide students with the skills they need to act on feedback and to self-assess their progress toward established criteria for success. These interrelated practices are key tools in helping students master learning targets and meet state and Common Core standards.
Chapter 5: Student-Led Conferences
Student-led conferences give students a leadership role in communicating their progress to their families. They are a key strategy for engaging students deeply in assessing their own work and motivating them to improve. Student-led conferences are also highly effective at involving nearly all families in the learning process. Student-led conferences are meetings with students, families, and teachers during which students share their progress toward mastery of academic and character learning targets and state and Common Core standards. Whether at the kindergarten level or the high school level, student-led conferences are facilitated by students, who discuss and reflect on their learning and set goals for improvement.
The student-led conferences chapter guides teachers and school leaders through the key decisions necessary to set up student-led conferences, including communicating with families, defining roles for participants, and preparing students to lead quality conferences.
Chapter 6: Celebrations of Learning
Celebrations of learning are another key student-engaged assessment practice that is focused on communicating learning. Although we use the term celebration (and these events are indeed community celebrations), they are most importantly student exhibitions of high-quality work that impel students to work hard in class all semester. Celebrations of learning are culminating grade-level or schoolwide events during which students display and present high-quality finished work to the school community, families, and members of the wider community. Often student performances are a part of celebrations of learning. Such events provide an authentic opportunity for students to reflect on their progress and tell the story of their learning journey.
This chapter will help teachers prepare their students for celebrations of learning—including the self-reflection on progress toward learning targets, state and Common Core standards, and habits of scholarship that lead up to the event and the revisions necessary for students to display and present their highest-quality work. School leaders will be guided in setting up the structures and systems necessary to host a community-wide event that reflects joy in learning as well as academic and artistic excellence.
Chapter 7: Passage Presentations with Portfolios
Passage presentations and portfolios are two distinct but interrelated practices within a student-engaged assessment system that require students to document and communicate evidence of their learning. They are closely linked to student-led conferences, which often lay the groundwork for passage presentations. A portfolio is a collection of student work that evidences student progress toward mastery of learning targets derived from state and Common Core standards, growth in habits of scholarship, and personal goals in academics, arts, and character. Passage presentations are benchmark demonstrations of learning over multiple years that mark pivotal transitions during a student’s schooling (e.g., at the conclusion of elementary, middle, or high school; at key grade levels, such as second, fifth, eighth, or tenth). During the presentations, students use their portfolios as a guide to articulate their proficiency and growth.
This chapter will guide teachers toward the productive use of portfolios as living documents that are a vital part of the classroom. Important questions such as “what goes into portfolios and what gets left out?” and “how will progress on habits of scholarship be reflected?” are addressed. This chapter will also support teachers and school leaders to set up the structures necessary to implement passage presentations that effectively include educators, families, and community members.
Chapter 8: Standards-Based Grading
In a standards-based grading system, grades communicate clearly about a student’s current achievement on standards. Of all the practices within a student-engaged assessment system, it is perhaps the most complex. It is best implemented as a schoolwide structure with district support, because it represents a change in the traditional model of grading and reporting in schools. Standards-based grading is closely linked to all of the other student-engaged assessment practices. State and Common Core standards are shaped into priority learning targets—written in student-friendly language—and grades are determined through evidence-based assessments of those learning targets. Standards-based grading is grounded in several key principles: grades must accurately describe a student’s progress and current level of achievement; habits of scholarship should be assessed and reported separately; grades are for communication, not motivation or punishment; grades must be specific enough in what they measure that it is clear what students need to work on to improve; and student engagement is key to the grading process.
The standards-based grading chapter will help schools set up the structures and expectations necessary to transform grading and reporting into a tool that promotes student accountability and motivation and gives families clarity on what students can do to improve. Extensive examples of faculty grading guides, grade books, and other resources will bring the practice to life.
