Help Your Students Use Formative Assessment Data

This video shares some strategies for helping students to use formative assessment data to assesses their own learning, determine goals, and monitor progress over time (6.5).  These strategies can help students take ownership of their own learning.

If you prefer read a print version, check out this blog post written by Tanner Higgin.

Active Learning Strategies

With a generation of students whose ability to focus seems to diminish yearly, as well as the fact that we have extended periods throughout most of our district, it is essential that teachers have a toolbox filled with active processing strategies. These strategies help maintain student engagement and enable students to transfer their learning into long-term knowledge that can be applied in other situations.

Here are a few favorite active processing strategies, along with a link to the original source if you want to read further.

 Make Snowballs (from http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2016/03/03/20-strategies-for-motivating-reluctant-learners/).

Students write answers to a prompt on a piece of paper. On the count of three, they throw their “snowball” randomly up and away (but not at anyone) and then grab a snowball that near them. This enables students to purposefully pause, reflect, make connections, and consider others’ thinking. Perez, the teacher cited in the source, uses this strategy in all subjects, sometimes asking students to write three new vocabulary words they learned, three successes they had in that lesson, or three questions. “Students love it and it’s inclusionary because it’s anonymous,” Perez said. Students also get to see one another’s thinking in this activity.

Mind Warm-Up (from http://www.edutopia.org/classroom-student-participation-tips)

As a warm-up, ask students to find mistakes purposefully placed in material written on the board. But instead of asking them to work silently and alone, and then debrief in a classic question-and-answer session with one student at a time (while many sit inattentively), use a mix of collaboration and competition to eliminate what could potentially become dead time.

Organize teams of three students and ask them to work together (quietly) and raise their hands when they think they have found all the mistakes. After the first team signals it's done, give a bit more time and then have teams indicate with their fingers -- together on the count of three -- the number of mistakes they found in the work. The team that found the most describes its answers until another team disagrees politely or until they are finished.

Two Truths and a Lie (original source unknown)

Most of us have played Two Truths and a Lie as a party game or ice-breaker.  Make this activity educational, however, by having small groups of students come up with two truths and one lie about the content they are studying. As an example, students studying Macbeth might say: 

1.       The idea to murder King Duncan originated with Lady Macbeth (lie).

2.       Lady Macduff can be viewed as a foil to Lady Macbeth (truth).

3.       Macbeth is ultimately slain by a man who was not “born of woman (truth).”

Either another small group, or the class as a whole, must determine which is the lie, and, most important, WHY it is a lie. This is a great review strategy for a test or upcoming essay.

Checks for Understanding vs. Formative Assessment

What's the difference between a Check for Understanding and a Formative Assessment? One essential factor:

With Formative Assessment, you use the information to inform future instruction. That instruction may occur in the next few minutes, days, or later in the school year, but the teacher uses the information gained from the assessment to adjust instruction to meet student needs. You may find that no adjustments are necessary because your Formative Assessment showed you that your students are right on track.

Click here to see a list of Formative Assessment strategies you can use right now.

Assessment for Learning Strategies

Happy Wednesday!

Looking for an easy way to quickly access formative assessment strategies in one place? Look no further!

This week we have compiled several frequently used and effective formative assessment strategies that teachers are finding helpful to collect data to drive instructional decisions. These strategies are geared toward elementary level students. Ideas shared in previous coach tips have also been added to this document. Click here to access the document in Google Docs, and preview below:

We hope that this will be a helpful tool when lesson planning. As always, let us know how we can be of help!

Smiles,
Kristin, Nicole and Shelly

Moving Students from Fixed Mindset to a Growth MIndset

Last week's Teaching Tip shared information and resources to better understand growth mindset. Carol Dweck, who created the term, did a TED talk in which she urges teachers to adopt the phrase "not yet" in terms of unmastered learning targets in the classroom. She also encourages us to help kids move away from their fixation on grades and on the need for validation by:

• Praising and rewarding effort, strategy, and process (as opposed to intelligence or ability)
• Ensuring that we as educators don't ourselves adopt a fixed mindset toward kids whom we assume won't be able to learn or grow

