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Welcome back friends to PassedTPA. Today we will be discussing Assessments.
Please pause this presentation and search your handbook for the phrase, “assessment”
to get a sense of the emphasis edTPA places on this activity….
Welcome back.
The definition of assessment according to the edTPA model is that it “includes all
those activities undertaken by teachers and students that provide information to be used
as feedback to modify teaching and learning activities.”
There are many types of assessments. Nowadays, educators often talk about formative and summative
assessment. However, in edTPA, assessments are categorized as informal and formal. It
is possible to align informal assessment with formative and formal with summative.
Nevertheless, the definitions provided for informal and formal assessment are defined
with examples.
Informal assessments include questions posed by the teacher or teacher observations of
students. Practical methods for conducting observations for assessment include pair-share
and think aloud, among others. In addition, any type of prompt presented by the teacher
to elicit student response may be labeled as an informal assessment.
Some examples of formal assessment include assignments, quizzes, journal entries, projects,
tests, lab reports, and so on.
Generally, the requirements for edTPA include multiple informal assessments across lessons,
assessment of students’ prior learning to begin the lesson sequence,
assessment of student voice, and a formal assessment summarizing student
learning of the lesson sequence.
In addition, the formal assessment should include an assessment criteria, though brief
assessment criteria could be presented for each assessment included in the portfolio.
This table summarizes some considerations when assembling assessments for edTPA.
A minimum of two informal assessments should be deployed per lesson. In addition, at least
one formal assessment should be deployed at or near the conclusion of the lesson sequence.
It is not necessary that formal assessments be graded, or submitted for scores, but it
should produce information for analysis by the teacher for generating feedback and for
informing future instruction.
It is helpful if each assessment has an assessment criteria, regardless of whether the assessment
is formal or informal. An assessment criteria is the tool used to differentiate weak to
strong performance on an assessment. It is necessary that the formal assessment have
an assessment criteria. Examples of assessment criteria include rubrics, checklists, answer
keys, exemplars, or brief descriptions of different types of performance.
There are various approaches for integrating assessments into the lesson sequence.
It is recommended that the lesson sequence begin with an assessment of students’ prior
learning. Assessment of prior learning should be sufficiently organized to provide results
which can be analyzed by the teacher for planning lesson activities. Results of the assessment
of prior learning are also useful for comparing to the formal assessment.
As this diagram suggests, each lesson should include two or more opportunities for conducting
informal assessment.
In addition, each lesson should include one or more opportunities for students to participate
in assessment of student voice.
One way to ensure inclusion of assessments is to label and describe them on the lesson
plans.
Here is a sample lesson outline. Notice it includes the assessments previously mentioned.
The outline begins with a preassessment, which serves as the assessment of prior learning.
Notice also that this outline includes two opportunities for informal assessment and
an opportunity for assessment of student voice at the end of the lesson. The lesson sequence
concludes with a formal assessment, in this case a postassessment.
Let’s consider some examples of informal and formal assessments useful for assembling
an edTPA portfolio.
This is an example informal assessment for first grade students learning math. The informal
assessment is written on the lesson itself, and it describes how the teacher will have
students come to the front of the class to complete a chart. Then, it describes how students
will work with partners to check their thinking. Last, it describes questions the teacher will
ask to check student understanding for this phase of the lesson.
This is another example of informal assessment, but for secondary science students. Again,
this informal assessment was described on the lesson plan. It includes a few questions
assessing whether students understand the primary task of the lesson, and what they
need to accomplish with respect to the learning target for the lesson.
This is an example of a formal assessment for kindergarten students in literacy. It
is a paper-pencil assessment, in this case a postassessment, to conclude the lesson sequence.
Notice the assessment includes a brief set of directions, objective questions, and subjective
questions. It may be the case that some students are too young to read assessment questions,
but this is overcome by having an adult read questions to students, or perhaps even recording
student responses.
This is another example of a formal assessment, but for 9th grade students learning English
as an additional language. Again, it includes a brief set of directions, objective and subjective
questions, along with a question assessing student voice.
Lessons for edTPA are labeled Lesson 1, Lesson 2, Lesson 3, and so on. Assessments may be
labeled 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 and so on to show multiple assessments for each lesson.
