Formative Assessment Design 3.0

This is my final version of the formative assessment that I plan to use in my classroom for the upcoming school year. Just to differentiate my thinking, any updated text will be in blue.

Purpose

I’ve noticed that recent former students have entered my class with more knowledge on some of my curriculum, specifically that of the American Revolution. I’ve designed this assessment to help me understand what my students know about my content at the beginning of the year. I plan to use the data to re-design my goals and lessons to better accommodate the needs of my students. According to Shepard, “Many teachers rely on a traditional, pretest-posttest design to document student progress, but then do not use information from the pretest in instruction” (Shepard, 2000, pg. 11). I want don’t want to be one of the “many” teachers, instead I want to actually use this information to guide my instruction. I plan to differentiate my instruction based on how students do on this pre-assessment. Although I’m not sure what this future differentiation will look like yet and wish to run ideas by my fellow 8th grade social studies companions, this may initially come in the form of a group project on the colonies. I can have the project emphasize or understate certain aspects of my teaching standards, based on what students already understand.

This assessment contains several “big picture” topics based on the 8th Grade Social Studies standards for the State of Michigan. These standards start on page 76 of this document.

Required Technologies

• Internet: This technology is required to access FlipGrid.
• Electronic Device: This device may be a computer, tablet, Chromebook, cell phone, or any device that connects to the internet and includes an internet browser. The device must also have a camera, or be able to connect to a camera. Students will record their responses through the device camera and submit their video to FlipGrid.

Student Instructions

This pre-assessment has been designed to help me be a better teacher for you. It is not used as a grade, but simply as a tool for me to understand what you know regarding 8th Grade Social Studies at the start of the school year. Please complete this assessment to the best of your abilities.

You will complete this assessment on an electronic device with a camera using FlipGrid. If you’ve never used FlipGrid before, don’t worry, it’s really easy! Login to FlipGrid and create a video of yourself answering the following questions. Please read each question, one at a time, and then speak your answer. Make sure you speak clearly so I can hear everything you have to say. This will be one video, not five separate videos.

1. Describe the role of geography in the development of the 13 colonies.
2. Why did colonists want to declare independence from Great Britain?
3. Name three issues that were resolved in the Constitution during the Constitutional Convention.
4. Choose and explain two reform movements.
5. Who had the better advantages going into the Civil War, the North or the South? Give and explain at least two reasons to support your position.

Student Feedback

After learning more about the importance of feedback, I would like to provide students with better feedback throughout the year, starting with this early assignment. As the assignment will be completed through FlipGrid, I plan to reply back to each student with a FlipGrid video of my own touching on the following:

• Mention any information that aligns to my teaching standards. For example, if a student mentions two appropriate strengths of the North in the Civil War, I will make sure to acknowledge that those indeed are two strengths of the North.
• Make clear that any inaccurate information mentioned is inaccurate, but put a positive spin on all answers by connecting it to something that is accurate. Students who obtain positive feedback are more likely to continue an activity (Hattie & Timperley, 2007). As this is one of the first assignment my students will complete, I want to set them up to continue participation throughout the year.
• Conclude by explaining that I plan to use the information to help create my lessons throughout the year in order to tailor my instruction. Students must see value in the assessment process and how it fits into the greater learning picture (Hattie & Timperley, 2007).

Rationale for Using FlipGrid

My school district has very recently announced that we would be starting the school year remotely. This means that students will be taking this assessment at home. I had planned to use FlipGrid even if this assessment was going to be taken at school because I wanted them to get used to the tool, however now my reasons are greater. In order to create a more personable learning environment, I feel it’s important for my students and I to see and hear each other. FlipGrid is an excellent tool to close the social gap that will exist between me and my new students in a online learning environment. I hope to continue using FlipGrid and other technologies like it in order to allow my students and I to feel more connected to each other.

Resources

Shepard, L. A. (2000). The Role of Assessment in a Learning Culture. Educational Researcher, 29(7), 4–14.