Last year I joined student ambassadors at the Springfield Renaissance School in Springfield, Massachusetts, as they gave Governor Deval Patrick a tour of their school. For the third consecutive year, the school was poised to send 100 percent of its graduates on to college, a remarkable achievement for an urban district school. Governor Patrick was there to honor the school and learn from its success. He posed a question to a student ambassador: “Destiny, would you say you are a good student?”
Destiny paused before responding: “That’s a hard question,” she said. “My habits of work learning targets are excellent. My academic learning targets are a mix—I’m still struggling to meet some of them.” Now the governor paused: “Learning targets?” he said. Destiny clarified: “The goals for what we need to know and be able to do.” The governor smiled. “Yes. Course objectives, lesson objectives. I know those.” Destiny shook her head. “No, sir. These are not the teacher’s course objectives. Learning targets belong to students. These are the things that I have to demonstrate that I can do well. I need to show evidence that I can factor equations and write essays or explain a concept in history—things like that.”
The governor nodded. “Interesting. And what are ‘habits of work’” learning targets?” Destiny was quick to answer. “Those are the most important targets of all. They are the study skills and habits we need to succeed in college and life. You have to focus on them here. That’s why we all go to college.”
—Ron Berger
The Foundation of Student-Engaged Assessment
The process of learning shouldn’t be a mystery. Learning targets provide students with tangible goals that they can understand and work toward. Rather than the teacher taking on all of the responsibility for meeting a lesson’s objectives, learning targets, written in student-friendly language and frequently reflected on, transfer ownership for meeting objectives from the teacher to the student. The seemingly simple work of reframing objectives written for teachers to learning targets, written for—and owned by—students, turns assessment on its head. The student becomes the main actor in assessing and improving his or her learning.
When the students in Lori Laliberte’s kindergarten class at the Odyssey School in Denver learned that their “bessbugs” had died, they were sad. They had been observing and caring for the bugs as part of their study of the life cycle. The “bessbug” company agreed to send them new bugs and because one of the Common Core literacy standards for kindergartners (W.K.2) is, Use a combination of drawing, dictating, and writing to inform informative/explanatory texts in which they name what they are writing about and supply some information about the topic, the occasion provided an authentic opportunity to learn how to write a thank-you letter. Two learning targets guided their effort: “I can identify the main parts of a letter” and “I can explain the purpose of sending a letter.” The students knew what their learning targets were from the outset of their lesson. In the accompanying video we see Laliberte’s students actively working toward meeting these learning targets.
By translating standards into learning targets her students could make sense of, Laliberte engaged them as active partners in making progress. She knew they had met the target when they could say, “I can.” The term target is significant. It emphasizes that students are aiming for something specific. Learning targets are meant to focus students in this way, directing their efforts and attention, as would a physical target. Every day, students discuss, reflect, track their progress, and assess their work in relation to learning targets. Learning targets build investment in learning by giving students the language to discuss what they know and what they need to learn. As an eighth-grader at the Odyssey School remarked, “The teacher will take time to break down the target, so we know where we’re going with the learning.”
Why This Practice Matters
Learning targets help students define what they are learning and why they are learning it, enabling them to monitor their progress toward the learning goal and giving them the language for and practice with metacognition. But why do these things matter? How does student ownership of learning make them better learners? How does self-monitoring increase student achievement? What’s so special about metacognition? The answer lies in their power to motivate students to learn. Learning targets help stimulate that motivation.
Learning Targets Represent Clear, Manageable Goals
Among the dynamics for student motivation is the desire to take on challenges that call on a student’s present capacity. In other words, students feel motivated to accomplish a task when they know it is within their reach.
Learning Targets Inherently Provide Short-Term Success
Motivation increases when students feel successful at previous attempts. Learning targets, by definition, break down abstract content standards into smaller learning tasks.
Learning Targets Let Students Know Where They Are
One of the hallmarks of student motivation is a sense of purpose. Motivated students know how the task at hand fits into the larger scheme of things. Reaching, or not quite reaching, a learning target represents critical information for students about what they know and can do, and what they still need to learn.
