“The truth comes out in the laundry.” That is a phrase my wife said to one of my sons this past weekend. I won’t get too much into the details, but apparently there was evidence that he was wearing one particular item of clothing a bit more often than perhaps would be recommended. Those of you who are parents of boys probably know exactly what I mean. They pick favorites and those favorites get worn threadbare. Not exactly what one would call hygienic, but typical nonetheless.
The phrase did not stick with me in relation to laundry, though. It stuck with me in regards to student assessment. I know assessment is nothing but a four letter word to some educators (think about it). But, like with laundry, the truth often comes out with it. I know exactly how easy it is to get in the mindset of, “I lived up to my responsibility of teaching them, now they have to live up to their responsibility of learning it.” Yes, there is responsibility on both sides of teaching and learning. At the same time, it is also true that some (and maybe many) will not have demonstrated mastery by the end of a particular unit of study. How will we know? The four driving questions of a PLC are helpful here: what do our students need to know and/or be able to do? How will we know when they have learned it? How will we respond when they haven’t learned it? How will we respond when they have?
Like my wife’s comment to my son about his laundry, quality assessments are grounded in feedback. And that feedback is driven by assessment. “Son, let’s talk about how often we should change our…” To our students after an assessment it might be, “Isabella, let me watch you write this number in expanded form so I can see your thought process.” Or, “Abby, let’s read this paragraph together and discuss its meaning and relationship to the main idea before we write about it.” Consider the many ways we can do this below:
The phrase did not stick with me in relation to laundry, though. It stuck with me in regards to student assessment. I know assessment is nothing but a four letter word to some educators (think about it). But, like with laundry, the truth often comes out with it. I know exactly how easy it is to get in the mindset of, “I lived up to my responsibility of teaching them, now they have to live up to their responsibility of learning it.” Yes, there is responsibility on both sides of teaching and learning. At the same time, it is also true that some (and maybe many) will not have demonstrated mastery by the end of a particular unit of study. How will we know? The four driving questions of a PLC are helpful here: what do our students need to know and/or be able to do? How will we know when they have learned it? How will we respond when they haven’t learned it? How will we respond when they have?
Like my wife’s comment to my son about his laundry, quality assessments are grounded in feedback. And that feedback is driven by assessment. “Son, let’s talk about how often we should change our…” To our students after an assessment it might be, “Isabella, let me watch you write this number in expanded form so I can see your thought process.” Or, “Abby, let’s read this paragraph together and discuss its meaning and relationship to the main idea before we write about it.” Consider the many ways we can do this below:
The truth comes out in the laundry. And not all laundry (when speaking of student assessment laundry) has to be summative. As a matter of fact, most of it shouldn’t be. But, we can’t know there is a problem unless we are actually doing the laundry along the way.A balanced assessment system is grounded in feedback. #lccrc pic.twitter.com/zz1iRpaSOf— Pete Helfers (@petehelfers) April 14, 2016
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