Sometimes we run into kids whose fixed mindsets are so strong and their voices so loud that we struggle for words and strategies to counter their beliefs. If you find yourself trying to move a student from a fixed mindset  to a growth mindset, you might want to utilize some responses from "Mindset Kit/Seven Common Growth Mindset Scenarios and Responses,pdf"

Here are few of the responses to get you started:

• “Let’s take one step at a time. That way we can see where we might need to focus more attention and time.”
• “This looks like pretty demanding stuff. What would a focused first try look like?”
• “Let’s discuss some strategies for tackling this.”
• “Remind yourself that you just can’t do it ‘YET.’ Let’s think through some next steps to take.”
• “What was difficult? Let’s focus on the difficulties to see if we can figure it out.”
• “I can see a difference in now compared to ______ from last week/yesterday. What has changed? Talk me through what happened.”

Increasing Student Achievement Through a Growth Mindset

According to Hattie’s research, “Developing assessment capable students who know the learning target for the lesson, can describe where they are in relation to the criteria for success, and can use that information to select learning strategies to improve their work is the number-one factor for improving student achievement” We all want that for our students and our own children, but how do we develop assessment capable students?

Unfortunately, there is no quick fix posted on Pinterest that we can share to help answer that question. Trust us, we’ve spent countless hours trying to find one! What we have discovered from the research is that there is a clear connection between developing assessment capable students and a Growth Mindset.

Dr. Carol Dweck, the author of Mindset; The New Psychology of Success describes this connection in a recent article: Carol Dweck Revisits the 'Growth Mindset'

"My colleagues and I learned things we thought people needed to know. We found that students’ mindsets—how they perceive their abilities—played a key role in their motivation and achievement, and we found that if we changed students’ mindsets, we could boost their achievement. More precisely, students who believed their intelligence could be developed (a growth mindset) outperformed those who believed their intelligence was fixed (a fixed mindset). And when students learned through a structured program that they could “grow their brains” and increase their intellectual abilities, they did better. Finally, we found that having children focus on the process that leads to learning (like hard work or trying new strategies) could foster a growth mindset and its benefits."

As we learn more about the power of the Growth Mindset, we will definitely share. Recently we learned that ClassDojo (an online behavior management system) has worked with Stanford University’s Project for Ed Research that Scales (a group that studies students’ motivation and resilience) to create a 5 part series to help teachers, students, and parents learn about the growth mindset. Check out the following article and videos to learn more.

ClassDojo’s Critters Want to Teach You About Growth Mindsets

ClassDojo Videos

There is also a great resource for parents to assist them in talking to their child about Growth Mindset on our very own Tahoma website. 

Growth Mindset on the Tahoma website

Finally, you might consider reading Mindsets in the Classroom, which is currently being offered as an on-line book study and will be offered again in the spring.

Of course the best way for all of us to learn is from each other. Please share your stories with us so we can all grow together!

Kristin, Nicole and Shelly

Growth Mindset and Student Growth

Have you ever had a student proclaim, "I'm just no good at _______________!"  (fill in your subject area).  These students can benefit from learning about growth mindset.

A growth mindset is, "a belief system that suggests that one's intelligence can be grown or developed with persistence, effort, and a focus on learning" (Ricci 3).  Clearly, a growth mindset helps students achieve growth with any skill.

Carol Dweck, author of Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, says, "...students' mindsets--how they perceive their abilities--played a key role in their motivation and achievement, and we found that if we changed students' mindsets, we could boost their achievement.  More precisely, students who believed their intelligence could be developed (a growth mindset) outperformed those who believed their intelligence was fixed (a fixed mindset).  And when students learned through a structured program that they could 'grow their brains' and increase their intellectual abilities, they did better.  Finally, we found that having children focus on the process that leads to learning (like hard work or trying new strategies) could foster a growth mindset...".

Take this Mindset Self-assessment to find out if you have more of a fixed or a growth mindset.

As secondary teachers, it's important to help student understand and believe that they can grow and improve their skills, but teachers must also acknowledge that there are limits.  We can all improve our basketball skills, but we can't all be Michael Jordan.  

To learn more about growth mindset, check out these videos made available by the psychology department at Stanford University.

You can also join the book study that will be offered in the spring on Mary Cay Ricci's book: