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As students move through a lesson, some acquire information and skills more quickly than others. Some students will need additional support, scaffolds, feedback, or reteaching to understand key concepts and apply specific strategies, processes, or skills. We must collect formative assessment data in each lesson to understand our students’ progress and respond to their needs.
Formative assessment is a process of gathering information about students’ understanding and their progress toward firm standards-aligned learning goals. Formative assessment helps teachers gauge how effective their instruction has been at helping students learn concepts and apply skills. The goals of formative assessment include:
Unlike summative assessment, which typically occurs at the end of a learning cycle to evaluate students’ overall progress toward the unit’s desired results, formative assessment is ongoing and designed to inform instruction, indicate areas where additional differentiation is needed, and guide learning.
Formative assessment should also serve as a tool for students to develop a heightened awareness of their strengths, limitations, and growth. When teachers share formative assessment data with students, it becomes a powerful tool for goal setting, progress monitoring, and reflection. In our book, The Shift to Student-led, Dr. Novak and I dedicate a chapter to reimagining formative assessment as simply a teacher tool and share a collection of strategies designed to transform formative assessment into a metacognitive tool for learners!
There are different categories of formative assessment, including observational assessments, checks for understanding, and formative feedback. Let’s explore examples in each category of formative assessment.
The teacher’s observations of student behaviors, interactions, and work provide valuable qualitative data (or information that is descriptive and non-numeric) that complements quantitative assessments, like quizzes that produce numerical data. Techniques such as anecdotal records, checklists, and rating scales allow educators to gain insights into students’ progress, engagement, and learning strategies.
1. Observations with a Checklist: Simply observing our students at work can provide valuable insights into their behaviors, interactions, and level of understanding during classroom activities. This approach is particularly beneficial for capturing qualitative data that complements quantitative assessments and helps us make informed instructional decisions.
Teachers can use observations with a checklist when students are:
Teachers might include the following items on a checklist:
2. Observation Paired with a Simple Rubric: Assessing students’ performance or behavior using a simple standards-aligned, mastery-based rubric during classroom activities provides a clear strategy for teachers to provide students with transparent and clear feedback on their areas of strength and those needing improvement.
For example, suppose small groups of students are discussing a text they’ve read, a video they watched, or a podcast they listened to. In that case, the teacher can move around the room observing students and circling language on the rubric to informally assess their participation in the discussion or their understanding of the content. At the end of the discussion, the teacher can distribute the rubrics and ask students to review their assessment and reflect on what they learned.
This category is essential for assessing students’ comprehension, identifying misconceptions, and measuring progress toward learning objectives. Quick checks like quizzes, exit tickets, and questioning techniques provide valuable insights into students’ understanding.
1. Tell Me How: Instead of relying solely on written explanations to assess what students know or can do, video requires that students communicate verbally. For some students, this is easier; however, it may be more challenging for others. It’s important to mix it up so that students who struggle to communicate their ideas verbally have opportunities to practice when the stakes are low. Conversely, it gives students who excel at verbally articulating their thoughts the chance to surface their learning that way.
Ask students to record a video:
2. Create An Analogy: Ask students to make a comparison or create an analogy. An analogy or comparison challenges students to think about the quality or characteristic of a concept, phenomenon, object, etc. to explain how it is similar to something else.
3. Error Analysis: Generate a series of problems or a work sample containing errors. Ask students to find the mistakes, correct them, and explain (in writing or verbally in a video recording) how they knew the errors were present and how they went about fixing them.
4. 3-2-1 Activity: Ask students to complete the following prompts. What are three things they learned?
What two questions do they have? What is one thing they would like more help with or are confused about?
Providing timely, specific, and actionable feedback is critical for guiding students’ learning and helping them improve. Formative feedback helps students understand their strengths, areas for improvement, and how to progress toward learning goals effectively.
1. Real-time Feedback in a Teacher-led Station: Teachers using the station rotation model should dedicate their teacher-led station to real-time feedback sessions whenever students are working on a process (e.g., formal writing assignment, performance task, project). That way, they can pull the feedback loop into the classroom, making it focused, timely, and actionable.