Notice from the table that there may be a different number of assessments depending
on the requirements of the lesson.
Generally, informal assessments will appear on the lesson plans as descriptions. Formal
assessments, like a key assignment, test, reflection, or lab report for summarizing
student performance at the conclusion of the lesson sequence will likely be its own document.
Copy-paste all assessments onto one document, and label it Assessments.
The reason for doing this is that the portfolio upload dashboard, shown here, requires a file
for all of the assessments of the lesson sequence.
Some basics of edTPA assessment have been covered. Let’s consider some additional
requirements relating to assessments, especially the formal assessment.
It is necessary that candidates assesses prior learning, integrate multiple informal assessments
across lessons, assess student voice, and deploy a formal assessment. Also note that
Task 3 requires analysis of student work samples.
The example that follows integrates four of these requirements using a preassessment and
postassessment model with specific question features. Note that the postassessment completed
by students may serve as the work sample used for analysis in Task 3.
In a previous slide, the assessment of prior learning and formal assessment were shown
at the beginning and end of the sequence.
Revising this diagram slightly shows that assessing student prior learning may be accomplished
with a preassessment. Then, the sequence may be concluded with a postassessment. Although
this model is efficient for overlapping requirements, it is not required.
The pre- and postassessment model is conceptualized as a set of bookend activities for beginning
and ending the lesson sequence.
The pre- and postassessment may be identical, similar, or different. The example that follows
examines a pre-postassessment model where the assessments are identical.
Whether a pre- and postassessment is used, the formal assessment should include 1) directions
for administering the assessment, 2) quantitative questions which are defined as items that
may be counted as correct or incorrect, like multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blank, or true-false,
3) qualitative items, such as written answers to open-ended questions, and 4) questions
assessing student voice, which is students assessing their performance on the learning
target, or central focus.
Another element which should be shown on the formal assessment is alignment between the
lesson plans and assessment questions. Alignment is the degree to which planning, instruction,
and assessment overlap with each other.
Here is an example of a preassessment with these characteristics. The postassessment
would look identical. Of course, this format is not suitable for all subject areas and
grades. However, it does show requirements, such as a brief set of directions, quantitative-type
questions, qualitative-type questions, and a set of questions for assessing student voice.
The questions included on the formal assessment should be aligned with the learning targets
and central focus of the lesson sequence.
Here is a set of example learning targets and a central focus.
One way to align learning targets and the central focus with an assessment is to include
words shown in the learning targets and central focus with questions on the assessment, as
shown here.
And again, whatever students are to accomplish according to the learning targets may appear
as open-ended questions on the assessment to show alignment.
The set of student voice questions on the assessment should also show alignment with
the learning targets and central focus of the lesson sequence.
It is necessary to have an assessment criteria for the formal assessment. The assessment
criteria may take many forms, like rubric, description, or answer key. This assessment
criteria for the example postassessment includes a right-wrong checklist, rubric, and description.
The assessment criteria is also aligned with quantitative, qualitative, and student voice
sections of the pre-postassessment in this example.
One advantage of the pre-postassessment model is that it simplifies analysis of whole class
performance. Results from the preassessment may be compared to the postassessment, as
shown in this table and graph. This type of analysis is efficient for answering edTPA
commentary prompts.
Similarly, the analysis may be conducted for individual students, as the table and graph
show for Mindy, Dave, and Jim. EdTPA commentary prompts require analysis of whole class performance
and analysis of individual performance.
Including quantitative, qualitative, and student voice questions, along with clear alignment
to the learning targets and central focus, enables candidates to use the postassessment
as the work sample for Task 3.
Assessments for edTPA include several features and some requirements.
First, there should be multiple informal assessments across the lessons.
Similarly, there should be multiple opportunities to assess student voice across the lessons.
There should be some assessment of students prior learning to begin the sequence.
There should be some formal assessment, which shows alignment with the central focus and
learning targets. Questions should be quantitative, qualitative, and assess student voice.
There should be assessment criteria, such as a rubric for differentiating student performance
on the assessments. Finally, assessments should provide information
enabling the candidate to analyze whole class and individual student performance.
Thanks for participating in this module of PassedTPA, Assessments.