CEP 813 Reflection

As I wrap up and reflect on my experience in CEP 813: Electronic Assessment, I realize how much my thinking around assessment has grown. At the start of this journey, I came up with three personal beliefs on assessment. These are my original beliefs:

1. Types: An assessment can be a lot of things. Formative assessments can be exit tickets, daily assignments, or even a show of hands. Plickers is a great way to formally assess students in a quick, anonymous way. Assessments can also take the form of an end of unit test, quiz, or project. These larger types of assessments are summative.
2. Purpose: Assessments are used to guide us teachers as to what our students know. They are key in determining how well we do at our craft. We can adjust our current teaching using data from formative assessments, and can change things for next year using data from summative assessments.
3. Perception: Some believe one needs to pass a test to show their knowledge or ability. I disagree because there are many ways students can demonstrate their learning. We cannot judge the value of a student, teacher, or school, based solely on that of a test, as there are many skills students gain that are not shown by a test.

My original beliefs are broad ideas on assessment. Throughout CEP 813, I have affirmed and grown my original thinking with every new unit of study. Here are some of the ways my thinking has progressed throughout each unit.

Unit 1: Foundations of Assessment and Evaluation

• Immediately with this first unit of CEP 813, my three beliefs were affirmed and expanded upon. I learned how standardized assessments were historically used to determine if someone had mastered a skill (skills used to increase the efficiency of factories) and were based on route memorization. This perception of the purpose of testing continues today in our schools (Shepard, 2000). It’s a perception that we need to work against because there are many ways to assess learning.
• I created my first draft of my Formative Assessment Design 1.0. This assessment is a real life example that I plan to use in my classroom. It demonstrates the purpose of what I believe assessments should be, a tool to help us teachers understand what our students understand.
• A broader range of assessment tools is necessary to capture important learning goals and processes and to more directly connect assessment to ongoing instruction (Shepard, 2000). I appreciate this way of thinking as it directly supports my view that we need to have a variety of assessment types in order to effectively determine what students understand.

Unit 2: Assessment-Driven Instructional Design

• A major theme of this unit was Backwards Design. This is a concept that I had learned about in my undergrad courses and one that I try to (not always successfully) implement within my classroom. This concept aligns with my beliefs on the purpose of assessment. In order for us teachers to really understand what our students know, our assessments must be created based on the standards and end learning results we want our students to master.
• A video by Rick Wormeli reinforced my thinking on the various types of assessments. He explained the differences between formative and summative assessments and how teachers spend a majority of their time on summmative assessments. It felt strange to me that this was true, however thinking of the perception of testing and how much time we spend on standardized tests throughout the school year, this makes sense to me.
• I created my Assessment Checklist 1.0, which supported my belief behind the purpose of what assessments are. Not only do we want assessments to show us what our students know, we want them to show us what our students understand. This is a change in my previous way of thinking, because I had used “know” and “understand” interchangeably. However, I’ve learned that just because a student “knows” something, doesn’t mean they actually understand it.

Unit 3: Feedback

• In this unit I was able to learn the importance of assessment feedback. I learned there are four levels to feedback: about the task, the processing of the task, self-regulation, and self as a person (Hattie & Timperley, 2007). I was quick to include two questions on my Assessment Checklist 2.0 that are feedback related. Before this unit, I had not considered how important feedback is in the assessment process. My view on the types of assessments has been expanded to include feedback.
• I further enhanced my Formative Assessment Design 2.0 by switching gears from a Google Form to incorporate FlipGrid as the online tool for this assessment. This assessment is shaping up to be a great example of what I view the purpose of an assessment to be. I still plan to use this assessment with my students in the fall and look forward to seeing how it informs me of student knowledge.
• Feedback is one way that we can change the perception of assessments in school. “It is the feedback information and interpretations from assessments, not the numbers or grades, that matter” (Hattie & Timperley, 2007, pg. 104). Feedback motivates students to be successful and I’m grateful to better understand the role and importance of feedback in assessments.

Unit 4: Formative Assessments in Digital Contexts

• I explored a large amount of electronic assessment tools in this unit. These tools allow for many types of assessments to be created and used effectively. Many of these tools support my beliefs regarding the purpose of assessment. Since these tools can create custom assessments, a teacher can create a large variety of assessments that support their desired learning goals and objectives.
• I was able to use my Assessment Checklist to review a formative assessment created by a peer. It was interesting to see what my peer’s perception of a good assessment looks like. I realized a lot of my views on assessments were aligned to that of my peer based on the types of questioning she used in her assessment.

