Homework for Class 2:

1.Read Chapter 1 of the Moss and Brookhart book. Highlight five key ideas that
you find useful for the work you are doing with your teachers on formative
assessment.

ADVANCING FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT IN EVERY CLASSROOM

The formative assessment process helps students intentionally harness the
workings of their own minds to generate motivation to learn.
Students and teachers must become skilled assessors who can gauge the gap
between the students current level of challenge and level of support must be
just right.
Plan your lesson, monitor your teaching, and then help your students become
self-regulated learners.
Teachers learn about effective teaching by studying the effectiveness of their
own instructional decisions. This practice promotes professional learning that is
relevant, authentic, and transformational.
It engages students in learning how to learn. Students learn more, learn smarter,
and grow into self-aware learners who can tell you exactly what they did to get
to exactly where they are.
It helps low achievers more than other students and so reduces the range of
achievement while raising achievement overall.
2. Read either Chapter 2 or Chapter 3 of your Cooper text. (Remember, you chose
your chapter in your last discussion group of the day.) Make five jot notes of
things that you thought were important.

ADAPTING ASSESSMENT FOR STUDENTS WITH SPECIAL NEEDS AND SECOND

LANGUAGE LEARNERS.
When adapting a task it is important to ensure that the assessment is both valid
& reliable.
1. Minimize disadvantages as a result of exceptionality
2. Encourage students to persevere at a task, while ensuring that they are
not deceived about their present level of achievement.
3. Maximize students opportunity for success.
4. Avoid invalidating the assessment results by over-compensating for the
students special needs.
Communication of assessment information must be perfectly clear to students
and their parents and guardians in terms of what has been achieved and how
much support was provided to enable the students to achieve a given learning
target.
Try to record your observations of students of special needs during 1 st few days
and weeks to help you adapt both assessment for learning and assessment of
learning tasks. (figure 3.1)
1. Instructional materials and tasks
2. Responses to others in class
3. Responses to environmental variables
Scaffolding is always intended to be temporary (more needed/required early in
the learning process as students construct knowledge understanding and skills.
Needs to be reduced/removed as students progress)
Three ways to adapt: accommodation, modification, and substituting

3. Also, I asked that you do a quick read of Chapter 2 of Eric Jensen's book,

Teaching with Poverty in Mind. Here is the information you need: Skim over Teaching
with Poverty in Mind by Eric Jensen: Chapter 2. How Poverty Affects Behavior and Academic Performance
found at http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/109074/chapters/how-poverty-affects-behavior-and-academicperformance.aspx. Remember to think critically, and feel free to skip the parts that are
heavy on the biology/neurology of the brain.

Practicum for Class 2:

Complete Activity 1 A on page 26 of your participant manual (Course binder).
Note: We adapted the chart so that it only has two columns ("Culture Now"
and "Evidence.") Make five to seven jot notes in each column. Finally, write a
3-sentence summary, synthesizing what you learned about the culture of
assessment in your school/place of work.
Culture Now
Evidence
1. Student- teacher conversations
about
Gradebook

2. Grade Nine classroom ongoing

discussion about formative
assessment in my own classroom.

Student requesting time after class to

discuss progress of assessment.
During classroom visits teachers and
students discussing outcome
expectations and criteria.
Students asking if an assignment is
formative or summative.
Students saw learning as a placement given
to them and beyond their scope of control.
Conversation about a written product
and outcome ensued, co-created
criteria, self -assessed said product.
New strategies were developed to
support better environment for learning
based on student observation. Students
then revised work to progress in the
learning and set new goals to continue
improving.

3. PLCs developing around assessment

Teachers spending more time around

understanding outcomes and
backwards planning.
Assignments have rubrics with
outcome based criteria not just an
outcome at the top.

4. Teacher-parent conversations

Comments on report cards are

beginning to be more informative,
giving parents more insight into their
childs learning.
Teachers are having more informed
conversations about strengths and
challenges about learning, that include,
but go beyond behaviour and

attendance.
I learned that the culture is changing with not only teachers but with
students. Slowly we are seeing and valuing the process more than the
product. Its about a journey that we share that is observable, achievable and
motivating for all learners. Each person is a vital part in the process and if we
keep at it real learning will happen. Students really do want to learn and I
think we will all be motivated by the success.