Assessment as a Tool to Empower and Motivate Learners

In our last blog, we discussed the relationship between clarity and deliberate practice. We emphasized the need for teachers and learners to know the intended learning of the day and what success looks like so that teachers can design learning experiences and practice opportunities to reinforce and accelerate learning. But let’s turn our attention to assessment to bring this conversation full circle.

Assessment beyond testing.

Any time state agencies and policymakers start in on assessment, we start sweating a little. We tense up. We roll our eyes. We disassociate. But before we write off the idea of assessment, let’s talk about its function. Assessment is the bridge between teaching and learning (Wiliam, 2013). It’s how we know when teaching has stuck; it’s how we know that learners have—or have not—learned what we taught. It gives us evidence of what we need to do next.

Too often, assessment is reduced to a test or grade, a moment in time where teachers learn what students retained. But, when integrated seamlessly into instruction, assessment guides instruction, empowers learners, and supports student understanding. Let’s explore some ways to rethink assessment as a meaningful tool for teachers and students rather than a test that measures achievement.

Assessment as evidence.

If you read the research on educational assessment, you’ll see that it isn’t a singular event. Assessment is a systematic process of evidence gathering, interpretation, and use. So, it’s not a moment in time. It’s a series of intentionally planned opportunities to check in with learners and gather evidence of what they’re understanding and what they are not.

Checks for understanding. Quizzes. Whiteboards. Drawings. Hand movements. Turn-and-talks. Quickwrites. Standardized measures. Explanations.

Whether diagnostic, informal, or high-stakes, assessment is evidence of learning. Learning intentions orient student thinking and effort to a daily goal. Success criteria provide the touchpoints for evidence we want to see as students progress toward the goal.

Assessment—whether a simple turn-and-talk or an elaborate project—informs teachers about where students are in their learning. But more importantly, assessment is feedback from learner to teacher and should always influence our next steps. Thus, it’s not simply an evidence-gathering tool; it’s a reflection of our impact that indicates the moves we need to make to move students closer toward the goal.

Assessment in the minute-to-minute moments informs and supports assessment in the long-term milestones.

Below, we transcribed a 40-minute lesson on the stages of the plant life cycle. Notice the number of assessment opportunities Mrs. Katie Holt provides her learners. Consider the variance (talking, gesturing, writing), structure (partner turn-and-talks, randomized calling, whole class, one-on-one), and impact on students’ cognitive engagement.

 

Time	What is the Teacher Doing?	What are students doing?
0:00 – 0:22	Teacher calls on students to answer the question they ask themselves as good learners.	Student 1 responds: what are we learning? Student 2 responds? How will we succeed?
0:22 – 1:26	Teacher leads students in choral repeat of learning intention and success criteria.	Students give choral response, repeating LISC Student 3 makes a connection to something he already knows in the SC.
1:26 – 3:37	Teacher asks students why it’s important to learn about the plant life cycle.   Calls on students individually to answer.	Students choral ask “Why are we learning this?”   7 students to respond after being called upon to explain the why. Students give multi-sentence responses.
3:37 – 3:52	Teacher displays a slide with images and asks students to chorally respond to which season the pictures represent as she points.	All: spring. Summer. Winter. Fall.
3:52 – 4:48	Partner B answer: “How are plants affected by the changes in sunlight in the four different seasons?”	Students turn and talk in partner A and B pairings.
4:48 – 6:30	Teacher draws “Lucky Ducks” (ducks with students’ names written on them) to speak aloud for the class.	Students’ names drawn respond.
6:30 – 8:18	Teacher explains they are going to “hack their hippocampus to determine if we stored the memories from yesterday”. Teacher calls Lucky ducks to answer questions.	3 Lucky Ducks respond.
8:18 – 9:01	Teacher references the learning intention and success criteria as they begin focused instruction.   Teacher reveals vocabulary word of the day: protective.	Students hold up five fingers and chorally say vocabulary word, protective, protective, protective, protective, protective
9:01 – 12:37	Teacher explains about the life cycle of a flowering plant. Teacher references success criteria about stages of life cycle and makes connection to images on slide.
12:37 – 13:52	Teacher provides students with hand motions that show the stages of a plant life cycle.	Students mimic teacher hand movements and say the stages as they demonstrate with their hands: seed, sprout, young plant
13:52 – 14:36	Teacher continues with stages of the life cycle
14:36 – 15:12	Teacher recaps the first three stages and adds “flower”.   Explains that not all plants are flowering, so some plants are adult plants.	Students repeat hand motions with teacher: seed, sprout, young plant, flower.
15:12 – 15:50	Teacher references success criteria about pollination and asks students before she explains it, if anyone knows what type of animals help pollination occurs.	Students raise hands and 2 are called on to respond
15:50 – 22:08	Teacher explains pollination	3 students raise hands to make connections
22:08 – 24:35	Teacher continues explanation of pollinators.	Students give a thumbs up every time they hear the teacher say the word of the day “protective”
24:35 – 27:06	Teacher references success criterion about the plant life cycle and annotates smart board with the stages of the cycle. As she annotates, she says, “show me on your hands”.	Students use hand motions to show all the motions related to the life cycle and use the academic vocabulary. (seed, sprout, young plant, flowering plant/adult plant, wither away, seed dispersal).
27:06 – 28:07	Teacher references the first success criterion and displays a blank life cycle with images to reference.	Partners A and B turn to explain the plant life cycle to each other, adding, clarifying, and building on responses.
28:07 – 29:37	Teacher calls on Lucky Ducks to explain one part of the life cycle.	6 Lucky Ducks name the parts and explain what they mean.
29:37 – 30:58	Teacher recaps each part of the life cycle.	Students self-assess using their fingers (1, 2, 3) to show how well they know each stage.
30:58 – 31:56	Teacher references 2nd success criterion and poses two questions:   Partner A: How does pollination happen? Partner B: How do flowering plants attract pollinators?	Partners A and B take turns explaining their answers.
31:56 – 34:41	Teacher calls on Lucky Ducks to share out.   Teacher probes deeper responses.	Lucky Ducks respond while remaining students use hand signals to agree or disagree.
34:41 – 39:06	Teacher sets up final self-assessment where students reflect on success criteria	Students write down their explanations of the plant life cycle and pollination.
39:06 – 41:21	Teacher gives exemplar answer.	Students check off the parts of Teacher’s answer that they discussed. Students rate themselves 1, 2, 3 and explain why.

