AFL

When you are testing, marking, observing, assessing (etc) your students' work:

• What information do you want to get from these assessments?
• What will you do with the data? What will you use it for?
• Why are you doing it? (Do you have to do it, or do you choose to do it?)
• What is the PURPOSE for the assessment anyway?
• What is the PURPOSE of teaching?

Here's what AFL is NOT:

• a program
• a strategy
• an add-on, something more
• about marks or letter grades

It is also NOT:

• Assessment OF Learning
• Assessment AS Learning

So what exactly is Assessment FOR Learning?

It is something effective teachers do minute-by-minute and day-by-day to PROMOTE and ENABLE student learning.

It is not only about informing teachers about how a student is doing...

It is also (and perhaps more so) about informing the teacher about what adjustments they need to make to help that student learn.

An Example...

www.wordle.net is a site that creates a "word cloud" of any pasted text with the highest frequency words appearing the largest.

A teacher had her grade 2 students "wordle" their narrative stories...

so what?

The info she got told her she needed to work with her students on developing their vocabulary in order to improve their narrative writing (more descriptive synonyms for "went").

It's about the LEARNING!

So....

What are the elements of AFL?

What does AFL look like?

Intentions

Teacher clarity and explanation of intention ranked as the 8th (of 138) most important contributor to learning (Hattie, 2009)

• Record and post learning intentions
• Put each learning intention into a bigger picture of “why” students might want to learn it
• Keep bringing students’ focus back to the learning intentions during the lesson/task

• TSWBAT
• OLI the Owl

(Our Learning Intention)

• INTU (I need to understand)

Caution:

Use "face your challenges" or "strive to the highest" goals instead of "do your best" goals.

"DYB" goals are easily attained by anyone; The performances of students who have the most challenging goals are over 250% higher than the performances of students with the easiest goals.

(Wood & Locke , 1997, in Hattie, 2009)

Questions

Can be used to find out what students know (so you know what you have to do to help them) or to help them think.

Ask more questions to help learners think.

Involve students more in asking their own questions.

Use ideas such as “hands down” or “all write” to encourage participation

Refrain from being the arbiter of right & wrong

Give learners a brief time to think and/or talk with a peer before inviting responses. Give 3-5 seconds.

(Most teachers give 1 second or less -- Wiliam).

If a student says “I don’t know”, say you’ll go back to them after 2 more people; if they say they still don’t know, ask them to state their favourite response from the others and tell why

"Good teaching is more a giving of right questions than a giving of right answers."

Josef Albers

Students can understand the differences in 4 levels of performance...not 100 (which is what giving a percentage is).

Using previously collected samples of a task (models at each level of performance), lead the class in creating a rubric with aspect criteria and levels of performances for each criterion, and hand it out prior to the task--this process will build ownership and clarity of expectation.

Build a rubric for tasks that the students will do repeatedly...that way you can use the same rubric each time and students will know from the previous assessment what they need to do to improve the next time.

People perform better when they know the goal(s), see models, know how their performance compares to the criteria.

Rick Stiggins

“Unless we specify to students what the criteria for learning are, they will continue to be mystified as to what they are to do and what is is they are learning.”

Grant Wiggins, 1992

Descriptive Feedback

What is working

What’s not working

What’s next

...that needs to be:

Specific

Explicit

Timely

Focused on the skill not the product

Direct students' attention to their work, rather than to their mistakes

Descriptive Feedback is "among the most powerful influences on achievement" (Hattie, 2009; ranked 10th of 138).

...feedback is most powerful when it is "student-to-teacher" feedback that occurs through questioning and through the results of formative assessment (Hattie, 2009)

"When teachers seek, or at least are open to, feedback from students as to what students know, what they understand, where they make errors, when they have misconceptions, when they are not engaged--then teaching and learning can be synchronized and powerful. Feedback to teachers helps make learning visible."

(Hattie, 2009)

• Makes students active players (BC Principle of Learning)
• Is strongly connected to motivation and engagement.
• One way students demonstrate ownership is when they show and talk about their own learning with others.

Becomes Assessment AS Learning

Develops students’:

• communication and interpersonal skills
• critical thinking skills
• skills of metacognition

Metacognitive skills such as self-questioning rank 13th on the most influential contributors to student achievement (Hattie, 2009).

How do I know if I am using AFL in my classroom?

• Do I routinely share learning goals with my students so they know where we are heading? (Intentions)

• Do I routinely communicate to students the standards they are aiming for before they begin work on a task? (Criteria)

• Do I routinely have students self and peer assess their work in ways that improve their learning? (Self & Peer Assessment)

• Does my questioning technique include all students and promote increased understanding? (Questions)

• Do I routinely provide individual feedback to students that informs them how to improve? (Feedback)

• Do I routinely provide opportunities for students to make use of this feedback to improve specific pieces of work? ( wnership)

Can the student

“re-submit” work?

