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Accentuate The Formative

Michigan teachers use rubrics and video to improve their practice

By Theron Blakeslee, Denny Chandler, Edward Roeber and Tara Kintz
Categories: Data, Learning designs
October 2017
Vol. 38 No 5
Formative assessment is one of the most effective tools that teachers use to promote student learning, and watching yourself teach on video is one of the most effective ways to improve your teaching. As part of a project for the Michigan Department of Education, we worked with eight teachers in Michigan who are using videos of their teaching to improve their use of formative assessment practices. In this article, we describe one of the rubrics we used and highlight some of the improvements that the teachers in our project discovered for themselves through this process. We also discuss how the learning teams we worked with are moving toward facilitating their own enhanced professional learning using classroom observations and the rubrics to provide actionable feedback to

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Theron Blakeslee ([email protected]) and Denny Chandler ([email protected]) are employed by the Michigan Assessment Consortium to conduct research for the Michigan Department of Education on the FAME program. Edward Roeber ([email protected]) is assistant director of the Michigan Assessment Consortium and directs the consortium’s FAME research effort. Tara Kintz ([email protected]) is director of the fellowship of instructional leaders in the Office of K-12 Outreach at Michigan State University.

5 Dimensions of Formative Assessment

Planning

  • Instructional planning

Learning targets

  • Use of learning targets
  • Learning progressions
  • Model of proficient achievement

Eliciting student understanding

  • Activating prior knowledge
  • Eliciting evidence of student understanding
  • Teacher questioning strategies

Rationale for questioning

  • Formative feedback
  • Feedback from the teacher
  • Feedback from peers
  • Student self-assessment

Instructional and learning decisions

  • Adjustments to teaching
  • Adjustments to learning

References

Costa, A. & Garmston, R. (2016). Cognitive Coaching: Developing self-directed leaders and learners (3rd ed.). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

Kintz, T., Lane, J., Gotwals, A., & Cisterna, D. (2015). Professional development at the local level: Necessary and sufficient conditions for critical colleagueship. Teaching and Teacher Education, 51, 121-136.



Categories: Data, Learning designs

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