Topic: Assessment Architecture

SPARK Testing so students learn!

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This guest post is written by Kara Hageman, a PhD student in Educational Psychology at the University of Iowa and former high school science teacher. She blogs at www.spiralingassessment.com. Kara can be reached via email at kara-hageman@uiowa.edu or via Twitter @hageman97

A poem is learned by heart and then not again repeated. We will suppose that after a half year it has been forgotten: no effort of recollection is able to call it back again into consciousness (Hermann Ebbinghaus, 1885, p. 8).
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Navigating Changing Assessment Paradigms: My Personal Experience

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This week was filled with diverse experiences. I attended and presented at a conference and engaged in an online interview, sharing my school district’s eight-year journey into standards-based assessment. I spoke with a colleague in another country to brainstorm ways to move past road blocks in assessment reform and I worked with new teachers to refine their assessment practices. Finally, I planned a future session on data engagement and reflection between Board of Education members, in-school administrators, and district office personnel.

I mention these extremely diverse experiences because each one provoked deeper and deeper thinking about education, assessment, and what it means to adjust our approaches over time. Read more

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Summative Assessment Timing

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“The strongest of all warriors are these two – Time and Patience.” Leo Tolstoy

“There is more to life than simply increasing its speed.” Mahatma Gandhi Read more

But, I already know which of my students needs help!

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When I work with teachers who are writing and using formative assessments in their instructional practices, they will sometimes tell me that while they understand how important formative assessment is, they also feel that they are wasting instructional time because they already know which of their students have learned the targets being assessed. They say that some students always need help, and others have asked questions during the instruction that show they don’t even have a basic understanding of the target being taught. For these students, they wonder why they should even give them the formative assessment. Read more

The Most Important Three-Letter Word in Assessment Practice

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Think of any group of thirty people whose only commonality is their age. Would it be reasonable to expect that each member of that group has the same ability in mathematics? That they all read at the same level with the same fluency, comprehension, and vocabulary? They all have the same writing ability and can produce high-level prose on any topic? Would they all demonstrate the same self-regulation in social situations? I think we can readily agree it would be folly to make those broad assumptions. Read more

Overcoming the Assessment Practices of our Youth

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As a classroom teacher I studied, routinely, how to become a better teacher. I constantly questioned how I could improve instruction so that the students I was teaching could learn at high levels. It was important for me to improve my craft so that I could help my students maximize their potential. When I became a campus administrator I began thinking about my teaching in a different way.

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