Topic: Assessment tools

Teacher: Edita Blanco

RUBRIC FOR NOTEBOOKS

	10	8	5,5	2
Activities 40 %	All the activities have been done and corrected.	All the activities have been done but not corrected.	Half or less than half of the activities have been done (corrected or not).	Only some of the activities have been done.
Neatness and organization 20 %	Pages are numbered, no pages have been skipped, and titles are included.	Mostly all pages are numbered and include a title, no skipped pages.	some page numbers and titles are missing, a few skipped pages.	Pages are not numbered or titled, several skipped pages.
Content Accuracy 20 %	Table of contents is up-to-date. It includes all the contents explained in the unit.	Table of contents is up-to-date but some of the contents are not included.	Table of contents is not-up-to-date. Most of the contents are not included.	Table of contents have not been updated for a long time.
Learning strategies 20 %	All lessons inlude notes taken by the students, reflexions and examples.	Most of the lessons include notes taken by the students, reflexions and examples.	Several lessons include notes taken by the students, reflexions and examples.	A few lessons (or none) include notes taken by the students, reflexions and examples.

RUBRIC for FUNCTIONS AND GRAPHS: Representation and analysis

	2	5,5	8	10
Representation of linear functions: Table of values. 40 %	Student hasn’t understood how to make a table of values and represent the points in a graph.	The table of values have several mistakes. Many of the points have not been plotted correctly and are not easy to see.	The table of values have a few mistakes. Most of the points have been plotted correctly and are easy to see.	The table of values have been correctly filled. All points are plotted correctly and are easy to see. A ruler is used to neatly connect the points or make the bars.
Representation of linear functions: Labeling of X axis. 10 %	The X-axis is not labeled.	The X-axis has a label.	The X-axis has a clear label that describes the units used for the independent variable.	The X-axis has a clear, neat label that describes the units used for the independent variable.
Representation of linear functions: Labeling of Y axis. 10 %	The Y-axis is not labeled.	The Y-axis has a label.	The Y-axis has a clear label that describes the units used for the independent variable.	The Y-axis has a clear, neat label that describes the units used for the independent variable.
Graph Analysis 40 %	Student wrote more than three correct facts about the graph and used comparisons to analyse it. He/she understand all the information that could be obtained form the graph.	Student was able to write three correct facts about the graph and understand the information that could be obtained from it.	Student was able to write two correct facts about the graph and he/she shows a beginning understanding of the information that could be obtained from the graph.	Student was able to write one or fewer facts that were correct about the graph but he/she doesn’t seem to have understood all the information that could be obtained from the graph.

Source: https://www.edutopia.org

7 Smart, Fast Ways to Do Formative Assessment

Within these methods you’ll find close to 40 tools and tricks for finding out what your students know while they’re still learning.

By Laura Thomas

April 26, 2019

Formative assessment—discovering what students know while they’re still in the process of learning it—can be tricky. Designing just the right assessment can feel high stakes—for teachers, not students—because we’re using it to figure out what comes next. Are we ready to move on? Do our students need a different path into the concepts? Or, more likely, which students are ready to move on and which need a different path?

When it comes to figuring out what our students really know, we have to look at more than one kind of information. A single data point—no matter how well designed the quiz, presentation, or problem behind it—isn’t enough information to help us plan the next step in our instruction.

Add to that the fact that different learning tasks are best measured in different ways, and we can see why we need a variety of formative assessment tools we can deploy quickly, seamlessly, and in a low-stakes way—all while not creating an unmanageable workload. That’s why it’s important to keep it simple: Formative assessments generally just need to be checked, not graded, as the point is to get a basic read on the progress of individuals, or the class as a whole.

7 Approaches to Formative Assessment

1. Entry and exit slips: Those marginal minutes at the beginning and end of class can provide some great opportunities to find out what kids remember. Start the class off with a quick question about the previous day’s work while students are getting settled—you can ask differentiated questions written out on chart paper or projected on the board, for example.

Exit slips can take lots of forms beyond the old-school pencil and scrap paper. Whether you’re assessing at the bottom of Bloom’s taxonomy or the top, you can use tools like Padlet or Poll Everywhere, or measure progress toward attainment or retention of essential content or standards with tools like Google Classroom’s Question tool, Google Forms with Flubaroo, and Edulastic, all of which make seeing what students know a snap.

A quick way to see the big picture if you use paper exit tickets is to sort the papers into three piles: Students got the point; they sort of got it; and they didn’t get it. The size of the stacks is your clue about what to do next.

