Balanced Approach to Assessment Day 3

Peer Assessment Process

Goals to improve pre-, formative, and performance summative assessment

1. Gather cumulative evidence of proficiency throughout the process of the performance summative assessment.  Can be done by partnering students together to assess each other as they work through their performance assessment.
2. Give more specifics as to how the lesson can be differentiated with the information from my formative assessments.
3. The creation of a grading rubric could make it easier for me, the teacher, to score the students' performance assessments.

Reflection about the Peer Assessment Process

• How have you administered processes like this in your classroom?

I ofter use a process called Think-Pair-Share in my classroom where students work through a math problem together (usually something that we are working on for that day's lesson) and then discuss their work with their neighbor.  In this way they can bounce ideas off of each other and I can walk around the room and check for their understanding.

• Why did we complete this process?

I believe that we completed this process so that we could have some direct feedback from someone that hasn't been directly involved in the creation of these assessments.  So often when one is working directly on a project for a bit of time it can be harder to see the forrest for the trees.  Having someone else look over the work can aid in giving a wider perspective.

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Differentiated Instruction

How do I differentiate instruction to meet the needs of all learners? How do I work with small groups of students while other students work independently?

Make a plan for differentiating instruction to meet the needs of learners who are ready to go on and the learners who need more instruction.



Define Differentiation:  

Adapting one's instruction in response to the needs, abilities, and learning styles of the students with the goal in mind of increasing student success.


Characteristics:

• Helps students to learn through mistakes
• Provides students with options and choice
• Provides opportunities for all students to learn without decreasing the rigor of the course.
• High expectations for all students

Examples:

• Providing alternate assignments that still require the same level of work
• Flexible grouping of students that have similar needs
• A "homework menu" where students are allowed to choose a certain number of problems from the assignment to complete
• Ongoing assessment
• Front-loading the vocabulary before the contented is taught
• Pairing low-level students with high-level students

Non-examples:

• Teaching every child exactly the same and expecting them to "just get it."
• Testing once and then moving on regardless.

3 Enduring Understandings:

1. All students will have different learning styles and it's up to the instructor to try to reach them using differentiation.
2. Requires ongoing assessment and constant feedback.
3. Positive student-teacher connections and a sense of community are necessary.