Assessments

What's up folks! Hopefully you all have moved past any food induced comas from the Thanksgiving and are ready to be back in action! Today our blog focuses on creating assessments that measure your goal. If you need a refresher on goal setting view our previous blog below. 

Once you have a clear goal, your next task will be to decide the non-negotiables for showing mastery of that goal. For example, we recently designed as series of lessons with the John Wash 2nd Grade team for students to successfully use adverbs within a sentence. We decided as a team that students HAD TO correctly use a complete sentence, have an adverb, and use the adverb in the correct context of the sentence message. Our team even created a little rubric for the kiddos so they could see a few example statements that show our teacher expectations for the standard. Once teachers were clear on expectations, choices then become much easier to embed because we knew the non-negotiables all choices needed to be able to incorporate. 

When thinking of choices keep two things in mind, (1) your goal and (2) your students' variability. Your goal will help you pinpoint choices that still capture the heart of what you are trying to teach and not take students off on tangents. Thinking of variability will force you to be creative about the options students are given. Think about students who you know would need support. Think about the students who 

​Here are some examples of choices that teachers said students could do at John Wash:

• Share Sentences Via Chatter Kids App
• Record a Video of Stated Sentences
• Story/Comic Strip with written Sentences
• Write a story with adverbs

need to be challenged. Think about providing options that incorporate technology. Think about choices that vary response options (voice, typing, handwriting, creative expression). Keep in mind that there is no set number of options for students in how they can express their understanding. For some goals the options maybe fairly limited and for some goals the options may be endless. Consider also giving your students an open ended option where they can hear the non-negotiables of a goal and brainstorm their own ideas for how they can show their understanding. 

The action & expression guidelines and checkpoints are your friend here. Have fun and be prepared to be surprised by what your students show you about themselves as you give them more autonomy.