Embedded Formative Assessment
with
Mike Power
EdCaliber Link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsCQG7bF1vE
Launching Into Hyperdrive Link
https://pusd.haikulearning.com/madelenebrooks/pusd-pddays1314/cms_page/view/19372865?_u=4077349&nids=61394451&uids=61409665
My Primary Resource
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All of the information on EFA comes from
Dylan Wiliam’s book, “Embedded Formative
Assessment”.
If you would like to learn more about
specific strategies, I highly recommend
aquiring this text (each participant at the
PUSD conference was given a copy).
In addition to establishing the rationale
behind this technique, the book gives
detailed descriptions of the reasearch
methods used as well as the results of that
research.
Most importantly, the text includes 53
specific classroom strategies.
Some Promising Failures
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There is no proof that designing lessons to
suit the learning styles of your students
results in greater student achievement.
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There is some evidence of slight gains in
students who were forced to try a learning style
they are not comfortable with.
Try crossing your arms… notice which arm is
on top. Now try the opposite way… which way
forced you to learn something?
Improving the content knowledge of teachers
has a minimal effect on student learning.
Though there is a correlation between the
experience level of the teacher and student
learning, that advantage is greatly reduced
after only a few years.
The Potential of Embedded Formative
Assessment
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Embedded Formative Assessment (EFA)
is showing impressive results in
significantly raising student achievement.
Dylan Wiliam’s book, Embedded
Formative Assessment, documents
specific experimental designs and
research results for all aspects of EFA.
When implementing new policies from
school site and District leadership teams,
we are often told that the newest
mandates are, “research based”, but how
often are we presented with the specific
research?
The Potential of Embedded Formative
Assessment
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At times it would appear that we throw
programs at problems, with little follow
through as to the effectiveness of these
changes.
It is my belief that most teachers are
highly professional and logical creatures
who are interested in improving student
learning.
I have met very few teachers in my 25
year career, that would refuse to
implement a strategy if they were
convinced that it was what was best for
their students.
What is embedded formative assessment?
• Given the continual change in
district wide testing in recent years,
our current definition may be
somewhat ambiguous
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Benchmarks
DWAs
DIAs
Formative assessments
Summative assessments
Interim assessments
What is embedded formative assessment?
• Research has shown that the type of testing that
has the most profound impact on improving student
learning is “embedded formative assessment”.
• Embedded formative assessment is getting
feedback AS you are in the process of teaching a
lesson.
– Its not a pre or post test
– It very closely resembles, “checking for
understanding”.
• unlike equity sticks, it makes all 35 of your
students accountable for every question.
– The goal is to create a snapshot that is relevant
and clearly measurable.
– After the snapshot, we use this data to clarify
and re-teach specific aspects of a lesson, as
needed
– Basically, you are checking in to see if your kids
are, “getting it”.
What is embedded formative assessment?
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There are 5 key strategies of Embedded
Formative Assessment:
1. Clarifying, sharing and understanding learning
intentions and criteria for success
2. Engineering effective classroom discussion,
activities, and learning tasks that elicit
evidence of learning
3. Providing feedback that moves learning
forward
4. Activating learners as instructional resources
for one another
5. Activating students as owners of their own
learning
1.
Clarifying, sharing and understanding learning
intentions and criteria for success
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Teachers must make it clear what they
want students to learn.
Make sure students clearly understand
what they are supposed to learn and what
they are supposed to be doing to facilitate
their own learning.
Posting Objectives can help, if the student
understands the objective, sees its
relevance, and understand how they will
demonstrate mastery.
Rubrics can also play a role, especially if
they are previewed in the anticipatory set.
2. Engineering effective classroom discussion, activities,
and learning tasks that elicit evidence of learning
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Teachers need to ascertain where
students are in their learning
Careful attention needs to be given to the
creation of questions that can effectively
measure what students have learned in
each phase of the lesson.
Sometimes there is more value in
exploring how a student arrived at an
answer, as opposed to focusing on the
correctness of the final response
High functioning classes create high
levels of student engagement. When
examining answering patterns, it is
important to note that calling on the eager
kid makes the achievement gap worse.
3. Providing feedback that moves learning forward
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Feedback needs to be constructive and
specific in order to be effective
Just giving a score as a form of feedback
may do more harm than good.
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It may create frustration
It may lower student confidence
Some students may get defensive or shut down
There is evidence that giving comments
without scores results in higher levels of
student achievement
“Never grade students while they are still
learning”– Alfred Kohn
4. Activating learners as instructional resources
for one another
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There are 4 main reasons why welldesigned cooperative learning activities
substantially improve student
achievement:
1. Motivation: Students must see that helping
their peers is in their self interest.
2. Social Cohesion: Students help their peers
because they care about the group.
3. Personalization: Students learn more because
the more able students engage with those that
are struggling with certain concepts.
4. Cognitive Elaboration: Being forced to teach a
concept forces the helper student to clarify the
idea in her own mind.
5. Activating students as owners of their own learning
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Teachers cannot create learning, only
learners can.
Teachers can create opportunities for
students to learn for themselves.
If teachers can’t force students to learn,
then why are teachers, schools and
districts sanctioned rather than students?
Students can develop insights into their
own learning in order to improve it.
