Planning Assessments
Assessment is a critical component of the instructional planning process and should have a prominent role in the learning process. This means that teachers should plan to integrate multiple forms of assessment and use the data to understand how well their students are learning the content and skills specified by the learning objectives. An assessment used during the learning process is referred to as a formative assessment. In this section, you will learn about the second stage in the Backward Design process of ensuring alignment between your learning objectives and your assessment plan.
Learning Objectives
By the end of this chapter, you will be able to:
- Determine acceptable evidence of student learning; and
- Select and/or design formative and summative assessments aligned with learning objectives to support, verify, and document learning.
Stage 2: Determining Acceptable Evidence
Now that we understand the value of having clear learning objectives, we can start to look at the second stage of the Backward Design model (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005) where we determine what types of evidence will be acceptable to demonstrate that our students have met our goals. When considering potential evidence, Popham and Baker (1970) contend that teachers must develop skills to differentiate between different types of practice to ensure that the evidence they collect aligns with their stated learning objectives. The assessment piece you choose, whether it be a quiz, assignment, essay, test, or project, will provide you with evidence of student learning. However, Popham and Baker suggest that you should evaluate what you are asking students to do based on the following practice types:
- Equivalent: practice the specific desired objective
- Analogous: practice is similar to the desired objective but not identical.
- En-route: skill needed before performing the desired objective
- Irrelevant: any practice or activity that does not align with the desired objective
Recognizing what type of practice you are requiring students to engage in will help guide your selection, adoption, and creation of assessments in stage 2 of the Backward Design process. The key to remember is that students should be given the opportunity to practice the specific skill(s) defined by your learning objectives (Popham & Baker, 1970). This second stage requires that you understand the differences between formative and summative assessment which is foundational information necessary to ensure you provide practice and feedback for your students during the learning process. In addition, we will investigate a variety of assessment types and their pros and cons in order to select the best format for your assessment.
Formative Assessment
Formative assessment includes all the practices teachers use to check student understanding throughout the teaching and learning process. Often, formative assessment is said to be an assessment for learning.
Definition of Formative Assessment*
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