Instructionally Supportive Assessment

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Instructionally Supportive Assessment

• What is instructionally supportive assessment?
• How can assessment be used to improve student
  learning?
• UEA Annual Conference
• Brett D. Moulding
• Utah Office of Education
• Director of Curriculum and Instruction

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• Instructionally Supportive Assessment
• What is instructionally supportive assessment?

• Aligns to Curriculum Standards-Goals-Objectives
• Focuses on Essential Concepts
• Assesses Important Meaningful Knowledge
• Provides Significant and Meaningful Information
  for Instruction

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Assess Students UnderstandingMeaningful
Essential Worth Retaining Big Ideas Key
Concepts Hopefully this knowledge is described
in the Core

• Assessment should be aligned to the Core
• Assess the Intended Learning Outcomes
• Assessments should assess students depth of
  understanding of the big ideas, concepts, and
  themes
• Reflect good instruction
• Assess across content areas those skills that are
  common to all curriculums

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What is Important Knowledge

• Identify the three essential concepts/skills that
  you want students to know and be able to do
• (write them down)
• Select one circle
• What evidence would you accept that your students
  know or can do _____?

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How can assessment be used to improve student
learning?
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Fundamental Theorem of LearningCurriculum /
Instruction / Assessment/ Learning

• Students learn what is taught
• Knowledge builds upon previous knowledge and
  experiences
• Learning objectives have value
• Aligning instruction to intended learning
  outcomes increases the chance of students
  learning the intended learning objectives
• Assessing target objective will improve
  instruction - hence learning

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Model for Instruction in UtahUsing Assessment of
Learning to Inform Instruction
Standards
Assessments
Instruction
Classroom Assessments
Utah Core Curriculum Fine ArtsHealth/PE Social
Studies Information Technology TLC Library Media
Teacher Observation of Students
Assessments Accompanying Instructional Materials

Skills
Math Language Arts Reading/Writing Science
U-PASS
CRTs Iowa Test BSCT Direct Writing
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What does research tell us

• Target essential concepts
• Connect learning
• Align instruction to learning objectives
• Information available to learner and teacher
• Quality feedback improves learning
• Nature of the effective feedback
• Meaningful and specific
• Prompt
• Detailed
• Constructive

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Attributes of knowledge that is retained and used

• Logical
• Memorable
• Applicable
• Connected to prior knowledge
• Used as part of thinking
• Big Ideas

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Good Assessment

• Quality classroom assessment requires a
  significant amount of time to develop, assess and
  evaluate
• Good assessment leads to meaningful evaluation
• Multiple lines of evidence improve instructional
  decisions
• Make wise decisions from data
• There is error in all measurement - Since your
  goal is to have meaningful information about
  student learning in your classroom you should
  strive to have assessment that reduces assessment
  error and is used for the purpose for which it is
  designed.

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Actions

• How can assessment be used in your school to
  improve instruction?
• Who needs to understand instructionally
  supportive assessment in your school?
• What needs to change in your school to improve
  feedback to students and teacher that will
  improve student achievement?

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• What is instructionally supportive assessment?
• How can assessment be used to improve student
  learning?

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• A good teacher must be able to put himself in the
  place of those who find learning hard.--Eliphas
  Levi
• If a child can't learn the way we teach, maybe we
  should teach the way they learn.--Ignacio 'Nacho'
  Estrada
• If kids come to us educators/teachers from
  strong, healthy functioning families, it makes
  our job easier. If they do not come to us from
  strong, healthy, functioning families, it makes
  our job more important.--Barbara Colorose
• It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken
  joy in creative expression and knowledge.--Albert
  Einstein
• The job of a teacher is to excite in the young a
  boundless sense of curiosity about life, so that
  the growing child shall come to apprehend it with
  an excitement tempered by awe and wonder.--John
  Garrett
• The man who can make hard things easy is the
  educator.--Ralph Waldo Emerson
• A teacher affects eternity he can never tell
  where his influence stops.--Henry Brooks Adams
• A teacher enlarges people in all sorts of ways
  besides just his subject matter.--Wallace Stegner
  (Crossing To Safety)
• The teacher who is attempting to teach without
  inspiring the pupil with a desire to learn is
  hammering on cold iron.--Horace Mann
• A teacher's day is half bureaucracy, half crisis,
  half monotony and one-eighth epiphany. Never mind
  the arithmetic.--Susan Ohanian (Ask Ms. Class)
• Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it
  is a lost tradition.--Jacques Barzun (Teacher in
  America)
• Teaching kids to count is fine, but teaching them
  what counts is best.--Bob Talbert
• What nobler profession than to touch the next
  generation--to see children hold your
  understanding in their eyes, your hope in their
  lives, your world in their hands. In their
  success, you find your own and so to them you
  give your all.--Unknown ("The Essence of
  Teaching")
• What was the duty of the teacher if not to
  inspire?--Bharati Mukhejee ("Buried Lives" The
  Middleman)
• The whole art of teaching is only the art of
  awakening the natural curiosity of young minds
  for the purpose of satisfying it
  afterwards.--Anatole France
• The whole secret of the teacher's force lies in
  the conviction that man are convertible.--Ralph
  Waldo Emerson (Journals)

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• Inspired teachers ... cannot be ordered by the
  gross from the factory. They must be discovered
  one by one, and brought home from the woods and
  swamps like orchids. They must be placed in a
  conservatory, not in a carpenter shop and they
  must be honored and trusted.--John Jay Chapman

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