TOWN Phase 2 - Module 5

1. Welcome to TOWN 2013 Phase 2
Module 5
The presentation will commence at 3:30pm
All schools will be asked to contribute to
discussions; please have your feedback ready
VMR: 600020601
Please remember to ‘mute’ your microphone
( when not participating in discussions through the meeting )

2. Agenda for meeting
3:15 –
3:30pm
Registration, login / roll call
3:30 - 3:45pm Welcome and acknowledgement
Feedback from participants
(Modules 1-4)
3:45 - 4:15pm Continuous assessment
4:15 - 4:40 pm Effective feedback
4:40 – 4:50pm What next? between-modules task
4:50pm -
Close 5:00pm
Questions, discussion
Module 6 – Monday 4th
November

3. Back toBack to
Feedback- Module 4
Suggestions – Introducing tape diagrams:
• Did you use a lesson study approach?
• Describe the lesson
• How did students respond?
•What was the impact on student engagement and learning?
How did you know?
• Will you continue to use tape diagrams?
• Do students independently use tape diagrams in their problem
solving?
Student progress update to Region;
Lesson Study implications;
Continuing to use SFF activities: what is working well?

4. Continuous assessment
RATS – Rich Assessment Tasks
Open-ended problem solving
Observations
Interviews

5. The task of the
teacher
The task of the teacher is not necessarily to teach, but to create
situations in which students learn. This focus emphasises what it is that
students learn, rather than what teachers do. Most teachers appear to
be quite skilled at regulating or controlling the activities in which
students engage, but have only a hazy idea of the learning that results.
Professor Dylan Wiliam (University of London)
Keeping learning on track: Formative assessment and regulation of learning

6. Aspects of formative assessment
• Enhance teaching
• Improve learning
• Reflect a belief that all students can improve.
It involves:
• Asking the right questions to determine where the student currently is in their
learning
• Knowing what comes next in the sequence of learning
• Knowing how to get them there.
 You know what you have taught. How do you know what learning has
occurred?
 What role does continuous assessment and monitoring have in the teaching
and
learning process?
 Share with your colleagues what continuous assessment and monitoring looks
Assessment for learning is designed to:

7. Using continuous assessment in the
classroom
What issues do you face when employing continuous assessment in the
classroom?

8. Should students be a part of the assessment
process?
One of the most constructive and empowering educational goals
we might frame would be to equip students to monitor their own
progress. Effective assessment is a continuous process,
predicated on the teacher's and the pupil's mutual recognition of
the goals of the learning and the criteria for success.
Gilar Leder (Ed.) Assessment and learning of mathematics, 1992
Why do you think self-monitoring would be empowering for students?
How can teachers make this possible?

9. ASSESSMENT AND RICH
TASKS

10. What Makes Assessment
Effective?
• Assessment connects to prior learning
• Students are given time to think before responding
• Assessment engages students, is relevant and
valued
• Students demonstrate mathematical skills in context
(Curriculum support website – Assessing and reporting K-12)

11. What is Authentic Assessment?
• Authentic means genuine, to make valid
• gives a ‘snapshot’ of student understandings at a given
point in time
• informs teachers where the student is “at” and where they
need to “move to” - Assessment for Learning
• identifies student strategies and skills
• engages the learner

12. Other forms of Assessment for Learning
• Completing simple drawings/diagrams
• Open ended puzzles (e.g. square saw)
• Describing/explaining/reflecting (verbal and written)
• Classifying
• Matching activities
• Quizzes
• Pre and post tests e.g. Frayer model
• Cloze activities e.g. directions
• Practical activities
• Observing games e.g. rabbit ears/ circle champions
• Portfolios/ work samples
• Self assessment e.g. Rubrics
• Peer assessment
• Questioning & recording e.g. daily evaluations/grid sheets
• RT rubrics/WM

13. Common Quality Elements
of Interview-based Assessments
• accurate snapshot of student performance
• clear directions/ relevant help for teaching and learning
• identifies the strategies students are using
• group students and differentiate curriculum
• can map student progress onto the Numeracy continuum

14. Open ended Assessments -
Example: The Square Saw
The square saw can be
used for a variety of
assessment areas
E.g. pre and post test
for identifying
equivalent fractions %,
decimals, fractions or
for showing
multiplication facts,
factors, multiples etc

15. Strategic Questioning
• Key Questions around the central concept
• Closed Questions
• Open Questions
• Prompting students to further respond
• Hands down questioning
• Responding positively to students with explicit feedback
• Building on ‘wrong’ answers
• Distributing questions around the class
• Encouraging students to ask questions

16. Rich Assessment Tasks (RATS)
What are they? How do I design them?

17. Why Rich Assessment Tasks (RATS) ?
“When teachers gave more intellectually demanding
tasks there was a strong relationship between the
quality of tasks and student work. Teachers giving
tasks with higher levels of intellectual quality got
higher levels of authentic work from students than
teachers who assigned less challenging tasks.”
Newmann, Lopez and Bryk (1998)

18. Rich Assessment Tasks
• Provides students with opportunities to demonstrate
understanding, knowledge and practical skills
• Allows for a full range of student performance
• Connect to previous learning or relevant curriculum
• Encompasses a variety of outcomes
• Promotes learning and engagement

19. Looking at Rich Tasks- Our Street

20. Our Street Task Continued

21. Stage 3 RAT
Measurement and Area Task MS3.1 and MS3.2
You are working at a dog boarding kennel and you have been
asked to design a dog exercise yard. You have been given 32
metres of fencing wire and four posts.
a. Use an appropriate scale on the grid paper. Mark the positions of
the fence posts with an x and record the measurements.
b. Design two more different dog exercise yards and record the
measurements for each of your dog exercise yards.
c. Record the area of each of your dog exercise yards.
d. Explain which of your yards would give a dog the best space for
exercise. Justify your answer.