Unit 5: Content Management Systems

• I reviewed the Course Management System (CMS) Google Classroom and saw how this CMS can allow for various types of assessments. Pretty much any electronic file can be uploaded and turned in as an assignment through Google Classroom. Students can also use the internal features, like discussion board questions, to participate in assessments. Parents and guardians can be sent a weekly summary of Google Classroom activity. This summary could help change the perception of assessments by showing families the variety of activities students partake in.
• Edmodo is a CMS that I used to create an assessment for the first time. This assessment creation is a good example of an assessment with purpose. Although the depth of this assessment is shallow, the assessment itself is rooted in my teaching standards. I plan to use this assessment with my students next year as an introduction to the topic of Reconstruction. Teachers can use Edmodo to create a variety of online assessments with custom multiple choice to short answer types of questions.

Unit 6: Digital Games and Assessments

• This was on of my favorite units in this course because I got to explore a core belief I have regarding assessments, that there are different types of effective assessments. I created my very own game based assessment using a program called Twine. This experience really reinforced all three of my assessment beliefs. The game’s purpose is closely tied to my teaching standards and it’s a great example of an assessment that can change the perception of what assessment should be. I’m extremely proud of this creation as it took me a lot of time to figure out how to use Twine, but I had a lot of fun!

Unit 7: Final Touches

• In this final unit, I was able to re-visit my Assessment Checklist to create version 4.0. This final version includes a sixth question, but one that I find very important. It gets at equity and bias in assessment creation. My initial perception was that standardize tests were fair to all groups of people. I disliked the over use of testing, but did not see them to put some people at a disadvantage. It was interesting to learn about the types of bias that appear in some tests and helpful to learn about how teachers can try to prevent unfairness during the assessment creation process.

Conclusion

• My initial beliefs on assessments have broadened to include even more viewpoints on what makes a good assessment. Each unit has allowed me to think and reflect on my ideas. Tools like the Assessment Checklist are helpful because I can use this to help determine if my future assessments are up to par or not. I look forward to continuing my learning on electronic assessment in the future!

References

Hattie, J., & Timperley, H. (2007). The power of feedback. Review of Educational Research, 77(1), 81–112.

Shepard, L. A. (2000). The Role of Assessment in a Learning Culture. Educational Researcher, 29(7), 4–14.

Back Again?! Assessment Checklist 4.0!

After further research, I have added a sixth and final question to my Assessment Checklist. Please view my updated checklist here. Changes have been made in blue to help distinguish my latest thinking.

The topic of my latest question is assessment bias. I ask, “Is the assessment free of bias?” Now, I will admit, I don’t know any teacher who would purposely create an assessment containing bias. However, everyone has hidden bias, whether we realize it or not, and this bias may rear its ugly head in places we may not think about, like assessment creation.

We teachers need to scrutinize our assessments to ensure that questions are not offensive and do not unfairly penalize students. Every student deserves the opportunity to be successful, and bias in assessment creation should never hold a student back from success.

Patriot or Loyal? A Game Based Assessment

I’ve finished working on my game assessment and I’m excited to share it! Check out my game here! I’ve added to my initial plan and the details are included in this post. I have also included attributions for multimedia included in the game at the bottom of this post.

Topic: The overall topic, or semiotic domain, for my game is the “Road to Revolution.” Players will take on the role of an American colonist as they encounter six events that led to the American Revolution. These events will have been discussed in class before the game and players should have a basic understanding of each event.

Internal Grammar: The six events that players will encounter include: The Stamp Act, Townsend Acts, The Boston Massacre, The Boston Tea Party, The Coercive Acts, and Lexington & Concord. Players will become a Loyalist (someone loyal to Britain and does not wish for independence) or a Patriot (someone who wishes to break free from Britain).

Players will also be exposed to symbols and sounds that represent the Patriot and Loyalist sides. The Betsy Ross colonial flag and “Yankee Doodle” song represent the Patriot side, while the British flag and “Turkish March” song represent the Loyalist side.

External Grammar: For each event a player encounters, they must make a choice. The choices are based on the historical perspectives of Loyalists and Patriots. For example, players will “witness” the Boston Massacre and will have to share to a local newspaper who they think is to blame. Patriots will blame the British soldiers as the aggressors, and Loyalists will blame the crowd of people for starting the conflict. Another example is Lexington/Concord. Players can decide to go and fight the British soldiers or urge people to remain calm and allow the soldiers to do their job. Just like in real life, these historical events shaped opinions, and the opinions shaped the events.

