Why do we have to do this?

It happens to every teacher. Maybe not every lesson, or even every day, but sometime a student will inevitably ask, “why do we have to do this?” And worse than the actual question is the moment you realize that you, the teacher, do not actually have an answer that will satisfy that student. The process of Backward Design as explained by Wiggins and McTighe in their book Understanding by Design explain a clear solution to this situation.

Having a clear picture of what students should be able to do at the conclusion of a unit should be the first step in lesson planning. That understanding leads to an effective and meaningful assessment. And when your lesson planning starts with well-designed assessments each individual lesson can be intentionally aimed at preparing students to demonstrate mastery of each objective. This process might require spending more time preparing each of your assessments, but it also gives more meaning to each lesson you teach. It also prepares you to answer that inevitable question.

I have just started thinking of a series of guiding questions to help ensure that my assessments are meaningful. My goal is to have five questions that I can check my assessments against to ensure they will allow students to demonstrate mastery of the objectives I teach. The first question is “are the objectives of this assessment clear to my students,” and the second is “is my assessment aligned with the objectives I planned to teach?” At the beginning of any planning cycle, I should be able to clearly explain what students should be able to do at the end of a unit. By asking these two questions about every assessment I plan to use I make sure my time planning and teaching relate directly to preparing students for what is expected of them.

By following this link you can read a more detailed explanation of these two questions, as well as the remaining three questions as they are added to my checklist.

One of the many benefits to the Backward Design process is knowing I always have an answer when asked: “why do we have to do this?”

Taking the Numbers out of Math

At the start of every school year, I struggle to understand why many of my students’ first thought when solving word problems is to simply pick a mathematical process and plug in the numbers provided in a word problem. I have tried to reason, beg, implore, and bribe my students into reading each word problem then stop to actually think about what that problem means. I’ve tried to encourage them to draw a picture or act it out, and as long as we focus on one isolated problem they are very successful in figuring out what process the problem requires. However, that does not translate to a more formal assessment. They slide back into the old habit of picking a process and plugging in the numbers. Then, I stumbled across numberless word problems.

The initial assessment I designed is intended to simply introduce students to numberless word problems and help develop their mathematical thinking, so the problems focus on basic addition, subtraction, or multiplication. Each problem is presented in four parts. At first, the problem is presented with no numbers and slowly builds the numbers, and at times the question, into the problem. This allows students to think about the situation presented in the problem without a mathematical process. By removing numbers from the problem initially, students have to think about what is actually happening in the problem.

To encourage students to think, and more importantly talk about their mathematical reasoning this assessment requires they complete four independent steps to explain and defend their work. First, they will make a simple sketch to model the situation presented in the problem. One number is added to the problem in the second slide, so students will next predict and explain if the remaining number should be larger or smaller based on the situation presented in the problem. After looking at the third slide students will explain the process they anticipate using to solve the problem based on all of the information provided. And finally, students will show and defend their work with all of the information and question provided on the fourth slide.

Students will be asked to solve and explain one problem a day. Students will be assigned one of the five problems so that equal-sized groups work on each problem. After completing the work for their first problem, students will record a short video explaining their work and post that video to our class’ Flipgrid. After the first-day students will work their assigned problem, but their Flipgrid video will be a response to the original video. For each video response, students will explain any similarities or differences in their work when compared to the original post. You can view the first week of numberless word problems here and the student instructions here.

Numberless word problems are an effective way to assess how well students are able to apply their understanding of mathematical processes to situations presented in word problems. The complexity of the problems can easily be increased after students understand the process of solving them. Numberless word problems have been the most effective tool for getting students to really think about and understand word problems. This process has benefitted my students’ standardized test scores, but more importantly, it has increased their mathematical reasoning.

Taking Assessment of the Assessment

Last week my students took their final standardized assessment, and now I find myself in the final two weeks of the school year. This time is filled with lessons more geared to student engagement than content mastery. With the last of the tests behind us, we move into making the last few days enjoyable as we celebrate what our students have accomplished this year. This time also presents an opportunity to reflect on how I assessed my students broadly this year and consider what I can do differently next year.

