Embedding assessment into classroom instruction entails setting clear objectives for what students will be learning, and then designing both activities that will get them there and ways to tell whether they did. If teachers do this, they can use class discussions and project work as a means of assessing what their students know without using conventional tests. In this 90-minute
How can a school ensure that its graduates are meeting community standards? Seniors at Maine’s Yarmouth High School help teachers design a year-long seminar course that explores a series of interdisciplinary topics (like “race, culture, and identity”) from the perspectives of science and humanism. Working alone and in groups, they read and discuss texts and pursue their individual research. At
What’s not on the test? Teachers, students, and parents are drawing new attention to the vital skills and habits that most state tests ignore — and asking for more and richer ways to show what they have learned. A group of New Jersey fourth-graders spreads a map on the floor and calculates with a bar scale how far they must
Eleventh and twelfth grade students in “Academy X,” a leadership and humanities academy at Sir Francis Drake High School in suburban Marin County, California spent nine weeks researching the school facilities crisis that faces not only their own area but the whole state. Working in groups, the students researched the facilities problem by meeting with school officials and state policy-makers
Schools around the country have turned to Senior Projects as a way to synthesize and demonstrate a student’s intellectual as well as life skills. Typically, such projects arise out of students’ individual passions or interests and are mentored by an outside expert in the field. At Henry M. Jackson High School outside Seattle, students spend an entire year pulling together
Teachers who like to use activities or projects to bring instruction to life may also assume that such activities make valid and reliable assessments of what a student understands. Not necessarily, warns Grant Wiggins in his 1998 book, Educative Assessment — but it’s simple to check, using these two questions: 1. Could the student do well at the task for
Match the statement at the top with the appropriate method from the list at the bottom. (Some methods may apply to more than one item) 1. I want to figure out how to improve my teaching in my classroom. 2. I want to figure out how to revise my classroom curriculum. 3. I want to figure out how to place