How Teachers Assessed a Unit of Instruction Prior to Upgrading |
In preparing their students to work on performance tasks, teachers describe what the task entails and the demonstration of skills that will be used to evaluate performance. This requires a careful description of the elements of good performance, most often in the form of a rubric, and allows students to judge their own work as they proceed. This helps to shift the ownership of learning for students from passive to active learning as students recognize what they will need to work on in order to meet the identified final outcome.
The work we are collectively engaged in is powerful because I truly believe it will make a difference for student learning. Just by rethinking assessment of learning we will be providing students with greater choice and voice in their learning. As I reflect on my own learning experiences, I remember too many instances of studying material only to be forgotten after the test was complete and wonder how my own learning process would have changed if teachers changed the way they were assessing knowledge.
Following an afternoon of professional development, we asked teachers to share their type of unit assessment before and after their unit upgrade. That evening, I entered teacher responses into a wordle to generate a visual image. The results are inspiring! Since larger words indicate more popular responses to unit assessments, we can tell that following an afternoon of professional development, teachers are making changes. They are rethinking their assessments from the standard unit tests to move towards a broader variety of assessment types. It is exciting to see how teachers in LASD are rethinking instruction.
How Teachers are Rethinking Assessment for a Unit of Instruction After Upgrading |
by Alyssa Gallagher, Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum & Instruction
Hi! this is very inspiring for aspiring teacher like me. Can you give concrete example of performance assessment that were used as an upgrade / replacement to traditional unit test and their effects (both positive and negative) to teachers and students.
ReplyDeletethank you,
Angie