2. Structured Peer Feedback: Incorporate peer feedback activities where students review and provide feedback on each other’s work. Use structured protocols or rubrics to guide the peer feedback process and ensure constructive and meaningful feedback.
3. Feedback Conferences: Schedule one-on-one or small group conferences with students to discuss their progress, review their work, and provide personalized feedback. Use this time to address specific questions, clarify concepts, and set goals for improvement. Teachers using the playlist model can build “teacher check-ins” into their playlists to ensure students pause their progress and meet with the teachers to receive feedback on their work.
4. AI Feedback Paired with Reflection: Teaching students to use an AI chatbot, like Co-pilot or ChatGPT, to receive feedback on their work provides them with a 24/7 feedback source. However, for this strategy to yield valuable formative assessment data for the teacher and students, teachers need to work with students to develop prompts they can use to elicit quality feedback from an AI tool.
Teachers should pair AI feedback sessions with a reflection tool to help students capture what they learned from AI and reflect on what that feedback tells them about their areas of strength and areas in need of improvement or development.
In the virtual coaching video below, I highlight the value of using formative assessment data to track students’ progress and respond to students’ needs.
Harnessing the power of formative assessment is about more than just gathering data. It’s about fostering a dynamic, student-centered approach to learning that provides teachers and students with the data needed to understand their progress, needs, and growth. Integrating formative assessment strategies seamlessly into your teaching practices allows teachers to monitor progress and facilitate more personalized learning experiences that foster continuous improvement.
Formative assessment serves as a cornerstone for creating a responsive, inclusive, and engaging classroom environment. It provides educators with invaluable insights into students’ understanding, learning trajectories, and areas for growth. This real-time feedback loop allows teachers to tailor instruction, offer targeted support, and guide students toward meaningful progress.
The folks on my email list get everything mentioned in my blog as well as other weekly email exclusives! I love designing resources to save teachers time and help them be more effective, but I don’t have the space to feature them all in my blogs. Join my email list, and you’ll receive copies of the formative assessment rubric, peer feedback choice board, AI feedback and reflect form, and more!
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Self-assessment is a powerful strategy that encourages students to become more invested in their learning journeys. It is a process where students evaluate their work, reflecting on what they’ve learned, how well they’ve understood complex concepts, how much progress they’ve made toward mastering key skills, and where they may need to invest time and energy to improve their concept knowledge and skill set (Siegesmund, 2016). Self-assessment shifts the focus from a grade-centric perspective to a learning-centric one. For those of us who want to encourage students to adopt a growth mindset, believing they can always improve and develop with practice and hard work, self-assessment is a critical piece of that puzzle (Wang, Zepeda, Qin, Del Toro & Binning, 2021).
The beauty of self-assessment lies in the empowerment it provides learners. It promotes ownership of learning, motivating students to be more engaged, active participants in their education. When students assess their work, they develop a deeper understanding of their strengths and weaknesses, fostering an innate drive to improve, and helping them to develop as expert learners (Tucker & Novak, 2022). They learn to set realistic yet challenging goals for themselves and devise strategies to reach those goals. It creates an environment where mistakes are seen not as failures but as opportunities for growth and exploration. In addition, it cultivates critical thinking, problem-solving, and decision-making skills – all of which are essential for lifelong learning and success beyond school. Self-assessment is not simply a tool for academic growth but also for personal development, cultivating students who are self-aware, self-directed learners ready to navigate their learning with confidence and resilience.
Too often, when teachers assign review and practice in class or for homework, the responsibility for checking the accuracy of that work falls on the teacher. It’s the teacher who collects a class’s worth of assignments, spends precious time marking papers, and evaluates each student’s progress. Why should the responsibility of checking accuracy and thinking about student progress fall solely on the teacher? This traditional approach is not only a drain on a teacher’s time but also limits the learning opportunities for students.
Firstly, this process deprives students of the chance to critically engage with their work. As a result, students miss out on the opportunity to recognize their strengths, identify their limitations, and target areas for growth. When students evaluate their own work, they gain invaluable insights into themselves as learners.
