EMBEDDING

FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT
DYLAN WILIAM &
SIOBHAN LEAHY

Book Study Winter 2016

In the first 5 minutes, complete the Entry Task: Name Tag

After Signing in, find your name tent at a table. Complete Corners 3 and 4.
Corner 3: Favorite Movie
Corner 4: Favorite Season

Elementary

Wildwood Elementary

Glenn Malone
#3

Selma
Baseball/Summer

#4

YOUR FACILITATORS
Beth Simpson
Juhi Bhatia
Kathy Horton-Schmidt
Kris Diamond
Michele Bledsoe
Learning with the expert, Dylan Wiliam!

Group Norms
Honor Time
Be Prepared to share and talk
Assume positive intent
Be kinder than necessary
Be professional
Follow the three universal rules for success
Mixed Group Success

Learning Intentions
Educators understand the need and support for the use of formative assessment
processes in instructional and professional settings.
Educators recognize and use measurable learning intentions and success criteria in
both instructional and professional settings.

Blog
Please log onto a Blog: http://psdbookstudy.blogspot.com/

Please post your thoughts, questions, and wonderings about

Formative Assessment.

Format of meetings with follow best practices pp 22-25

Meet every 3-4 weeks minimum amount of time to plan and carry out new ideas
Ninety minutes (seventy-five should be the absolute minimum)
Mixed, hybrid groups of 8-12 with occasional break-out rooms

Format:

Introduction

Starter Activity

Feedback

New Learning About Formative Assessment

Personal Action Planning

Summary of Learning

Starter Activity
True or False Statement Sorting
The purpose of this activity to engage in discussion and critical analysis of statements
from Chapter 1 in order to increase our understanding of what formative assessment is.
Materials:

envelopes
groups of 2 or 3

Directions: Read each statement and decide if it is true or false. Feel free to use the
book as a reference. All statements can be evaluated from reading pages 5 - 12. Decide
what makes each statement true or false.
Time:

10 minutes

Feedback- Chapter 1 True or False Activity Discussion

These statements are true:
Any test can be formative or summative. TRUE page 5 paragraph 4, page 6 paragraph 4
The essence of formative assessment is that the evidence collected must somehow improve instruction.
TRUE page 7 #4, page 8 #4
The results of formative assessments should form the future direction of learning. TRUE page 6
paragraph 2
Students should be actively engaged in the process of formative assessment. TRUE page 9 paragraph 4
One way to tell if an assessment is formative is by the amount of time that elapses between the collection
of evidence and the impact on instruction. TRUE page 6 #1, page 7 #1, page 9 paragraph 5
Teachers, learners and peers can be agents of formative assessment. TRUE page 11 paragraph 1
The shorter the time interval between eliciting the evidence and using it to improve instruction, the bigger
the likely impact on learning. TRUE page 9 paragraph 4

Feedback continued..
These statements are false:
It is correct to use the phrase: formative assessments. FALSE - page 5 paragraph 4; page 6
paragraph 5
There is one common definition of formative assessment. FALSE page 5 paragraphs 1 and 2, page
6 paragraph 6
In order to implement it correctly, it is vital that everyone agrees to the definition of formative
assessment. FALSE page 5 paragraph 2
Formative assessment requires specific curriculum to implement. FALSE page 9 paragraph 1
Students always learn what the teacher intends with a lesson. FALSE page 9 paragraph 1

Feedback continued
These statements could be true or false:
An exit ticket is an example of a formative assessment. TRUE and FALSE, DEPENDS ON
HOW IT IS USED page 7 #3
Common formative assessments, for example in math, are an example of formative
assessment. TRUE and FALSE, DEPENDS ON HOW IT IS USED page 7 #1

Why are we focusing our time on Formative Assessment?

Research and Background

Formative assessment could be conceptualized as the result of

crossing three processes (where the learner is going, where the learner
is right now, and how to get there) with three kinds of agents in the
classroom (teacher, peer, learner) (Leahy, Lyon, Thompson and
Wiliam, 2005).

Why are we focusing our time on Formative Assessment?

Research and Background

Using formal testing to monitor student achievement and make

instructional adjustments on a month-to-month basis - what might be
called long-cycle formative assessment (Wiliam & Thompson, 2008) can improve achievement, but the effects are generally small (p.9).

Why are we focusing our time on Formative Assessment?

Research and Background

Once assessments are scored, teachers meet to review their students

performance, check on any students who are not making the expected
progress, and decide what steps to take to ensure that all students are
making the necessary progress. This process does lead to increased
student achievement (Gallimore, Ermeling, Saunders, & Goldenberg,
2009; Saunders, Goldenberg, & Gallimore, 2009), but some authors
argue that the length of time between evidence collection and action
being taken is far too long (p.7).

Why are we focusing our time on Formative Assessment?