Procedural Rhetoric: As players encounter the events and make choices, their choice will reinforce the Patriot or Loyalist perspective. Each time a player chooses a “Patriot choice” they will be awarded a Patriot Point, while a “Loyalist choice” will result in a Loyalist Point. At the end of the game players will be assigned to either the Patriot, Loyalist, or maybe Neutral side (if they are split on their points) and this outcome is a direct result of their choices.

The image of the “Patriot flag” and “Patriot song” are displayed for each Patriot choice, further reinforcing the result of that choice. The same is true for each Loyalist choice.

Assessment Plan: As students progress throughout the game and make decisions to determine their outcome of Patriot or Loyalist, they will need to understand how their choices impact their result. At the end of the game, students will provide a written explanation of why they ended up with their result. They will need to cite evidence from the specific events and how their choices relate to either the Patriot or Loyalist perspectives. I plan for students to play this game assessment after learning about these events. If I notice that students cannot properly explain the event/choice relationship, I will look at which events and choices students are struggling with to see what needs to be re-taught.

Assessment Design Checklist: To see how this game assessment plan holds up to my Assessment Design Checklist, I’ve taken the questions from my checklist and answered them below.

• Does the content of the assessment align with the desired learning?  Was the assessment created with the end in mind?
  • Yes, the content in this assessment aligns with my 8th Grade Social Studies teaching standards for Michigan.
• Are students assessed on understanding over knowledge?
  • Students will not only need to understand the events presented in the game, but they will need to know how their choices relate to the Patriot and Loyalist perspectives.
• Is the assessment content meaningful to students? Do students understand the importance of the content?
  • I plan to communicate the importance of this game assessment before students participate. Also, I plan to have students complete this game after they’ve already learned about the events that led to the American Revolution. This should make the game more meaningful to students.
• Does the assessment offer timely and meaningful feedback to students?
  • Feedback is given after each event, as students will see their Patriot/Loyalist Points score change as they progress through the game. At the end, students will be told which side their path has taken them.
• Is the student involved in the feedback process?
  • Students will provide feedback as to why they ended up with their result. I could also consider having students provide feedback regarding if they believe their outcome was or was not appropriate based on their choices.

Attributions for multimedia used in game assessment

• Patriot/Loyalist image: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/LZ5lPeyBJmg/hqdefault.jpg
• British flag: https://media1.tenor.com/images/91668275ad9bc4c5c39e5f6d5a8ff8d5/tenor.gif?itemid=4718861
• Betsy Ross flag: https://media.tenor.com/images/d083397800ba81947abf398bbd0b1b95/tenor.gif
• Stamp Act image: https://www.sporcle.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/6-27.jpg
• Townsend Acts image: https://www.bostonteapartyship.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/boston-townshend-act.jpg
• Boston Massacre image: https://www.revolutionary-war-and-beyond.com/images/the-boston-massacre-5th-march-1770-by-alonzo-chappell.jpg
• Boston Tea Party image: https://thefederalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Boston_Tea_Party1-Custom.jpg
• Coercive Acts image: https://alexandrac46.weebly.com/uploads/3/7/5/1/37514145/167853_orig.jpg
• Lexington/Concord image: https://americanmilitaryhistorypodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/1222120330.62.jpg
• American Revolution Banner: https://assets.sutori.com/user-uploads/image/db7f178e-9af1-45e0-92da-5ee2798a7373/8c794973d30a48272b81b7cb79a08cfe.jpeg
• All music/sounds: https://lordstirlings.org/music.htm

Game Based Assessment: Patriot or Loyalist?

I have used game based assessments with my students in the past and they are usually a big hit. Students are engaged and don’t realize the amount of learning going on because content is presented in a fun way. The assessments I’ve used are ones that I’ve found and I’ve never created my own before now. I was recently introduced to a program called Twine, an online tool used to tell non-linear stories, which means it can also be used to create “choose your own adventure” games. I will be creating such a game using Twine based on the American Revolution and today I’m going to discuss my plan. As I’m a new user of Twine, any help or feedback would be appreciated in the comment section below!

Topic: The overall topic, or semiotic domain, for my game is going to be the “Road to Revolution.” This includes the build up of events and ideas that led to the American Revolution. I plan to include various images and multimedia that represent aspects of the time leading up to the American Revolution.