Secondly, the time teachers invest in marking many of these assignments could be better spent designing dynamic, differentiated learning experiences that are more student-centered. Since most teachers have anywhere between 30-170 students, the workflow that positions the teacher to assess all student work is unsustainable and makes it impossible to strive for a healthy work-life balance.
Thirdly, this traditional approach overlooks an opportunity to foster peer-to-peer support. Engaging students in self-assessment of review work and practice can be an excellent tool for promoting collaboration. In pairs or groups, students can compare their answers to an answer key or a strong exemplar and work together to check, correct, and discuss their questions. They can use this time to troubleshoot issues, engage in creative problem-solving, and learn from their mistakes together.
It’s essential to remember that review and practice should provide a safe space for students to make mistakes. When teachers grade these exercises, it creates anxiety among students still grappling with new concepts or skills. We should treat review and practice not as tests of competence or compliance but as stepping stones towards mastery, encouraging a growth mindset in our students.
Providing a rubric helps students understand how they’ll be graded on a large-scale assignment and creates clarity about what they are working toward. It serves as a roadmap, helping them understand the criteria on which they’ll be evaluated. Rubrics can also serve as powerful self-assessment tools as students work.
In the example below, elementary students working on a narrative are encouraged to look at their rough draft and evaluate where they believe they are in relation to specific criteria.
Self-assessment can also serve as a catalyst, inspiring students to reflect on their classroom participation and engagement in learning activities. For example, if teachers are shifting from whole group, teacher-led discussion to small group, student-led discussion, they can use self-assessment to encourage students to think about their strengths, limitations, and areas of growth as participants in a student-led discussion. This reminds students that participating in discussions is their responsibility and that discussion itself is a skill they can improve on over time.
In The Shift to Student-led, Dr. Katie Novak and I unpack ten teacher-led, time-consuming, and often frustratingly ineffective workflows and reimagine them to allow students to lead the learning. Workflow shift #8 focuses on moving from teacher-led assessment to student self-assessment. The chapter establishes the challenges presented when teachers are the only ones engaged in assessing student work, dives into research about the value of self-assessment, and presents multiple strategies teachers can use to position students to think critically about and reflect on their own work and what it reveals about them as learners.
To learn more about this shift, check out our new book, The Shift to Student-led. If you are interested in a discounted bulk order of 10 or more books, complete this form.
Siegesmund, A. (2016). Increasing student metacognition and learning through classroom-based learning communities and self-assessment. Journal of microbiology & biology education, 17(2), 204-214.
Wang, M. T., Zepeda, C. D., Qin, X., Del Toro, J., & Binning, K. R. (2021). More than growth mindset: Individual and interactive links among socioeconomically disadvantaged adolescents’ ability mindsets, metacognitive skills, and math engagement. Child Development, 92(5), e957-e976.
The post Shift to Self-assessment appeared first on Dr. Catlin Tucker.
Along with Google Workspace tools, Padlet is one of the educational technology tools that I've used the most consistently over the last fifteen years. I've used it for everything from hosting online brainstorming sessions to digital mapping to distraction-free YouTube viewing and a whole lot more. Padlet recently add five new features for the new school year.
The new features of Padlet are demonstrated in the two new videos that are embedded below. The new features include:
Good morning from Maine where the sun is rising on what should be a great summer day. Fortunately, I'm feeling much better than I did throughout the week as a struggled with a miserable cold that had me sleeping a lot more than normal and exercising a lot less than normal. I did get out for a few walks with my dogs. On one of those walks we stopped to help a salamander cross the road (to get to the other side, obviously).
I hope that you had a great week. If you started school this week, I hope it went well. If you still have a bit more vacation, soak it up and enjoy it before the madness of the school year begins.
