Educational Leadership - November 2009

conversation about instructional and curricular design.

We recommend that teachers meet in advance of teaching a unit to develop common formative assessments. The assessment items teachers select should be geared to diagnose specific kinds of learning so that teachers can discuss any misconceptions students still hold after instruction and recognize patterns among students (Fisher, Grant, Frey, & Johnson, 2007). Teachers should meet as soon as possible after they score each assessment to discuss the relationship between the results and teachers’ instruction and to plan next steps (the feed-forward component).

Partial conceptual understanding is a common cause of incorrect responses. For example, Ms. Goldstein’s English as a second language class was studying affixes in preparation for a benchmark assessment. Ms. Goldstein explained that the lesson’s purpose was to analyze new vocabulary words (feed up). Omar incorrectly identified in- as the prefix for interlude. Rather than simply supply Omar with the correct answer and move on, Ms. Goldstein asked him what the prefixes in- and inter- meant and received a correct reply. “Could the root be ‘-lude,’ or is it ‘-terlude’?” Ms. Goldstein questioned. Omar stayed with his initial incorrect answer, so she tried again, asking Omar’s small group, “Is the prefix in- or inter-? I’ll let you figure it out” (providing feedback that something needed to be figured out).

Omar’s group talked about the two meanings and how they would affect the overall word. Ms. Goldstein checked a few minutes later on whether Omar and his group had arrived at the correct answer.

After the English as a second language department administered its common formative assessment on affixes, Ms. Goldstein remarked, “I

Students should understand that tests are
a genre, one they are capable of mastering.

noticed some students in my class getting similar prefixes like in- and inter- confused. This was a pattern in all our classes. How can we teach look-alike prefixes more effectively?” The teachers decided to develop a Jeopardy-style game that included easily confounded affixes to give students practice.

Identify Competencies Although unit-based formative assessments are valuable benchmarks to inform teachers’ instruction, they offer students only snapshots of their progress. Learners need a system to measure their own attainment of course goals. Goals should be a balance of short-term (“I’m going to ask good questions today”) and long-term (“I’ll pass biology”); however, the gap between short-term and long-term goals

can be overwhelming. Creating a system of specific competencies that students should achieve in a course and a series of assessments that measure those competencies and provide clear feed-back enable students to measure their progress through any course.

Grade-level teams or departments usually specify course competencies and corresponding assignments. Competencies should reflect the state standards while offering students an array of ways to demonstrate mastery, not just paper-and-pencil tasks. The competency assessments should be numerous enough that students can adequately gauge their own progress at attaining competencies; generally 7 to 10 per academic year is best.