Procedural Rhetoric: Players will take on the role of an American colonist and will encounter historical events and ideas throughout the game. They will be given choices on how to respond to each event/idea. Their decisions will take them on a path to become a Patriot or Loyalist.

I have yet to thoroughly explore the capabilities of Twine so I can’t offer specifics on how a player’s path will be formed, I’m not sure if Twine can keep track of the number of times a player selects a “Patriot” choice to determine the end result as Patriot or Loyalist, or if a player will need to keep track of the number of Patriot/Loyalist outcomes they receive to determine their final result. I look forward to figuring this out soon.

Internal Grammar: Players will be take the path of a Loyalist (someone loyal to Britain and does not wish for independence) or a Patriot (someone who wishes to break free from Britain). They will also be exposed to a number of historical events such as: The Stamp Act, Townsend Acts, The Boston Massacre, The Boston Tea Party, Lexington & Concord, etc. These events will have been discussed in class before the game and players should have a basic understanding of each event.

External Grammar: Each of the events/ideas that players will be exposed to have different perspectives and American colonists responded to events differently. For example, players will witness the Boston Massacre and will have to share who they think is to blame. Patriots will blame the British soldiers as the aggressors, and Loyalists will blame the crowd of people for starting the conflict. Another example is players will have to choose how to respond to the taxes on tea. They can choose to continue to purchase tea (a Loyalist decision) or to boycott the purchase of tea (a Patriot decision).

Assessment Plan: As students progress throughout the game and make decisions to determine their outcome of Patriot or Loyalist, they will need to understand how their choices impact their result. At the end of the game, I will have students provide a written explanation of why they ended up with their result. They will need to cite specific events and how their choices relate to either the Patriot or Loyalist perspectives.

If students are unable to identify the relationship between their choices and their assigned outcome, this will show me that I need to re-teach this topic. I will also gain a sense of which events students do and do not understand and can spend time reviewing any events I notice are misunderstood.

Assessment Design Checklist: To see how this game assessment plan holds up to my Assessment Design Checklist, I’ve taken the questions from my checklist and answered them below.

• Does the content of the assessment align with the desired learning?  Was the assessment created with the end in mind?
  • Yes, the content in this assessment aligns with my 8th Grade Social Studies teaching standards for Michigan.
• Are students assessed on understanding over knowledge?
  • Students will not only need to understand the events presented in the game, but they will need to know how their choice impacts their result.
• Is the assessment content meaningful to students? Do students understand the importance of the content?
  • I plan to communicate the importance of this game assessment before students participate. Also, I plan to have students complete this game after they’ve already learned about the events that led to the American Revolution. This should make the game more meaningful to students.
• Does the assessment offer timely and meaningful feedback to students?
  • Students will be able to see their result of a Patriot or Loyalist as soon as the game is complete.
• Is the student involved in the feedback process?
  • Students will provide feedback as to why they ended up with their result. I could also consider having students provide feedback regarding if they believe their outcome was or was not appropriate based on their choices.

All in all, I’m looking forward to further exploring Twine to get my game assessment started!

Assessing students in Edmodo

After a several years of not using the platform, I recently revisited Edmodo and used the quiz creator to create an assessment for the first time. Check out my video to hear more about how my experience went!

The assessment I created in this video is a lower level assessment because it has students complete the lyrics without much higher level thinking. Because of this, it does not pass all of my expectations in my assessment checklist, but it does pass my first and fourth expectation. I see value in using this assessment as in introduction to Reconstitution because I believe it can get students thinking about the topic.

Update: I’ve provided an additional video showing my questions up close while I demonstrate the rap video students will use to complete the assessment. Clicking the title of the video (in the top left) will open it in YouTube if you would like to zoom in further.

Edmodo Quiz Up Close

I see a lot of value in the Edmodo Quiz creator. Here are some of the things I like the most:

• Immediate feedback – Students can see how they did as soon as they hit submit. This instant feedback is great for students and teachers. On the teacher side of things, data is broken down by student and by question for review.
• Versatility – Questions can be made fill in the blank, multiple choice, matching, short answer, and more. While the quiz I created was all fill in the blank, I like the ability to create deeper level thinking questions with the short answer option.
• Intuition – Student answers are accepted if they are typed in upper or lower case. This is more intuitive than some quiz creators I have seen. While I would like more time to test how intuitive this quiz creator is, I like what I see so far.