These were the week's most popular posts:
1. Five Wolfram Alpha Tutorials for Teachers
2. Five Tools for Creating Automatically Scored Formative Assessments
3. Using AI for Creating Formative Assessments
4. Staying Organized With Google Drive Folder Descriptions
5. Five Uses for Google Docs Besides Essay Writing
6. How to Add Audio to Almost Anything in Google Workspace
7. A New Accessible PhET Simulation
Self-paced Courses You Can Start Today
Formative assessments are ongoing assessments embedded throughout the learning process. These informal assessments provide information to the teacher about students’ understanding of the material being covered and the skills being introduced. This data allows the teacher to identify where students are struggling, where they are excelling, and where they need additional support.
Traditionally, formative assessment has been used as a teacher tool. Teachers collect informal data that helps them design effective lessons and differentiate to meet students’ specific needs. However, formative assessment data can be useful for teachers and students.
In this workflow shift, Dr. Novak and I want teachers to make formative assessment data available to learners so it helps them to develop a deeper understanding of themselves as learners. Metacognitive skill building is a critical component of cultivating the profile of an expert learner.
Making formative assessment data accessible to students is essential to foster a learning environment that prioritizes autonomy, self-regulation, and reflection. When students can view and interpret their formative assessment data, they can engage in metacognitive processes, such as planning and goal setting, tracking and monitoring their progress, and evaluating and reflecting on their learning.
Planning
By understanding their formative assessment results, students can set informed, realistic learning goals for themselves. They can identify areas of strength to build upon and weaknesses that need more focus, allowing them to strategically plan their approach to learning.
Monitoring
Access to ongoing formative assessment results allows students to continuously monitor their progress toward standards-aligned learning goals. This self-monitoring encourages students to stay engaged in their learning process, identify effective strategies they’ve used, and recognize when they might need to adjust their approach or need additional support.
Evaluating
After completing tasks or assignments, students can use their formative assessment data to evaluate their learning. They can reflect on their progress, the effectiveness of their learning strategies, and their growth over time. This reflective process is key to promoting self-awareness and critical thinking.
In our book, The Shift to Student-led, Dr. Katie Novak and I demonstrate how teachers can use Universal Design and blended learning to create the time and space needed to give students opportunities to work with their formative assessment data in class. We provide a collection of strategies and resources teachers can use to shift formative assessment data from a teacher tool to a metacognitive skill building tool for students.
To learn more about this shift, check out our new book, The Shift to Student-led. If you are interested in a discounted bulk order of 10 or more books, complete this form.
The post Shift to Leveraging Formative Assessment for Metacognition appeared first on Dr. Catlin Tucker.
Generating high-quality review materials and engaging review games takes time. It is also a cognitively challenging task since it requires thinking about the key concepts in a unit or learning cycle and producing a collection of questions to guide students in recalling information and developing a deeper understanding of the material. This is an unsustainable practice for teachers, especially if they must create review activities for multiple subjects or classes. This teacher-led workflow also robs students of the opportunity to drive their learning and engage in more meaningful review activities.
When students are given a chance to create their review questions, games, or guides, they are more likely to internalize the material and think critically about it. This fosters a deeper understanding of the material and encourages students to take ownership of their learning. By taking a more student-centered approach to review, teachers can help students become more active participants in the learning process, leading to higher levels of engagement and improved academic outcomes.
Instead of spending hours designing study guides or review activities and games, teachers should shift this cognitively challenging task to learners! Not only will this save teachers time, but it will engage students in the valuable process of looking through their notes and materials to identify important concepts, strategies, processes, and skills they believe they will need to know to perform successfully on an assessment.
In The Shift to Student-led, Dr. Novak and I highlight how teachers who regularly engage students in making their own review materials and study guides can incorporate the powerful evidence-based learning strategies of retrieval practice, spacing, interleaving, and feedback-driven metacognition (Agarwal & Bain, 2019).
Retrieval practice involves actively recalling information from memory. When students create their review questions and games, they practice retrieval since they are actively recalling information from memory. They can create review games using platforms like Quizizz and Kahoot! Not only do they need to retrieve information when they make a game for their peers, but they must also use this strategy when they play the review games that their peers have produced.
