September14, 2012

Research Paper

• Read and reflect on 2 articles about assessment
• 3-5 page paper
• Due in two weeks 
• APA style
• Bibme.org is a great resource for created bibliographies

Common Assessment

• Take standards and learning objectives and align them with the curriculum
• curriculum is aligned with essential outcomes
• are created by same grade level teachers (elementary) or same department (secondary)
• the goal is that the students get "The Big Rocks"
• are COMMON, TEAM-DEVELOPED FORMATIVE ASSESSMENTS
• help identify groups of students who need additional support and time to ensure their learning

Common Assessments are NOT

• a lock step mechanical manner in which to teach
• designed to evaluate teachers

PLC's or Data Teams

• analyze and study data from the CFAs
• where students learning lagged
• areas of shortcomings
• areas of strength
• what to reteach
• which students require additional support/enrichment/intervention
• short term/long term systemic solutions

Characteristics of Quality Common Assessments

• teacher/team generated
• all students take the same content assessment regardless of who their teacher may be
• item analysis occurs at the end of assessment
• narrative summary/analysis using the data (What's the next step?)

Questions to Ponder

• What do we want our students to know?
• How will we know they have learned it?
• What do we do when they do not learn it? Or already know it?

Common Assessments Assure:

• that all students will learn a set of specific common unit objectives
• that every student will learn the same content regardless of which teacher they were assigned