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Aligned Lessons Video Series:“Assessment Activities”

Assessment Activities

Assessments are activities students accomplish to show what they know or can do.

All assessment activities begin or arise from clear learning goals.

The purpose of assessment activities is to produce evidence of student learning.

Assessments can be used for formative or summative purposes.

Formative Assessment Is assessment for learning.

Formative assessments provide feed back to both the student and to the teacher about progress toward learning goals.

Formative assessments can support student learning towards final course assessment, or a summative assessment.

A formative assessment should build students’ confidence that they are on the right track.

In simple terms it should help a student know, “I’m on the right track and heading for the goal,” or “Okay, I’m off track, but now I know what to do to fix it.”

Summative Assessment Is assessment of learning.

It says to a student, “This is the end of the line. We’re not going to take anymore time (right now) for learning, so demonstrate how successful you’ve been at meeting the learning goal.”

Summative assessments may or may not be required in your school, but all students benefit from formative assessments that are skillfully designed and used.

The difference between formative and summative assessment is in how they are used.

Designing Assessment Activities

Develop aligned assessment activities that measure student achievement of classroom learning goals by:

1. Aligning it to the kind of learning called for in the learning goal.

2. Selecting an efficient and effective assessment type (e.g., selected response, extended written response, performance assessment, or personal communication).

3. Creating student friendly and fair parameters for how students complete the assessment activity.

1. Aligning it to the kind of learning called for in the learning goal.

This is how you can know the kind of learning described in the learning goal.

Rick Stiggins categorizes learning into four types:Knowledge: e.g., explain, describe, identify, name, list, define, label, match, choose, recall, recognize, select, understand, know

Reasoning: e.g., analyze, discriminate, compare/contrast, synthesize, classify, categorize, interpret, predict, generalize, hypothesize, justify, critique, defend, evaluate, prove

Skill: e.g., assemble, operate, use, demonstrate, measure, investigate, observe, listen, perform, conduct, read, speak, write, collect, explore

Performance/Product: e.g., design, develop, produce, create, make, write, speak, draw, represent, display, model, construct

2. Selecting an efficient and effective assessment type These are well matched assessment types for each kind

of learning:• Selected response (ex. true/false, multiple choice): good

match for mastery of knowledge• Extended written response (ex. at least several

sentences in length): can provide a window into the quality of student reasoning, and writing skills

• Performance assessment (ex. complex performances or products): students can show a particular skill, or mastery of skill, knowledge and reasoning as they present or perform big complex products

• Personal communication (ex. evidence by speaking or writing): though time-consuming, can show quality of student reasoning

3. Creating student friendly and fair parameters for how students complete the assessment activity.

Select assessment activity parameters that are:• Reasonable for the classroom situation• Accessible to students• Focused on learning goals

What are the qualities of a well-designed assessment activity?

Research based best practices in assessment lead us to ask:• Does this assessment activity elicit rich evidence of

student learning?• Are criteria for doing good work clearly stated?• Does the criteria for good work relate to the learning

goal, or is it focused on assessment parameters?• Does the activity provide students with feedback?• Does the activity put students in charge of their own

learning, provide real world connections, and/or

relationships outside of school?• Do students act as resources for each other?

Evaluation

Evaluation is the judgment about the level of success or achievement the student accomplishes in doing the assessment activity and, therefore, meeting the learning goals.

Evaluation Criteria With teacher colleagues, examine student

assessment products to develop aligned evaluation criteria that defines quality of learning.

• applied to student assessment products • clearly articulated quality indicators• focused on concepts and learning type called for

by the learning goal

* Please see “Evaluation Criteria” in the Aligned Video Series for more detail about this topic.

More Resources

Please refer to similar modules that explain the development of:• Professional Inquiry• Alignment of Key Teaching and Learning

Components• Unpacking Standards and Benchmarks• Learning Goals• Learning Tools and Teaching Strategies

Please refer to

http://www.mnartseducation.org

for more information.