Chapter 8

Common Assessments:
Bridging the Gap Between Teaching
and Learning
Back to the Magic 4
Questions
 What do we want students to learn?
 How will we know when they have
learned?
 How will we respond when they don’t
learn?
 How will we respond if they have already
learned it?
Common Formative
Assessments
 Eliminates the “teacher lottery”
 Creates a standard base of knowledge
for students going forward.
 Provides data that drives debate and
improvement in instructional activities.
 Teaching can be different, but Common
Assessments show consistency of
student learning.
Common Questions about
Common Assessments
 Question 1: What do we mean by
common?
 Periodic or interim assessments
collaboratively designed and administered to
all students in a grade level or course
several times within the quarter, semester,
trimester, or entire school year.
 Provide immediate feedback WHILE
LEARNING IS STILL TAKING PLACE
 Common Assessments are not the only
assessments used, but they must be used
and results should be discussed after each
common assessment
 Along with Common Assessments, each
teacher is responsible for day to day and
minute by minute classroom feedback for
each student as well
Questions Cont.

 What Data Should We Collect?

 We assess for two reasons:
 To gather evidence of student achievement to
inform instructional decisions.
 To motivate learning. Virtually all school
improvement models contend that schools will
become more effective if the right people have
access to the right evidence analyzed in the right
way and used to inform the right decisions
 Rick Stiggins
 6 Questions about Common Assessments to determine
their value and effect on student learning:
 Do they help our team to identify students who are experiencing
difficulty in their learning?
 Do we have a plan in place to provide those students with
additional time and support for learning?
 Do we provide students with another opportunity to demonstrate
their learning once they have been required to devote additional
time to learning the skill or concept?
 Do the results provide me with useful information as a teacher,
helping me to identify areas where my students are not doing
well compared with similar students pursuing the same
curriculum?
 Does student success on our common assessments translate
into success on other high stakes assessments such as state
and national exams/
More Questions about
Common Assessments
 What decisions are being made based on
assessment data?
 Critical instructional decisions based on data:
 Whether a learning target or outcome has been achieved
 Which students require additional time and support
 Which areas require additional teaching
 Whether students will be ready for the summative
assessment of learning at the end of the unit or course
 Whether curriculum is aligned across the grade or subject
 Whether teachers can employ effective strategies in their
instruction in the event that one or more teachers are not
obtaining satisfactory results
Still More Questions
 Who Will Make the Critical Decisions About
Student Learning?
 Formative, Common Assessments provide both the
teacher and the students with the information they
need.
 Most important decisions are the decisions the
students make for themselves.
 Students must be made aware of learning targets,
where they currently stand, and where they need to
go to meet the standards
 Three skills that teachers must encourage in
students:
 Self Management—How can students plan and organize
their own learning? How can they set goals, and name the
milestones they expect to reach along the way?
 Self Evaluation—How can students evaluate and critique
their own work? How can they critique the work of their
peers and reflect on the differences in perception?
 Self Adaptation—How can students modify their working
methods, based on the feedback they receive? How can
they best be prepared to learn?
 How Do We Involve Students in the
Assessment Process?
 Five Steps in which students demonstrate
involvement:
 Understand learning targets
 Engage in self-assessment
 Watch themselves grow
 Talk about their growth
 Plan next steps
Creating Common
Assessments
 Stage One: Identify Essential Learning—Team
discusses essential learning to be assessed.
 Stage Two: Assemble and Review Test Items—Type
of assessment (T/F, Mult. Choice, etc.), variety of
evidence of essential understanding
 Stage Three: Design a Scoring Tool—collectively
agree on evaluative criteria, Create a rubric—no
subjectivity on evaluating the target.
 Stage Four: “Anchor” the work—reconvene the
collaborative teams to review the student work and
describe it—sort groups into low, medium, and high
quality responses
Using Common
Assessment Results
 Assessment is the process of gathering and
discussing information from multiple and
diverse sources in order to develop a deep
understanding of what students know,
understand, and can do with their knowledge
as a result of their educational experiences.
The process culminates when
assessment results are used to
improve subsequent learning
 Teachers must have knowledge of various
strategies, skills and tactics to address specific
student needs
 The more deeply teachers understand
instructional organizers such as multiple
intelligences, learning styles, ethnicity, gender,
children at risk, learning disabilities, critical
thinking and brain research, the more precisely
they will respond to the diverse needs of the
learner.
Ongoing Professional
Inquiry
 We must utilize collective inquiry as a
powerful way to engage ourselves in
discovering what each of us can do to
answer the four critical questions of a
professional learning community.