Allow them to do so provided they attach a note directing the teacher to what they did to improve it.

"We think too much about effective methods of teaching and not enough about effective methods of learning."

John Carolus S. J.

• Evaluation AU SERVICE DE l'apprentissage
• Evaluation EN TANT QU'apprentissage
• Evaluation DE l'apprentissage

You weigh it to see if you're giving it the best to eat.

If not, you have to change its diet.

You don't fatten a pig by weighing it...

Resources

http://www.edu.gov.mb.ca/m12/frpub/me/docs/repenser_eval/docs/document_complet.pdf

By the way...

According to Hattie, "Providing formative evaluation" (aka AFL) is the #3 (out of 138) most significant contributor to student achievement.

(http://bcelc.insinc.com/webcastseries/20080416/archive.html)

(http://www.bced.gov.bc.ca/classroom_assessment/)

(http://www.bced.gov.bc.ca/perf_stands/)

(http://www.bced.gov.bc.ca/irp/irp.htm)

http://www.annedavies.com

• “Rethinking Classroom Assessment with Purpose in Mind” (Western and Northern Canadian Protocol, 2006) (http://www.wncp.ca/media/40539/rethink.pdf)

• BCELC web series featuring Faye Brownlie

• BC Ministry of Education: Classroom Assessment and Student Reporting

• Performance Standards

• IRPs
• Anne Davies ( )
• “Talk About Assessment: Strategies and Tools to Improve Learning”, Damian Cooper, 2007, Nelson
• Learning About Learning video series. Learning and Teaching Scotland,
• Assessment is for Learning (AifL). Learning and Teaching Scotland,

• Learning About Learning (Assessment) Staff Development materials (PowerPoint and Facilitator's Guide to use with staff)

• Wordle ( )
• Prezi ( ) (Prezi template acknowledgement to Adam Somlai-Fischer )
• Visible Learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement. Hattie, John (Routledge, 2009) ISBN: 978-0-415-47618-8

Assessment

FOR

Learning

Self & Peer Assessment

How

Why

http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/learningaboutlearning/index.asp

• Teach students to use language (criteria and descriptors) directly from the rubric
• Language students use should be descriptive rather than evaluative (useful info versus judgments)
• Talk with learners about the importance of receiving feedback from themselves and from their peers to support learning (their own AFL)
• Establish a pattern for peer feedback such as identify 2 or 3 strengths before giving one suggestion for improvement

Learning

Is non-judgmental feedback given to the learner about:

BUT...

http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/assess/index.asp

Criteria

Faye Brownlie

Criteria is what’s important or what counts in an activity/task. Students of all ages need a clear understanding of the criteria by which--AND the level to which--their work will be assessed.

Use a rubric

A sample...

http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/learningaboutlearning/assessment/staffDef.asp

Assessment OF Learning

• Summative/Final/Official Assessment
• Evaluation of students by teachers
• What teachers do TO students
• Goal is to MEASURE learning
• Serves as CERTIFYING or CULMINATING evaluation that discounts further learning

"wordle" of Assessment of Learning from "Rethinking Classroom Assessment with Purpose in Mind", WNCP, 2006)

Assessment AS Learning

• Student’s Metacognition
• Students do this "to" themselves
• Students become adept at personally monitoring what they are learning, and use what they discover from the monitoring to make adjustments, adaptations, and even major changes in their thinking

"wordle" of Assessment As Learning from "Rethinking Classroom Assessment with Purpose in Mind", WNCP, 2006)

Before we begin...ask yourself these questions:

FOR

Assessment

Learning

Teaching

• clear statements of what students are expected to learn and be able to do.

Teachers spend 35-50% of teaching time posing questions, or about 100 questions per hour. Teachers ask 300-400 questions per day, the majority of which are low-level cognitive questions (60% recall, 20% procedural) versus open-ended, inquiry questions (research cited in Hattie, 2009).

Use student-labelled popsicle sticks in nested cans to "pick on" certain students (but make it look like you're pulling their name "by luck").

Look what happens to the student's level of thinking when you

do that!

The Student Will Be Able To...

We use it in our lesson plans...why not show it to the kids? After all, it's what THEY are supposed to be able to do!

"Boys and girls, what does OLI say we need to do?"

http://www.wordle.net

"So class, what's your INTU today?"

http://www.prezi.com

Photo credits: 'horizon' by pierreyves @ flickr