No matter the tool, the key to keeping students engaged in the process of just-walked-in or almost-out-the-door formative assessment is the questions. Ask students to write for one minute on the most meaningful thing they learned. You can try prompts like:

What are three things you learned, two things you’re still curious about, and one thing you don’t understand? 
How would you have done things differently today, if you had the choice? 
What I found interesting about this work was... 
Right now I’m feeling... 
Today was hard because...

Or skip the words completely and have students draw or circle emojis to represent their assessment of their understanding.

2. Low-stakes quizzes and polls: If you want to find out whether your students really know as much as you think they know, polls and quizzes created with Socrative or Quizlet or in-class games and tools like Quizalize, Kahoot, FlipQuiz, Gimkit, Plickers, and Flippity can help you get a better sense of how much they really understand. (Grading quizzes but assigning low point values is a great way to make sure students really try: The quizzes matter, but an individual low score can’t kill a student’s grade.) Kids in many classes are always logged in to these tools, so formative assessments can be done very quickly. Teachers can see each kid’s response, and determine both individually and in aggregate how students are doing.

Because you can design the questions yourself, you determine the level of complexity. Ask questions at the bottom of Bloom’s taxonomy and you’ll get insight into what facts, vocabulary terms, or processes kids remember. Ask more complicated questions (“What advice do you think Katniss Everdeen would offer Scout Finch if the two of them were talking at the end of chapter 3?”), and you’ll get more sophisticated insights.

3. Dipsticks: So-called alternative formative assessments are meant to be as easy and quick as checking the oil in your car, so they’re sometimes referred to as dipsticks. These can be things like asking students to:

write a letter explaining a key idea to a friend,
draw a sketch to visually represent new knowledge, or
do a think, pair, share exercise with a partner.

Your own observations of students at work in class can provide valuable data as well, but they can be tricky to keep track of. Taking quick notes on a tablet or smartphone, or using a copy of your roster, is one approach. A focused observation form is more formal and can help you narrow your note-taking focus as you watch students work.

4. Interview assessments: If you want to dig a little deeper into students’ understanding of content, try discussion-based assessment methods. Casual chats with students in the classroom can help them feel at ease even as you get a sense of what they know, and you may find that five-minute interview assessments work really well. Five minutes per student would take quite a bit of time, but you don’t have to talk to every student about every project or lesson.

You can also shift some of this work to students using a peer-feedback process called TAG feedback (Tell your peer something they did well, Ask a thoughtful question, Give a positive suggestion). When you have students share the feedback they have for a peer, you gain insight into both students’ learning.

For more introverted students—or for more private assessments—use Flipgrid, Explain Everything, or Seesaw to have students record their answers to prompts and demonstrate what they can do.

5. Methods that incorporate art: Consider using visual art or photography or videography as an assessment tool. Whether students draw, create a collage, or sculpt, you may find that the assessment helps them synthesize their learning. Or think beyond the visual and have kids act out their understanding of the content. They can create a dance to model cell mitosis or act out stories like Ernest Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” to explore the subtext.

6. Misconceptions and errors: Sometimes it’s helpful to see if students understand why something is incorrect or why a concept is hard. Ask students to explain the “muddiest point” in the lesson—the place where things got confusing or particularly difficult or where they still lack clarity. Or do a misconception check: Present students with a common misunderstanding and ask them to apply previous knowledge to correct the mistake, or ask them to decide if a statement contains any mistakes at all, and then discuss their answers.

7. Self-assessment: Don’t forget to consult the experts—the kids. Often you can give your rubric to your students and have them spot their strengths and weaknesses.

You can use sticky notes to get a quick insight into what areas your kids think they need to work on. Ask them to pick their own trouble spot from three or four areas where you think the class as a whole needs work, and write those areas in separate columns on a whiteboard. Have you students answer on a sticky note and then put the note in the correct column—you can see the results at a glance.

Several self-assessments let the teacher see what every kid thinks very quickly. For example, you can use colored stacking cups that allow kids to flag that they’re all set (green cup), working through some confusion (yellow), or really confused and in need of help (red).

Similar strategies involve using participation cards for discussions (each student has three cards—“I agree,” “I disagree,” and “I don’t know how to respond”) and thumbs-up responses (instead of raising a hand, students hold a fist at their belly and put their thumb up when they’re ready to contribute). Students can instead use six hand gestures to silently signal that they agree, disagree, have something to add, and more. All of these strategies give teachers an unobtrusive way to see what students are thinking.

No matter which tools you select, make time to do your own reflection to ensure that you’re only assessing the content and not getting lost in the assessment fog. If a tool is too complicated, is not reliable or accessible, or takes up a disproportionate amount of time, it’s OK to put it aside and try something different.

CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS

This is a useful poster which gives practical examples of questions that can be used at any stage of the assessment process. It connects Bloom's Taxonomy and Thinking Skills.