Issue 86: Apr 12, 2010 Connections Newsletter

“Our Students Have the Best Scores in the School/District, Why Should We Have to do This?”

Jennifer Partrick
Apr 12, 2010

Take a minute and think beyond the test scores in the district to the best that your students can be. Are all of your students working up to their potential? Are all of your students making the gains they should be making? Are all of your students making the highest possible scores on tests? Do you know everything about teaching and instruction? If the answer is no to any of these questions, you should consider the LEARNING-FOCUSED model. As professionals, we must always seek out new methods and strategies to support instruction and learning for continuous improvement. If we do not, we are missing opportunities for growth; our students and our own.

Teachers must utilize the current research on what is working in classrooms to ensure students are reaching their potent ial. If all of our students have learned as much as they can while they are with us, then we can continue to do what we have always done. However, if there is one student who could have learned more, that changes everything.

LEARNING-FOCUSED has, at its foundation, the best teaching strategies housed in a framework that supports exemplary instruction and learning. There is research to support everything that LEARNING-FOCUSED espouses. Teachers who use the LEARNING-FOCUSED model analyze their standards and construct units that support learning, engagement, retention, collaboration, discussion, and memory. They create lessons and assignments that are interesting and stimulating for both teacher and student. Who would not w ant to do that?

Is there room for growth for all! of your students, including your gifted students? Are you able to create lessons that support your lowest and highest achieving students? Are all of your students engaged? If not, there are students whose needs are not being met. LEARNING-FOCUSED lesson construction supports all students to ensure they are all learning. Lessons are chunked in order for students to think about and process their learning. Students summarize after each chunk so teachers are able to assess how well the students have learned the information throughout the lesson. At each assessment point, there is room for practice and summarization. Lessons based on essential standards include Extending Thinking activities which give students additional time to interact with the content in interesting and authentic ways in order to deepen their understanding of the content learned.

Are all of your students working up to their potential? Are all of your students engaged in learning? Are all of your students successful? If not, perhaps you should ask yourself, "Can I afford not to do this?"



Allowing Choice on a Traditional Test

Debbie Willingham
Apr 12, 2010

Most teachers of academic subjects tend to have several common characteristics when it comes to giving tests. First, we think all the details are important, so we tend to ask lots of short-answer questions (fill in, matching, true/false) or in math courses a list of problems, that are all at the lower end of Bloom's Taxonomy (revised in 2001). Second, we create what we feel is a very thorough test and then give it, with little or no modification, year after year. Third, we usually give only one version of a test, or if t wo just rearrange the order of the same questions.

Although we know that it is important for our students to think more analytically and at higher levels, we usually ask them to do this more through class discussion and projects rather than on tests. One easy way to develop higher quality tests by including more high level questions is to use the revised Bloom's as the basis and provide some choice among the questions to be answered. Questions at different difficulty levels should be awarded different point values:

  • 5 points each at the levels of Remembering (Knowledge) and Understanding (Comprehension)
  • 10 points each at the Applying (Application) level
  • 15 points each at the Analyzing (Analysis) level
  • 20 points each at the levels of Evaluating and Creating (Synthesis and Evaluation)

Students then choose the questions they want to answer from each area with whatever parameters the teacher includes, such as choosing at least one from each area, having some mandatory and some student choice, or choosing any combination of questions as long as they total 100 points.

As a guide to developing questions, use verbiage that fits the levels of the Taxonomy in your construction of both assessment prompts in lessons and on the test. Don't forget that assessment prompts can be great test questions. A few examples to remind teachers of the types of questions that fit each level are:

  • Remembering: describe, identify, list, define
  • Understanding: summarize, explain, categorize, generalize
  • Applying: predict, diagnose, estimate, plan, construct a theory as to why, apply a procedure to a familiar or unfamiliar task
  • Analyzing: distinguish between, examine perspectives, deduce, determine bias or intent, draw conclusions by constructing support
  • Evaluating: assess for correctness, detect fallacies or inconsistencies, determine appropriateness, judge among options, critique
  • Creating: compose, design, plan, generate a hypothesis for, devise a procedure for, invent

Think about a unit of study recently completed with students and consider what questions you can develop for each level. You do not always have to include every level; do what makes sense for the content rather than forcing an unnatural fit for a particular type of question. Students appreciate a differentiated test for two reasons: first, they do have some choice in which questions they answer, which gives them the sense that they have control and are in a way "cheating;" and if you include questions you used during teaching as Assessment Prompts, students better understand the importance of paying attention and being engaged during lessons.

For more detail and examples, refer to A Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching, and Assessing,
Lorin W. Anderson and David R. Krathwohl, ed.



The Connection between Benchmark Assessments and Assessment Prompts

Carol Brewer
Apr 12, 2010

Assessment Prompts, as recommended by LEARNING-FOCUSED, really make Distributed Practice and Distributed Summarizing applicable and effective in every Acquistion Lesson. Assessment Prompts are used throughout the lesson to check for understanding. With the use of these prompts, you are able to adjust instruction as needed through their use as formative assessment. This saves you from the chagrin felt at the end of a lesson when no one can answer the Lesson Essential Question or worse when you grade the unit test and see students just did not "get it."

The connection from Benchmark Assessments to Assessment Prompts is huge. Benchmarks are analyzed to identify the most missed questions. The question stems from the Benchmark Assessments are usually closely aligned to state tests, and therefore should be used regularly, especially during science and social studies lessons. Using these stems provides students with the language and structure of different types of questions and helps prepare them to respond to a variety of prompts. Too many times students understand the content of what they are reading only to get confused by the questions being asked. The question stems from the Benchmark Assessments also make perfect Assessment Prompts. Think about using the stems as questions to check for understanding during your Acquistion Lessons. As students answer these questions they become accustomed to using higher level thinking in their responses.