Spacing refers to the practice of spreading out study sessions over time. Spacing can be easier to incorporate into a class if students can create their own study schedules and review materials. By doing so, they can spread their study sessions over time and avoid cramming. If students are helping to produce review materials, there will be more review games and activities to choose from, which means they can be a regular and reoccurring part of the class. This is much more effective than having a single Jeopardy review game before an exam.
Interleaving involves studying multiple topics in a randomized order. Interleaving is also more likely to occur when students are engaged in creating their review materials since they can choose to study multiple topics in a randomized order. The materials created by the class can also be mixed up to give students randomized review over time.
Feedback-driven metacognition involves reflecting on one’s learning progress and receiving feedback from others. Teachers can build feedback loops into the process of designing review materials. For example, as students learn how to generate review games, activities, and choice boards for each other, teachers can include a peer feedback process where students critique each other’s review activities, complimenting strong elements and offering suggestions for improvement. Then students can reflect on what they learned from the feedback and how they will incorporate it into future review activities.
By involving students in creating their own review materials and study guides, teachers can facilitate these four powerful learning strategies and promote deeper understanding and long-term retention of the material. To learn more about this shift, check out our new book, The Shift to Student-led. Complete this form if you want a discounted bulk order of 10 or more books.
The post Shifting from Teacher Generated Review to Student-Generated Review appeared first on Dr. Catlin Tucker.
In today’s rapidly changing educational landscape, educators face numerous challenges when designing instruction that promotes deeper learning for all students. Recently, I had the privilege of meeting with a group of international educators in Dubai grappling with these challenges. Through our online series, we explored the power of universally designed blended learning models to achieve deeper learning outcomes. Our discussions culminated in selecting specific challenges to explore in-depth, with the goal of prototyping solutions at the Learning Leaders Summit in Dubai. As I listened to their experiences, I couldn’t help but notice how closely these challenges mirrored those faced by educators in the United States.
The sign of deeper learning is the ability to transfer or apply knowledge and skills to new and novel contexts. However, to design for deeper learning, teachers must consider the intersection of cognitive, interpersonal, and intrapersonal domains.
Cognitive
The cognitive domain refers to the content knowledge and skills students must acquire to engage in deeper learning. This includes higher-order thinking, problem-solving, and reasoning.
How do teachers ensure that instruction and facilitation of learning are accessible, inclusive, and equitable?
Interpersonal
The interpersonal domain includes the collaborative and communication skills students need to work effectively with others and engage in shared tasks. This includes social negotiation.
How can teachers design student-centered lessons that encourage students to learn with and from each other?
Intrapersonal
The intrapersonal domain encompasses the development of skills such as self-directed learning, reflection, and metacognition. These internal skills are vital to cultivating expert learners.
How can teachers weave social-emotional learning (SEL) skills into the fabric of their lessons?
As I facilitated these sessions, I became increasingly excited about the potential of Universal Design for Learning (UDL), blended learning, and social-emotional learning (SEL) to foster deeper learning outcomes. Too often, these three critical components of effective learning are treated as separate initiatives rather than being integrated in a cohesive way. However, when combined, they have the potential to create powerful learning environments that promote cognitive, interpersonal, and intrapersonal growth in students. By weaving these three approaches together, educators can create comprehensive and effective learning experiences that support each aspect of the deeper learning puzzle. UDL, blended learning, and SEL can be harnessed together to create rich and meaningful learning opportunities for all students.
Prior to our meeting in Dubai, each school group selected a challenge related to achieving deeper learning that they wanted to address. Because schools around the world face many of the same obstacles, I wanted to share these challenges and provide insight into the strategies these teachers were exploring to overcome them. It’s important to note that there are no simple answers in education. The challenges we face are complex and multifaceted, and our decision-making is impacted by the communities we serve and the students we teach. Nevertheless, by sharing these challenges and the ideas generated to address them, I hope to spark a conversation and encourage educators to contribute their own perspectives.
I’d like to continue this conversation and work together to create more effective, equitable, and meaningful learning experiences for all students. Below are three of the challenges we focused on and some of the ideas generated during our time together.
