Making Classroom Assessment Work

3Rd Edition! When should we assess, and when should we evaluate? What might be the results of evaluating too early or too much? How do we know if we are evaluating the right things? How do we know what makes sense for the learner and for the course? These questions are at the heart of "Making Classroom Assessment Work." This book combines powerful ideas with practical strategies to implement quality classroom assessment. Use assessment "for" learning to guide instruction, provide feedback, collect evidence of learning, present evidence of success, and produce accurate standards-based report cards. The framework provides a guide for teachers--from involving students, parents, and community members in the assessment process to evaluating and reporting progress. Each chapter ends with a section of questions and reflections to encourage readers to guide their own learning and the learning of students, to identify key decision points in planning their own individual strategies, and to carry out assessment "for" learning in a way that fits their classrooms.

Making Classroom Assessments Reliable and Valid by Robert J. Marzano will convince you that classroom assessments should become the primary method for formally measuring student learning over other types of assessment in education. Read about the key advantages of classroom assessments over interim, end-of-course, and state assessments in how to assess student learning and measure growth over time. Marzano also addresses the validity and reliability of classroom assessments and how to improve those metrics before bringing them to their rightful place in K-12 assessments. This book outlines how to revamp validity and reliability to match technical advances made in classroom assessment, instead of matching large-scale assessment's traditional standards. Using this book, teachers, schools, and districts can design classroom assessments that are equally if not more reliable and valid than traditional large-scale assessments. How this book will convince you to use classroom assessments: Consider the history of large-scale assessments in US education and the purpose of standardized testing. Inspect the importance of and future role of classroom assessment. Explore the three mathematical models of reliability, as well as the three major types of validity. Understand the principles of assessment for learning and the importance of measuring students' individual and comparative growth. Use the provided formulas to create classroom assessments that match traditional interim or end-of-year assessments in reliability and validity. Contents: Introduction: The Role of Classroom Assessment Chapter 1: Discussing the Classroom Assessment Paradigm for Validity Chapter 2: Designing and Scoring Parallel Assessments Chapter 3: Discussing the Classroom Assessment Paradigm for Reliability Chapter 4: Measuring Growth for Groups of Students Chapter 5: Transforming the System Using the New Classroom Assessment Paradigms Appendix

“Hall and Burke acknowledge that formative assessment is hard work. But they make clear that the benefits far outweigh the disadvantages… They neatly divide it into bite-sized chapters, with each building neatly on the one before - [this book] is easily accessible to the reader.” BJET This book explains and exemplifies formative assessment in practice. Drawing on incidents and case studies from primary classrooms, it describes and analyses how teachers use formative assessment to promote learning. It argues the case for formative assessment with reference to sociocultural perspectives on learning and it examines this in the context of current assessment policy. Themes addressed in the various chapters include feedback, the power and roles of learners and teachers in formative assessment; self and peer assessment; and sharing success criteria with learners. Individual chapters explore formative assessment in: literacy, numeracy, art, science,and history. In addition there are two chapters on formative assessment in the early years. Making Formative Assessment Work provides teachers, student teachers, teacher educators and researchers with a sophisticated grasp of issues in formative assessment and how they relate to the improvement of pupil learning.

Designed as a ready-to-use survival guide for middle school Earth science teachers, this title is an invaluable resource that provides an entire year's worth of inquiry-based and discovery-oriented Earth science lessons, including 33 investigations or labs and 17 detailed projects. This unique collection of astronomy, geology, meteorology, and physical oceanography lessons promotes deeper understanding of science concepts through a hands-on approach that identifies and dispels student misconceptions and expands student understanding and knowledge. In addition, this field-tested and standards-based volume is ideal for university-level methodology courses in science education.

Using clear explanations and cases, this must-have resource shows how formative assessment can improve student learning. Included are lesson plans and ideas for easy implementation.

This book is based on the belief that decision making is perhaps the most critical of all teaching skills and that good assessments lie at the core of good decision making. To become better teachers then, teachers must learn to make informed decisions about both individual students (learning decisions) and about groups of students (teaching decisions). This book gives equal status to both types of decisions and shows how assessment is integral to both. The organization of the book is sequential, mirroring the way in which information should be used to make decisions. It begins with a conceptual framework linking information to decision making, then moves to the design of assessment instruments and the collection of assessment information, then to the interpretation of assessment information and, finally, to reporting the results of both the assessment and the decision-making process. There is an emphasis throughout on linking why teachers assess with what and how they assess. Other key features include: * Practical Framework -- The book's framework corresponds to the framework that teachers use to grade their students: conduct (classroom behavior), effort (student motivation), and achievement (student learning). * Unique Chapters -- There are separate chapters on interpreting assessment information prior to decision making and on reporting assessment information to parents, teachers, and administrators. * Flexibility -- Because of its modest length and price, and its practical focus on the links between assessment and everyday teacher decision making, this text can be used either in full-length assessment courses for teachers or to teach the assessment units in educational psychology or integrated methods courses.