 

Avoiding the illusion of learning.

Without assessment, we get the illusion of learning. We often see students taking notes, nodding, and staring in the general direction of the teacher. But these are passive processes. Learning demands a more active one.

Whether we call it assessment, evidence, or checks for understanding, these frequent opportunities help focus students’ attention and orient them to the learning at hand. It’s easy to be a passive student; it’s much more difficult, yet rewarding, to be an active one. Assessment opportunities create active mental processes in students by allowing them to demonstrate their understanding in no-stakes or low-stakes ways multiple times throughout a lesson.

Assessment as a systematic, intentionally planned process.

When we are planning assessment opportunities, here’s a few questions to consider:

1. What evidence do I need? Success criteria give teachers the touchpoints in instruction to gather evidence. If we say, “I can identify figurative language in a text” then we have to provide opportunities for students to identify figurative language in a text. Understand what you’re looking or listening for, and plan accordingly.
2. Why do I need it? When you think about the evidence you’re gathering, we want the evidence to be meaningful in learning. Evidence that is meaningful should allow us to see students’ progress toward the learning goal.
3. From whom do I need it? It’s difficult to track all of the conversations in a classroom of 35 or check all of the quickwrites in a time-efficient manner, so we want to be intentional about from whom we are gathering evidence and when. While all students’ will be seen at some point during the lesson, design experiences that allow you to draw out evidence from whom you need it.
4. How will I collect it? Planning for multiple opportunities for students to respond allows teachers multiple opportunities to see who’s stuck and who’s flying forward. Mixing modalities—writing, whiteboards, partner talks, technology, choral response—allows students’ multiple ways to demonstrate learning in ways that are seamlessly integrated into the lesson cycle.
5. What do I do next? Gathering evidence is essential for moving learning forward, but applying the evidence to guide instructional steps is equally important. Do we need to re-explain, ask more questions, add or remove scaffolds, slow down or speed up? When we are intentional about the evidence we are looking and listening for in student work, we can determine our next steps in the moment.

By shifting to frequent assessment opportunities, we can more accurately gauge student learning, and more importantly, adjust instruction to move learning forward.

When we shift our thinking from assessment as a singular event that happens TO students to assessment as a cycle that happens WITH students, we begin to see assessment as a powerful tool in schools and classrooms.

Reference

Wiliam, D. (2013). Assessment: The bridge between teaching and learning. Voices from the Middle, 21(2), 15–20.​