Honoring learner diversity in a school with limited resources is a complex and multifaceted problem. Every year, schools face an ever-widening spectrum of needs in their classrooms, including students with different learning preferences, skills, abilities, cultural backgrounds, and language proficiencies. Teachers are struggling to address the needs of each student effectively, as they often feel they lack the necessary resources and training to provide tailored and individualized instruction to each student.
This problem has far-reaching implications for both the students and the education system. Students who feel unsupported or misunderstood in the classroom may disengage from learning, leading to lower academic achievement, and reduced self-esteem. On the other hand, teachers may experience burnout and frustration as they feel ill-equipped to meet the diverse needs of their students.
In our collaboration, we delved into the potential of utilizing the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework alongside blended learning models to create and facilitate lessons that honor the diversity of needs and learner variability in a classroom. During our discussion, a crucial question was raised: “In terms of teacher training, should schools begin with UDL or blended learning?” I proposed that starting with UDL can be a more effective approach, as it can help teachers shift their mindset towards providing learning experiences that are accessible, inclusive, and equitable for all students.
UDL is a research-based framework that focuses on providing students with multiple means for engagement, representation, action, and expression. This approach emphasizes the importance of creating flexible and adaptable learning environments that support all students’ diverse needs and preferences. Once teachers understand how to implement UDL effectively, schools can explore the potential benefits of blended learning in operationalizing UDL.
Traditional whole-group instruction can make it challenging to meet the goals of UDL, as the one-size-fits-all approach may not be suitable for all learners. However, blended learning models can provide a flexible and personalized approach that can cater to different students’ unique learning styles and preferences. By incorporating blended learning into the UDL framework, teachers can provide students with various pathways and variable teacher support to help them progress toward firm standards-aligned goals.
Today’s students are part of a hyper-connected world where they have access to a wealth of information, media, and tools that empower them to control how they learn and interact with others. However, many traditional classrooms do not reflect this reality, providing limited opportunities for authentic and meaningful engagement with the subject matter or other students. As a result, students may feel disconnected from school and perceive it as irrelevant to their lives, leading to disengagement and potentially poor academic performance. This disconnect between school and life makes engaging students in deeper learning challenging.
To address the challenge of the growing disconnect between students’ lives and traditional classrooms, we focused on creating student-centered learning environments with blended learning models, where control is shifted from the teacher to the learner. Instead of relying solely on teachers as the experts at the front of the room, we questioned whether this was the most effective use of their time given the vast amount of information available online. Technology is good at transferring information. Students can read articles, watch videos, and listen to podcasts to learn. Technology has the advantage of putting students in control of the pace at which they acquire and process new information. Instead of seeing their value as instructors and experts, we explored the teacher’s role as facilitator and coach, guiding individual and small groups of students in their journey toward mastering concepts and skills.
We also discussed how traditional forms of assessment might not accurately measure students’ learning or provide them with opportunities to transfer their learning in authentic and meaningful contexts. Therefore, we must develop multiple pathways to assess student learning, ensuring all learners can demonstrate their understanding of concepts and skills.
Overall, we need to focus on creating more relevant and engaging learning experiences and assessments for students that better align with their lives outside of the classroom.
Student apathy and lack of motivation are significant barriers to engaging students in deeper learning. To engage in deeper learning, students must take an active role in the learning process. They need to be willing to invest time and effort in pursuing knowledge, ask questions, and take risks. Unfortunately, many students are disengaged and lack the motivation to take on this challenge.
This lack of motivation can arise from a variety of sources, including boredom with the subject matter, a lack of relevance to their lives, or a feeling that their efforts will not be rewarded. Students may sometimes feel overwhelmed or intimidated by the material, leading to a sense of defeat before they even start. This apathy and lack of motivation can be a significant barrier to deeper learning, as it inhibits students’ ability to engage with the subject matter and develop a sense of ownership over their learning.
An interesting moment in my facilitation was when someone in the group said, “It feels like there are two paths when students are apathetic and unmotivated. We can either tighten our grip and create harsher consequences or give them more control and agency so students are more likely to engage.” I appreciated this comment because it highlights a fundamental tension in education: compliance versus student agency.