22. RAT Example
Helping Hand
The scenario:
'Madeline is very good at reading digital clocks. All of the clocks in
her house are digital. For Madeline’s birthday her grandparents
bought her an analogue wristwatch but she is having trouble
reading the time.'
Write to Madeline helping her to tell the time on her new watch.
Use diagrams as part of your response.

23. Designing A Rich Assessment
Task
• Choose a real world topic
• Decide what area/concepts you want to assess
• Think of an investigating question
• Set criteria, including marking criteria
• Create scaffolds for students requiring support

24. Ways to Make Rich TasksWays to Make Rich Tasks
• FIND ONE
– Support documents
– COGS
– etc..
• WHAT IF’S
- using NAPLAN questions to form complex problems
• WRITE FROM SCRATCH
- Use hobbies
- Weekend activities
- Culture etc
Example

25. Assessment Resource Centre
http://arc.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au

26. Why re-invent the wheel?

27. Monitoring and Tracking using
Numeracy Continuum
• Authentic Assessment to know student levels
• Planning teaching around concepts of majority of class
• Visual Wall mapping and celebration of movement
• Student self regulation & feedback; knowing where to next?
• Forming class groups based on levels
• Differentiating activities based on framework
• 5 week data entry points around integrated program blocks
• Monitoring of tracking levels K-6 on Excel Spread sheet system
• Aligning school reporting systems with assessment points
and language

28. Effective Feedback
Types of feedback
Quality of feedback

29. The Frayer Model

30. The next step in the process of teaching and
assessing is feedback
… feedback is at or near the top of those treatments which have the
greatest effect on student learning. Feedback is not only an outcome of
student performance, but an essential part of the learning process.
Professor Steve Dinham
Feedback on Feedback (2008)
Teachers providing feedback to their students closes the loop of teaching,
learning and assessment. Through providing good quality feedback, teachers
enable students to take responsibility for their learning and progress.
Students need constructive feedback that can help them learn better –
feedback needs to be specific so that students are able to take action.
Feedback should also be shared with parents in ways that strengthen their
capacity to actively support their child’s learning.
The Australian Association of Mathematics Teachers.
Position paper on the practice of assessing mathematics learning. 2008

31. • ...the most powerful single moderator that enhances
achievement is feedback. The simplest prescription for
improving education must be "dollops of feedback" -- providing
information how and why the child understands and
misunderstands, and what directions the student must take to
improve.
• The most fundamental component of teaching is imparting
information to students, assessing and evaluating the students
understanding of this information, and then matching the next
teaching act to the present understandings of the student.
John Hattie (University of Auckland)
Influences on Student learning: Inaugural lecture 1999

32. Feedback on learning - Professor Dylan
Wiliam
A very important way of looking at feedback is whether it's ego involving or task
involving.
Ego involving: You did very well - it focuses on that person’s position in the class.
Task involving: What you need to do to improve....
The research clearly shows that ego involving feedback is rarely effective and, in
fact, can lower achievement. In other words, in many cases rather than giving that
kind of praise you would have been better off shutting up and giving no feedback at
all!
Research shows that when feedback focuses on what students need to do to
improve, and, in particular, how to go about it... then you get very large impacts on
student achievement.
I think that good feedback causes thinking. We need to give students feedback
that helps them move forward; that makes it clear that ability is incremental rather
than fixed. If we send the message to students that ability is fixed then if you’re not
confident or think that you might actually fail when other people will succeed, you
will disengage and basically, you will decide that you would rather be thought lazy
than stupid.

33. (This is a summary of a video transcript. The video can be found at:
http://www.journeytoexcellence.org.uk/videos/expertspeakers/feedbackonlearni
ngdylanwiliam.asp

34. Where to next?
TOWN Phase 2
Module 5: Between VCs activity‐
The following tasks need to be completed before the video conference for
Module 6:
1.Using one of the lesson plans in your email package, determine how you will
assess the students during the lesson.
2.Teach the lesson and provide feedback at the next VC regarding:
the lesson and key concept that was assessed
how you assessed the students’ understanding during the lesson
how you recorded the assessment information
how you overcame any difficulties or issues
any implications for your future teaching and assessing.
3.Continue to update student progress in your records and data wall.
4.Continue to teach lessons and activities from the TOWN resources.

35. Where to next?
Module 6: Term 4
Monday 4th
November 2013
• Feedback: continuous assessment and feedback strategies,
progress on data wall, implementing SFF activities
Planning for sustainability
Completing TOWN tracking sheets
Completing TOWN Phase2 Teacher Assessment

36. Thank you –
Please send your attendance sheets
suzanne.gibson@det.nsw.edu.au
or fax: 9208 7629
Module 6: Term 4
Monday 4th
November 2013
ivana.zekanovic@det.nsw.edu.au rowena.whittle@det.nsw.edu.au
suzanne.gibson@det.nsw.edu.au