Nothing is perfect, and there are some things I would like to change about the Edmodo quiz creator. I would like the option to have more than one question on a page. For my assessment example, I used the same video for all of my questions and it was frustrating that the video has to be restarted for each question. All in all, I would recommend the Edmodo quiz creator and would definitely use it with my students.

Google Classroom Review

I’ve used Google Classroom with my students for several years now, however during the most recent school year I used it much more than usual. Throughout my usage of this Course Management System (CMS), I have encountered many benefits and drawbacks of the various features. Today I will explore the four major features of Google Classroom: Steam, Classwork, People, and Grades, in addition to the Privacy Notice and how each of these relate to assessment.

Stream

The stream is the default screen after a student logs in and contains the “feed” of assessments, announcements, and anything else the teacher posts for students to see. There is a box that lists upcoming assessments and their due dates and there’s also a spot for students to type and post a message to be displayed publicly in the feed. This feature can be disabled if a teacher doesn’t want students making public posts.

Students will typically access their assessments directly from the stream in order to turn in their work. Each assessment has a specific drop location that is easy for students to access. On the teacher side, it’s easy to see which students have and have not completed an assessment.

Private feedback can be given for each assessment and students can respond to this feedback. I’ve found this extremely useful in providing feedback to students. Sometimes I will ask questions to further clarify something and students will respond back with more evidence of their thinking.

Classwork

Under the classwork portion, students only see the assessments that have been posted. This is the second way students can access and turn in their work, the first being in the stream. If the stream is cluttered with other posts, this feature allows students to more easily see the list of assigned assessments. As for teachers, new assignments, quizzes, questions, and materials can be created here. Creations can be saved in draft mode and do not have to be published right away. Teachers can also post things but make them appear to students at a later date.

A quiz assessment cannot be created directly within Google Classroom, however Classroom is connected to Google Forms. I do not see this as a drawback as both programs communicate well. Teachers have the option to import scores automatically into Classroom for students to see.

Questions can be used for assessments as well. Student responses to questions can be made public or private. If they are public, students can respond to the posts of their peers, however cannot see their peers posts until they post something themselves. Essentially, the public option becomes a discussion board. I like that students cannot see other posts until they post their own because it promotes an original response. The private feature is also useful when I don’t want other students to see each other’s posts. I can provide feedback to both the public and private postings.

People

A class roster is found on the people screen that contains emails for each student. Parents/Guardians can also be invited to get a periodic email summary of student activity. If parents accept the invitation, their email will appear on the roster next to their student’s name.

The email summary for parents and guardians is useful to keep families in the loop on upcoming assessments and whether or not an assessment has been turned in or not. A major drawback to this feature is that a student can click “mark as done” and the assessment will show as being turned in, even if the student attaches no work. This causes confusion on the parent end when they see a “0” in the grade book for missing work, but Google Classroom shows it as being turned in. I would like to see Google Classroom give teachers the control to mark things as missing or turned in to help avoid this confusion.

Grades

The grade screen is only accessible to the teacher. This is a grade book grid view that includes the names of each student on the left, and each assessment on the top. This big picture view is convenient when a teacher would like to see student scores on assessments without going into each individual assessment.

Grades are also provided to students on each individual assignment, however a drawback is that Google Classroom does not communicate with the system my school district uses to store grades and attendance. This is not a huge deal, but it would be a continent feature I would like to see in the future.

Privacy Notice

According to the privacy notice for G Suite Education products, for which Google Classroom is a part of, Google collects and shares user information in certain ways. The time, place, and type of device used to access Google Classroom is recorded by Google. K-12 students will not receive any ads from Google, nor will their personal information be shared with third parties. Parents are able to request their child’s information to not be shared with Google Classroom by contacting their school’s G Suite administrator. However, there are certain legal situations when Google may share personal information. I do not any reason in the policy that would cause me to limit my use of Google Classroom for student assessments, or for any other school activity.

Overall Assessment Implications

Although there are other CMS’s that offer more features for teachers and students, I believe Google Classroom is a solid CMS that provides adequate features for assessments. These include:

• Multiple Choice or multiple answer quizzes created using Google Forms.
• Assessments where students digitally create. Any document format can be turned in, but it may take time to show students how to find and turn in certain file types.
• Discussion board based assessments, when a teacher wants students to communicate with each other.
• Feedback is easy to give and receive. Teacher and students can converse back and forth.
• Need help? Students can post questions in the classroom feed and other students can respond to help provide an answer.