Research and Background
To the extent that evidence about student achievement is elicited,
interpreted, and used by teacher, learners, or their peers, to make
decisions about the next steps in instruction that are likely to be
better, or better founded, than the decisions they would have taken in
the absence of the evidence that was elicited (Black and Wiliam,
2009, p.9).

Why are we focusing our time on Formative Assessment?

Research and Background
There is now a substantial body of research that shows regular testing
increases student achievement by improving students abilities to
retrieve things from memory (P.C. Brown, Roediger, & McDaniel, 2014)
and reducing anxiety (Agarwal, DAntonio, Roediger, McDermott, &
McDaniel, 2014). (p6)

Why are we focusing our time on Formative Assessment?

Research and Background
Michael Scriven coined the terms formative and summative evaluation
in 1967
Gathering information to assess effectiveness
is only formative if it is used to alter subsequent educational
decisions
Black and Wiliam expanded the definition in 1997
Practice in a classroom is formative to the extent that evidence
about student achievement is elicited, interpreted, and used by
teachers, learners, or their peers, to make decisions about the next
steps in instruction

Smarter Balanced Definition of Formative Assessment

Speed Dating
Find a group of 3-4
Read over the question or quote
Everyone take an opportunity to
share your thinking.
After two minutes and the timer is
complete find a new group.

Date 1
Policy makers behave rather like desperate hitters who come up to the
plate and try to hit a home run off every pitch. The result is, of course, a
lot of strikeouts. What we need instead is small ball: get walked to
first, steal second, get bunted to third, and score on a sacrifice fly.
(p. 13)
Nothing has promised so much and has been so frustratingly wasteful
as the thousands of workshops and conferences that led to no
significant change in practice when teachers returned to their
classrooms (Fullan & Stiegelbauer, 1991, p.315)

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End

Date 2
What is not given enough thought is how to support teachers in making
the changes to their practices when they return to their classrooms the
process of teacher change. (Pg 14)
Discuss the importance of the five key process components: choice,
flexibility, small steps, accountability and support; and how these
components support teacher change. (pp 14-21)

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End

Date 3
Weight Watchers ought to be the least successful organization on the
planet, because everyone who wants to lose weight knows what to do:
eat less and exercise more. But Weight Watchers realizes that it is not
in the knowledge-giving business; it is in the habit-changing business.
People who want to lose weight know what they need to do. What they
need are structures and supports that help them do what they want to
do. (p. 19)
Discuss the importance of this example and how it relates to teaching and
learning.

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Take-Away
What is needed is a way of allowing teachers flexibility, while at the
same time constraining the use of that flexibility so that modifications to the
original ideas do not unduly weaken their effectiveness. This is why it is so
important make the distinction between strategies of classroom
formative assessment on the one hand and techniques that can be used
to enact these strategies in classroom on the other. By anchoring the
techniques to (at least) one of the five key strategies, we provide a means
by which you can modify the techniques but still provide a reasonable
assurance of fidelity to the original research. Therefore you have a
reasonable guarantee that the techniques will be effective in increasing
student achievement. (p. 16)

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New Learning About Formative Assessment:

Learning Intentions and Success Criteria

Its what we copy into our books at the beginning of

the lesson, while were talking to our friends. p28
What is a learning intention?
Describing what we want our students to learn.
Its like knowing the teachers secret. p31
What is the success criteria?
What we use to judge whether the learning activities were
successful.

Key Learning Intentions / Success Criteria (pp 59-60)

Key Ideas:

Sometimes you should not set a learning intention at the start of the lesson.
Keep the context of learning out of the learning intention.
Start with samples of work rather than rubrics, to communicate quality.
Use big ideas, learning progression, and staging posts.

If the only things our students can do are what we have taught them to do, they cant do

very much at all, because those exact circumstances are unlikely ever to arise again.
The only useful learning is that which the student can apply beyond the context of the
learning. (p32)
In other words, we think that differentiation should take place in terms of the success
criteria rather than the learning intentions. (p36)

Nonfiction Reading and Writing Unit- Digital Library Resource

My Report About Frogs - Digital Library Resource

Personal Action Planning

What do I hope to accomplish prior to our next meeting?
Pick one (or more) ideas presented in chapters 1-3 that you will
implement or you will undertake in your school over the next three
weeks.
Write down/summarize this idea. Turn it in at as an entry task at our
next meeting (February 22)

Success Criteria
Principals recognize and use measurable learning intentions and success criteria in both
instructional and professional settings.
Educators apply formative assessment processes in instructional and professional
settings.

Summary of Learning
Please log onto a Blog: http://psdbookstudy.blogspot.com/
By the next session please answer the following questions.
I want to find out more about
I was particularly interested in
Look into your professional development or teacher classrooms for learning
intentions & success criteria. Post your observations and thoughts related to to this
idea.

See you on February 22! Same time, Same Place

Sneak Peek of our next session
Post on the Blog
Read Chapters 4 & 5