Sitting Beside Our Students

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 “It’s time for assessment practices to be intentionally designed to foster student agency rather than hinder it.”-  Future Focused Education

I agree. Let’s talk about this. Because among all of the things during the 2020-2021 school year, THIS is not going to be solved unless we both unpack and shift our fundamental beliefs about the purpose of assessment as a whole. In this blog I will address the fundamental shifts that we need to make, provide some concrete strategies to support you in making these shifts, and then discuss why now is the time.

What are the shifts?

As  Ken O'Connor says in his assessment webinar,” the ‘order of operations’ in teaching should be: first, student relationships and wellness; second, learning; and third, assessment. When we approach assessment practices, we should not lose sight of our priorities.” So, how do we do that?

The assessment for Learning Project helps us frame how we look at assessment, proposing 5 fundamental shifts that are shown in the image below.

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The shifts are:

Process: From Isolated to integrated

Priority: From Evaluation to reflection and feedback

Product: From Score to body of evidence

Purpose: From Expose inequity to enact equity

Partnership: From Control to collaboration

Each of these shifts places student learning at the forefront of assessment allowing for student agency.

You can learn more here

Jacob Gutierrez, a student, shares his voice as part of the gallery of student voices in the Future Focused Education,“If I’m being honest, too often we learn for tests now instead of knowledge itself. So often I hear in class, ‘This is going to be on the test Friday.’”

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You can hear Gutierrez speak here. We are failing our students with traditional practices of sorting, scoring, and grading. We are missing the point of education. And our students know it. 

So what do we do? 

For starters, we tip the scales towards formative assessment. But, if you must give summative assessment, here is some advice from Edutopia. First, stop assessing everything. Get very clear on the nice to know and the need to know. We have guidance from Achieve the Core to make those decisions in mathematics at the K-8 level. Secondly, think smaller. Give smaller assessments along the way versus large scale end of unit exams. Less at a time will be more meaningful and more useful. And last, leverage technology that will make test taking more accessible. 

Formative assessment is, however, the way to go. This is the real time data that you gather and act upon to move your students forward in their learning journey. What we need is a system to collect that data. I believe we have a moment in time that not only necessitates this, but that by leaning into technology we can capture that information more easily than ever. Here is a list of 24 tools from the Global Online Academy for doing just that. Pick two tools for you and your students to learn. 

Collect data over time using checklists, Google Forms,  and anecdotal records where you list student names and leave a space to write down what you see and hear during class meetings. Focus on sharing feedback using private break out meeting rooms, inserting comments into slideshows or post-it notes into Jam Boards. Conduct check-ins during synchronous sessions using the private chat feature. And, finally, leverage personal conversations by setting up small groups and one-on-one meetings with students to learn what they know and to provide just in time instruction to move them forward. See more discussion here: Edutopia 

Why do we make this change now?

We make this change now because we have to. What we have always done is not going to work in this ever shifting year of instruction from in person teaching to hybrid arrangements to fully distance learning. We have to shift. Traditional forms of assessment will be full of inequity, and will not adequately show us what our students know, nor will it provide them with the necessary tools to LEARN. Which is afterall, our purpose. 

The word assessment has its roots in the Latin language meaning. Educators at Carlton College tell us, “The Latin root assidere means to sit beside. In an educational context, the process of observing learning; describing, collecting, recording, scoring, and interpreting information about a student's or one's own learning. At its most useful, assessment is an episode in the learning process; part of reflection and autobiographical understanding of progress.”

I can not think of a better time than in the middle of this pandemic to sit beside our students. Who’s with me?

Susan LooneyComment