THOUGHTFUL CLASSROOM PROFESSIONAL LEARNING SUITES
A Professional Learning Suite
Using Formative Assessment to Advance Student Learning
Tools and strategies for putting the power of formative assessment to work in every classroom
Featuring Dr. Harvey Silver, today’s leading expert on instructional tools and strategies
Does your approach to assessment promote deeper learning?
Today’s educators know that assessment means much more than assigning and grading student work. They know assessment is an ongoing process that involves regularly gathering information about student learning, using that information to make better instructional decisions, and empowering students to take greater responsibility for monitoring and improving their learning.
But knowing these things to be true and making them everyday practice in the classroom are two very different things.
This suite is designed to help teachers move beyond traditional, paper-and-pencil assessment to “assessment for learning”—a formative approach to assessment that enhances learning and builds student self-efficacy. The suite is built around three research-based principles of high-quality formative assessment and provides practical tools that help teachers put these principles into practice. The three principles are
- Invite students into the process, right from the beginning.
- Make learning and thinking visible.
- Help students take control over their learning.
What Tools & Strategies Will I Find In This Suite?
Tools for Inviting Students into the Process
- Student-Friendly Learning Targets + Post, Discuss, Reference: Two tools that work together to ensure students have a deep and personal understanding of learning targets and are able to use them to assess their own learning
- Vocabulary Knowledge Rating (VKR): A technique that introduces students to critical vocabulary terms before instruction begins and that trains them to assess and improve their understanding as the unit unfolds
- Advanced Playbook on Using Success Criteria to Promote Deep Learning
Tools for Making Learning Visible
- Clear or Cloudy?: A checking-for-understanding tool that tells us what students are clear about and what’s still cloudy
- Because: A simple and flexible technique that helps uncover students’ thinking and builds the “evidence habit” by requiring students to give a “because” for every claim they make and answer they give
- Questioning in Style: A questioning technique that uses four different styles of questions to gather information about students’ thinking while increasing classroom engagement
- The Five Cs of In-Lesson Feedback: A framework designed to simplify the process of gathering and responding to evidence of student learning in real time by focusing teachers’ attention on five critical behaviors or moves
Tools for Helping Students Take Greater Control Over their Own Learning
- Stop, Slow, Go!: A tool that provides information about the effectiveness of classroom lessons in real time and empowers students to help set the ideal pace of instruction
- Graduated Difficulty: A tool that presents students with different levels of tasks and invites students to make decisions about which level is best for them and how they can advance to higher levels
- Effort Tracker: A tool that boosts motivation by helping students recognize that they have the power to improve their academic performance through effort
- Personal Best: A tool that motivates students to master new skills by challenging them to improve their performance over time so they can achieve their personal best
PLUS:
Practical resources to help teachers and PLCs plan, reflect, and analyze student work—including a Comprehensive Planning Guide.
Click above for an advance organizer of the tools and strategies in this suite.
Your Path to Improvement Starts Here
Check Out a Sample TOOL Tutorial
Check out all of the
Thoughtful Classroom Professional Learning Suites
Tools and Strategies for Active, In-Depth Learning