To do this I reviewed one of the assessments I used in my classroom this year specifically looking at the assumptions present in the assessment. The Common Assessment is used across my district to track student progress and determine students’ readiness for the end of year assessments. This test is administered following the same procedures the state of Texas uses for the state assessment, and students were given a score that reflected how they would have fared had this assessment been the “real thing.” While it imitates the official state test this Common Assessment only covers the first two six-weeks of the school year, so it is assessing only a limited amount of the content students are expected to learn.

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Common Assessment

This should be a test that proves students mastery students’ mathematical progress, but by giving this assessment I make the following assumptions:

My students are able to read and comprehend each of the problems before applying any mathematical processes
My students understand the real world situations that are being described in the problems
The reference page provided is beneficial to students and they understand when or if they need to use it
My students understand the relationship between place value and the decimal point when answering the final two questions
This is a true reflection of how well my students understand each of the concepts taught in the first two six-weeks of the school year

These assumptions would be present in many of the assessments I was asked to give this year. Every two to three weeks I gave an assessment that looked very much like the Common Assessment to check my students’ mastery of a completed unit.

Last week I explained three thoughts I have about assessments. First, that assessments should not be final; second, that students should be involved; and third, that assessments should indicate as much about my performance as a teacher as they do about my students’ performance. The Common Assessment does not align with those three thoughts, at least not the first two. This assessment was final, though students were given time to make corrections after we generated the data from the testing session, and students were not involved in the actual assessing of their work. I feel these two elements are critical to meaningful learning, and this assessment did not support my students with an overall understanding of the content. It functions much more like a “gotcha” for students who performed poorly. I was able to use the results to reflect on how well I taught the material, but I gave this assessment eight or nine weeks after completing my first unit which was not helpful in guiding my lesson planning.

This assessment is so similar to the tests that I took as a fifth-grade student twenty years ago, and I suspect it would look very similar to the tests that my dad took when he was in fifth grade. This assessment does not match the methods of instruction that I am being encouraged to use in my classroom. As I look at this assessment in isolation it appears little has changed in how students are being assessed through the history of education in this country. This method of multiple choice assessment is consistent with the history of educational assessment and has not adjusted to the new methods of instruction used today.

This assessment is beneficial and has a place in my classroom. It prepares students for the assessment they will take at the end of the year to demonstrate mastery of fifth-grade content for promotion by the state. It also provides solid data regarding my instruction and allows for reflection on my performance. However, this should not be the only or even the most meaningful form of student assessment. This Common Assessment has a place in my classroom as long as there are other forms of assessment present alongside it.

Three Thoughts on Assessment

Before I begin CEP 813 (and my last semester as a student in the MAET program) I have been asked to share three things I believe about assessment. Assessment is a heavy word for many classroom teachers, especially at this time of the year. In fact, I spent four hours of my day today giving the STAAR (State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness) Test. There is a weight to this word, and I feel often a disconnect between what it looks like ideologically opposed to in practice. I am often faced with the struggle of what I think assessment should be or how it should function in a classroom and what I feel I have the time for in order to meet all of the expectations placed on a classroom teacher. Still, assessment is necessary to determine the depth of students’ learning and pinpoint areas of misconception. Assessment is a foundational component of any successful classroom. With that in mind, the three things I believe about assessment are that assessment should not be final, students should be involved, and it should indicate as much about my performance as a teacher as it does my students’ performance.

Assessment should not be final – “Is this a grade” is asked at least once at the conclusion of every assignment. My answer over time has evolved from simply “yes” to “I’ll look at it and then we will figure that out.” It takes time for my students to understand that their first attempt on an assignment is not their last. Assessment should be used to determine how much more growth is needed for a student to truly understand an idea. Relieving some of the stress students feel is an additional benefit of this thinking.
Students should be involved – My experience with assessment as a student was entirely one-sided. I turned in an assignment, received a grade (often without any explanation beyond a few “x’s” on the page), and then moved on. I was never given a chance to assess my own work. I have found value in guiding my students through the assessment process. It gives them a better sense of how well they are really doing and makes the assessment more than just a number grade that will be recorded on a report card someday.
It should indicate as much about my performance as a teacher as it does my students’ performance – Assessment its not just about how my students did; assessment provides data about how well I taught my content and how well I explained the new material. This also takes some of the assessment stress off of my students because they know that each grade is as much about me as it was about them.

I am excited to begin looking at electronic assessment this summer to better understand the role assessment plays in the online classroom and the adjustments that are necessary for an asynchronous learning environment.