2. If teachers attend monthly assessment
literacy meetings and meet weekly in
grade level Professional Learning
Communities (PLC) to share and apply the
7 strategies of assessment literacy (AL),
then we will increase the percentage of
teachers embedding AL into their daily
instruction as measured by quarterly
student surveys in grades 2-5.
3. Strategy #1
Provide a clear and
understandable
vision of the learning
target.
4. I can learn whatever I need to
learn to do well in school.
Strategy #1
5. I know if my work is good or not before I give it to
the teacher.
Strategy #1
6. It is clear to me what I am expected to
learn.
Strategy #1
7. My teacher tells our class what we are
going to learn before we start to learn it.
Strategy #1
8. I can explain why my work is good or not.
Strategy #1
18. After we take a test, we use it to show us what we are
good at and what we still need to work on.
Strategy #4
19. Strategy 5: Design lessons to focus on
one aspect of quality at a time.
Strategy 6: Teach students focused
revision.
Strategy 7: Engage students in self-
reflection and let them keep track of
and share their learning.
20. I can use samples of my work to show what
I have learned.
Strategy #7
21. I keep track of how my work gets better
over time.
Strategy #7
22. I can compare samples of my work to show
how much I have improved.
Strategy #7
23. When I try to learn something hard, I can learn it.
24. If I decide to get good grades, I really
can do it.
Hello. This is Dr. Arbetter, principal or Walker Elementary School. In the next several slides, I will share with you our progress on our professional development strategy aimed at increasing student achievement.
At Walker School, we are a collaborative learning community guided by a relentless focus to ensure each student achieves maximum growth. Walker’s teachers are learning assessment literacy strategies to help our students become lifelong learners, productive citizens, and responsible leaders for an ever-evolving society. Our Professional Growth strategy is: If teachers attend monthly assessment literacy meetings and meet weekly in grade level Professional Learning Communities (PLC) to share and apply the 7 strategies of assessment literacy (AL), then we will increase the percentage of teachers embedding Assessment Literacy into their daily instruction as measured by quarterly student surveys in grades 2-5. The following slides show how our students answered the questions on their most recent quarterly survey in December.
The first assessment literacy strategy is for teachers to provide a clear and understandable vision of the learning target in student-friendly language. The research behind this is that students learn better when they know what they are learning ahead of time. At Walker, you will see learning targets posted inside every classroom. In addition, teachers are working on sharing these targets with students orally at the beginning of each lesson. Another part of this strategy is to share clear scoring guides, or rubrics, with students as they work on assignments. We measured how well we are doing this through a variety of questions to students, as you will see in the next few slides.
80% of Walker’s 2 nd , 3 rd , 4 th , & 5 th graders felt they could learn whatever they needed to learn to do well in school. Strategy #1 helps students believe this.
64% of Walker’s students think they know if their work is good or not before they turn it in to the teacher. This is a relative weakness for us and tells us that we need to work more on sharing scoring guides with students as they learn.
84% of students clearly understand what they are expected to learn. This tells us that we are doing well with sharing clear learning targets with students.
This graph reinforces that we are doing well with sharing learning targets with students. 93% of our students responded that teachers share learning targets with them.
Scoring Guides, which are part of Strategy 1, help students explain why their work is good or not. As of the end of 2 nd semester, 66% of our students felt that they could explain why their work was good or not. We will continue working on providing and explaining scoring guides to students. As we progress with this strategy, students will help create the scoring guides with teachers.
74% of our students felt that they could explain what they learned at the end of learning experiences. Since 93% of our students agreed that teachers tell them the learning targets at the beginning of lessons, this question’s results shows us that we need to work on revisiting the learning targets during the middle and at the end of lessons.
78% of our students understand their teacher’s grading system.
The second assessment literacy strategy is for teachers to use examples and models of strong and weak work with students. In this way, students have a clear picture of what they are aiming for when completing assignments.
85% of our students believe that teachers implement Strategy #2 regularly.
Examples of strong and weak work help students know what they need to do to make their work better. As you can see from this slide, 73% of our students believe this to be true.
80% of Walker’s students know how to do work that will get a good grade.
The third assessment literacy strategy is for teachers to provide regular descriptive feedback to students. This kind of feedback means that teachers are telling students what specifically they are doing well and what specifically they need to work on. For example, “Good use of simile when you wrote, “She was as sweet as honey.”
Descriptive feedback can help students judge the quality of their work.
The fourth assessment literacy strategy is for teachers to teach students to self-assess their work and set goals. All of our teachers have learned the first 4 strategies of Assessment Literacy.
Students use results of prior assessments and assignments to help them set goals for future work. 85% of our students, as of the end of December, felt that they did this regularly.
The majority of our teachers will learn Strategies 5, 6, and 7 between now and the end of the year. 8 of our faculty members learned these strategies last year and are really focusing in on Strategy #7 this year, which is to engage students in self-reflection and let them keep track of and share their learning.
82% of our students know how to use samples of their work to show what they’ve learned.
68% of our students keep track of how their work gets better over time. As stated previously, only a handful of our teachers have started to work on this strategy.
75% of Walker’s students know how to compare samples of work to show improvement over time.
While the last several questions we looked at are not directly related to any one Assessment Literacy strategy, each question points to a combination of strategies. 69% of our students believe that they can learn hard concepts when they try.
77% of our students are confident that they can get good grades.
78% of our students believe they do well in school.
84% of Walker’s 2 nd , 3 rd , 4 th , & 5 th graders believe they are good at learning.
93% of our students believe the main reason for good grades is doing good work.
78% of our students believe that doing good work enables students to learn hard things in school. As you can see, while we still have a lot of learning ourselves to do in order to become more proficient in implementing assessment literacy strategies in order to help our students become life-long learners, we are well on our way.