Since every student at my school has a Google Account, it makes sense for me to use Google Classroom as my CMS. Students can use any Google program (Docs, Slides, Sheets, etc) and can easily turn in these file types through Google Classroom. The streamlined feel is great for students and teachers. Is it perfect? No, but it has the basics that I believe the majority of teachers would want in a CMS.

Does Your Assessment Pass the Test?

The new and improved version of my assessment checklist is here! After further research I’ve fine tuned my checklist and added a fifth question. I have used the checklist to evaluate an assessment created by a peer and I realize that some of my questions are difficult to answer without a conversation with the assessment creator. Regardless, I believe the questions I have in this final checklist are important and backed by research.

How does your assessment stack up?

View the checklist here. My newest additions are typed in blue.

Formative Assessment Design 2.0

Today I’m going to revisit the formative assessment I created for my social studies classroom. Just to differentiate my thinking, any updated text will be in blue.

Purpose

I’ve noticed that students this school year have entered my class with more knowledge on some of my curriculum, specifically that of the American Revolution. The purpose of this assessment is for me to understand what my students know about my content at the beginning of the year. I plan to use the data to re-design my goals and lessons to better accommodate the needs of my students. According to Shepard, “Many teachers rely on a traditional, pretest-posttest design to document student progress, but then do not use information from the pretest in instruction” (Shepard, 2000, pg. 11). I want don’t want to be one of “most” teachers, instead I want to actually use this information to guide my instruction. I plan to differentiate my instruction based on how students do on this pre-assessment. Although I’m not sure what this will look like yet and wish to run ideas by my fellow 8th grade social studies companions, this may initially come in the form of a group project on the colonies.

This assessment contains several “big picture” topics based on the 8th Grade Social Studies standards for the State of Michigan. These standards start on page 76 of this document.

Student Instructions

This pre-assessment has been designed to help me be a better teacher for you. It is not used as a grade, but simply as a tool for me to understand what you know regarding 8th Grade Social Studies at the start of the school year. Please complete this assessment to the best of your abilities.

You will complete this assessment on your Chromebook using FlipGrid. If you’ve never used FlipGrid before, don’t worry, it’s really easy! Login to FlipGrid and create a video of yourself answering the following questions. Please read each question, one at a time, and then speak your answer. Make sure you speak clearly so I can hear everything you have to say.

1. Describe the role of geography in the development of the 13 colonies.
2. Why did colonists want to declare independence from Great Britain?
3. Name three issues that were resolved in the Constitution during the Constitutional Convention.
4. Choose and explain two reform movements.
5. Who had the better advantages going into the Civil War, the North or the South? Give and explain at least two reasons to support your position.

Student Feedback

After learning more about the importance of feedback, I would like to provide students with better feedback throughout the year, starting with this early assignment. As the assignment will be completed through FlipGrid, I plan do reply back to each student with a FlipGrid video touching on the following:

• Mention any information that aligns to my teaching standards. For example, if a student mentions two appropriate strengths of the North in the Civil War, I will make sure to acknowledge that those indeed are two strengths of the North.
• Make clear that any inaccurate information mentioned is inaccurate, but put a positive spin on all answers by connecting it to something that is accurate. Students who obtain positive feedback are more likely to continue an activity (Hattie & Timperley, 2007). As this is one of the first assignment my students will complete, I want to set them up to continue participation throughout the year.
• Conclude by explaining that I plan to use the information to help create my lessons throughout the year in order to tailor my instruction. Students must see value in the assessment process and how it fits into the greater learning picture (Hattie & Timperley, 2007).

Resources

Shepard, L. A. (2000). The Role of Assessment in a Learning Culture. Educational Researcher, 29(7), 4–14.

Does Your Assessment Pass the Test?

How can teachers tell if a classroom assessment is appropriate?

I’ve been learning about the many factors that go into making a model assessment. Recently I created a checklist for teachers to use to determine how well an assessment supports the research that I’ve read. I just updated my Assessment Design Checklist with a new emphasis on student feedback.

Please access the checklist here!