In education, tightening our grip and exerting more control when students aren’t meeting our expectations is common. However, this approach can be counterproductive. Meeting students’ basic psychological needs, such as autonomy, competence, and relatedness, is essential for motivation.
Our conversation focused on incorporating Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and blended learning to build autonomy and student agency into the learning experience. By giving students a degree of independence and the ability to make decisions about their learning, they are more likely to become engaged and invested in their education. We also discussed how providing flexible pathways for learning can positively impact students’ feelings of competence and increase their confidence in their ability to complete assigned tasks.
Finally, we explored the use of social-emotional learning (SEL) strategies to build a strong learning community that is inclusive and supportive. This approach helps to create a positive and safe learning environment where students feel comfortable taking risks and challenging themselves. By combining these strategies, we can help students overcome apathy and lack of motivation, build deeper connections to their learning, and develop the skills they need to succeed in school and beyond.
Achieving deeper learning requires educators to think about and design learning experiences to develop cognitive, interpersonal, and intrapersonal skills. While there are challenges we face in creating environments that foster deeper learning, there are effective strategies that can help overcome these barriers.
By using Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and blended learning, educators can build autonomy and student agency into the learning experience and shift control over the learning to students by providing flexible pathways. Incorporating social-emotional learning strategies can also help students develop the skills they need to overcome apathy and lack of motivation and build deeper connections to their learning and each other. Together UDL, blended learning, and social-emotional skill building can help us create classrooms where students want to engage in deeper learning.
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Blended learning environments offer a unique opportunity for teachers to shift the control of the learning experience from teacher to learner by combining active, engaged learning online and offline. However, teachers must leverage technology effectively and use data strategically to differentiate and personalize learning to ensure that all students progress towards firm standards-aligned goals. In this context, data-driven design is essential because it allows teachers to make informed decisions about how to support students’ learning in a personalized, targeted, and effective way. By collecting and analyzing data, teachers can adapt their instruction and provide targeted support that meets the unique needs of each student, thereby maximizing student learning outcomes in blended learning environments.
During a recent session with a leadership team, we delved into the assessment cycle pictured below, which teachers can use to design effective learning experiences for students while strategically using data.
Effective teaching is all about meeting students where they are, and the first step in that journey is assessing their prior knowledge and skills. Just like runners on a track, students are all unique and start their learning journeys at different points, depending on their backgrounds and experiences. As such, teachers must have a clear understanding of their students’ starting points to design units and lessons that meet their diverse needs. This is where pre-assessment data comes in: it enables teachers to determine what students already know and what they need to learn to ensure they progress toward their learning goals. Armed with this information, teachers can tailor their instruction and differentiate learning experiences for students with varying levels of understanding, ultimately maximizing learning outcomes for all students.
Pre-Assessment Strategies
Once teachers have pre-assessment data, they can use the principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) to design effective learning experiences that meet the diverse needs of individual learners. UDL is a framework for designing and delivering instruction that is flexible and inclusive, and that can be customized to meet the needs of all learners. Using UDL, teachers can create multiple pathways so all students progress toward firm standards-aligned goals.
Blended learning models are particularly well-suited for implementing Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles because they shift teachers from a whole group model to a focus on working with small groups and individual students. This shift enables teachers to differentiate instruction and provide personalized learning experiences for each student. Blended learning combines the benefits of small group instruction and peer-to-peer collaboration with technology-based learning, offering a flexible, engaging, and individualized approach to learning.
By leveraging UDL principles in a blended learning environment, teachers can more consistently provide multiple means of engagement, representation, and action and expression to meet the diverse needs of all students. For example, teachers can use a variety of multimedia resources such as videos, podcasts, and interactive tools to represent content in different ways, allowing students to access the material in a format that suits their learning preferences.