Both metacognition and motivation are
required in order for students to become
self regulated learners.
Read Aloud /Think Aloud: A practical EFA for
improving reading skills
oThe Read Aloud/Think Aloud strategy is one
that I picked up from WestEd’s Reading
Apprenticeship Program.
oThere are two pillars of Reading
Apprenticeship:
oExtensive in-class reading opportunities
oThe use of metacognition strategies
“Why should I teach reading?”
•It gives our students better access to the
curriculum
•It improves reading levels
•Improved student comprehension ability
•Reading attack skills are transferable into several
other areas
•It’s a vital academic skill that becomes more
crucial as our students continue their education.
•It better prepares them for Common Core
A quick confession:
About half of my A.P.U.S.H. students refuse to read
for homework.
Many of my A.P. kids read below grade level and a
majority of my C.P. students are below grade level.
As a result, at least half of my students in all of my
classes may experience frustration with reading
the assigned text.
I have often worked from the assumption that I have
to compensate for their reluctance to read, by
supplementing what they were supposed to have
read with lecture and online video summaries.
Therefore, at the beginning of implementing this
program, I had to establish the relevancy of reading
for my current students.
Reading Questions
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In what way does your school promote reading?
Do you believe that your student’s generation
reads more or less than your own? Explain why
In what ways is reading still a survival skill?
What limits does illiteracy place on you?
Are there historical examples of how keeping
people illiterate helped preserve the power of the
oppressors?
How can good readers benefit from becoming
better readers?
How many pages per week does a full time college
student read?
In what way would increasing student reading
levels improve their scores on summative
assessments like DIAs, OARS and Smarter Balance
Tests?
How to Bartle Puzballs
There are tork gooboos of puzballs,
including laplies, mushos, and fushos.
Even if you bartle the puzballs that tvo
inny and onny of the pern, they do not
grunto any lipples. In order to geemee
a puzball that gruntos lipples, you
should bartle the fusho who has
rarckled the parshtootoos after her
humply fluflu.
How to Bartle Puzballs
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How many gooboos of puzballs are there?
What are the laplies, mushos, and fushos?
Even if you bartle the puzballs that tovo
inny and onny of the pern, they still will
not what?
How can you geemee a puzball that
gruntos lipples?
O.A. How to Bartle Puzballs
1.
How many gooboos of puzballs are there?
A: There are tork gooboos of puzballs.
2.
What are the laplies, mushos, and fushos?
A: Laplies, mushos, and fushos are types of
puzballs
3.
Even if you bartle the puzballs that tovo inny
and onny of the pern, they still will not what?
A: They will not grunto any lipples.
4.
How can you geemee a puzball that gruntos
lipples?
A: You should bartle the fusho who has rarckled
her parshtootoos after her humply fluflu.
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Sadly, this is one way I have tried to assess
whether or not my students comprehended
the reading material.
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Students can receive a perfect score by
figuring out the answers from context, but
since the paragraph is gibberish, they have
learned nothing!
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Reading is more than decoding letters,
words or even deciphering, “correct”
answers.
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Reading must include comprehension.
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To truly comprehend, the reader must
engage in reading by turning on their
internal dialogue with the text.
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Along with extensive in-class reading
opportunities, becoming aware of that
internal dialogue (metacognition) is one of
the pillars of the Reading Apprenticeship
program.
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This is an in-class technique I have used
with every level of my U.S. History
classes (CP, Honors and AP).
Read Aloud/Think Aloud T-List
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Facts in the text
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Shared out thoughts
Sample Text from Dylan Wiliam’s book
Embedded Formative Assessment (p.3)
Why Educational Achievement Matters
“Educational achievement matters—more now than at any time
in the past. It matters for individuals, and it matters for society.
For individuals, higher levels of education mean higher
earnings, better health, lower health care costs, lower criminal
justice costs, and increased economic growth. In this chapter,
we will explore why education is vital to the prosperity of every
nation and why the vast majority of attempts by policymakers
to improve the achievement of school students has failed.”
Using Plickers as an Embedded
Formative Assessment Tool
https://plickers.com/
What are Plickers and how can they help us?
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Plickers technology very closely resembles the
iclickers format
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You can create multiple choice questions to get
immediate feedback on student understanding.
You can vary the DOK level of your questions
The data is arranged on a bar graph
The advantage of Plickers:
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You don’t need to check out iclickers
Your students don’t need to bring any devices
All you need is a computer and a smart phone, or
wireless ipad or tablet
The app is free, all you need to do is download it,
create your class rosters and print one class set of
plickers cards.
There are great online tutorials
Let’s See it in Action
Limitations
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Synching your iphone or ipad to your
computer can be a little tricky
– Your phone or tablet need to be on the
same wireless network as your computer
As of this year, Plickers can’t do cumulative
totals for individual students
– However, their site does include a link
where teachers can suggest improvements
for the next version, and several teachers
have already requested adding this feature.
Implications
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Its great for immediate feedback
It can be used for test review
It’s a quick way to re-teach the standards during
the embedded intervention period
It can be used for scoring group team review
competitions
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Each group gets their own numbered card
Teams can discretely post their answer without any
other group knowing their response
It can be used for polling
– Good for gauging student interest when
forming groups for project based learning.