Additionally, blended learning allows for the creation of customized learning experiences that meet the individual needs of students. Teachers can use technology tools to personalize learning paths, monitor student progress, and provide immediate feedback, enabling them to adjust instruction based on individual student needs. This approach ensures that each student receives the necessary support and challenge to succeed, regardless of their learning style, ability level, or background.
Formative assessments are ongoing assessments embedded throughout the learning process. These informal assessments provide information to the teacher about students’ understanding of the material being covered and the skills being introduced. This data allows the teacher to identify where students are struggling, where they are excelling, and where they need additional support.
By collecting this data, teachers can adjust their teaching strategies to address the needs of individual students or the class as a whole. They can use this information to differentiate instruction, target interventions, and provide personalized learning experiences for each student. This approach is particularly effective in a blended learning environment, where technology can be leveraged to provide adaptive and personalized learning experiences based on formative assessment data.
Without formative assessment data, teachers may not be aware of what students are struggling with or where they need additional support. This can lead to a lack of engagement, frustration, and disengagement from the learning process. Therefore, collecting formative assessment data is critical to ensuring that all students are making progress toward the learning goals and receiving the support they need to succeed.
Check for Understanding Strategies
Formative assessment data provides teachers with valuable information about what their students know and don’t know, allowing them to make informed decisions about how to differentiate instruction to meet the needs of individual learners. By analyzing this data, teachers can gain insights into areas of strength, gaps, and misconceptions in student understanding. This information can then be used to differentiate instruction more consistently and effectively.
Content
How students access the content (e.g., knowledge, understanding, and skills)
Example: Read a text vs. listen to an audio recording of the text
Process
How students understand or make sense of the content
Examples: Graphic organizers, guided notes templates, word banks, work with manipulatives
Product
How students demonstrate and/or communicate their learning
Example: Provide a choice between performance tasks that appeal to learners with different interests, strengths, preferences
Teachers may differentiate the content, process, or product depending on their students’ needs. For example, teachers can group students based on their understanding of a concept and provide targeted instruction to each group. The station rotation model is ideal for designing a lesson to allow teachers time for this targeted small-group instruction. Teachers can also use the station rotation model to provide focused, actionable feedback as students work. Feedback is crucial in helping students understand what they are doing well and where they need to improve.
Teachers can also provide students with different learning activities that are tailored to their individual needs based on the data collected from formative assessments. By using formative assessment data to differentiate instruction, teachers can ensure that all students receive the support they need to progress toward firm standards-aligned goals.
The purpose of summative assessment is to evaluate student learning and determine whether they have achieved the intended learning outcomes. It typically occurs at the end of a unit, semester, or course and often takes the form of an exam, project, or paper. Summative assessments provide an opportunity for teachers to measure student achievement against specific learning objectives and to determine whether students have mastered the content and skills covered in the course.
Using performance tasks as a summative assessment strategy offers several benefits over traditional exams. Unlike exams that typically measure discrete knowledge and recall, performance tasks require students to apply their learning to a complex, real-world problem or scenario, providing a more authentic demonstration of what they have learned.
Performance tasks also allow for more flexibility in demonstrating knowledge and skills, as students can approach the task in different ways and showcase their unique strengths. Additionally, performance tasks often involve collaboration and communication, encouraging students to work together and practice important social and emotional skills. Finally, performance tasks provide more meaningful feedback for students and teachers, as the assessment criteria are often aligned with real-world expectations and provide clear indicators of student learning and growth.
Teachers can build student agency into a performance task by giving students meaningful choices about the scenario they select or the product they create. A simple “Would you rather…” option can help students feel more confident in their ability to perform well.
Using data strategically to drive instructional design is crucial to ensure that diverse groups of learners are being supported and challenged effectively. By using pre-assessment data to identify students’ prior knowledge and skills, teachers can design instruction that meets each student’s unique needs and supports their learning journey. Additionally, formative assessment data provides teachers with valuable feedback about students’ progress, allowing for adjustments to be made to instruction and ensuring that students are consistently receiving the support they need. When combined with principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and blended learning models, data-driven instruction can provide meaningful and engaging learning experiences for all students, empowering them to take ownership of their learning and succeed academically.
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