How To Look At Student Work To Uncover Student Thinking

Are you picking up all your students' work is trying to tell you? In this book, assessment expert Susan M. Brookhart and instructional coach Alice Oakley walk teachers through a better and more illuminating way to approach student work across grade levels and content areas. You’ll learn to view students' assignments not as a verdict on right or wrong but as a window into what students "got" and how they are thinking about it. The insight you'll gain will help you * Infer what students are thinking, * Provide effective feedback, * Decide on next instructional moves, and * Grow as a professional. Brookhart and Oakley then guide teachers through the next steps: clarify learning goals, increase the quality of classroom assessments, deepen your content and pedagogical knowledge, study student work with colleagues, and involve students in the formative learning cycle. The book's many authentic examples of student work and teacher insights, coaching tips, and reflection questions will help readers move from looking at student work for correctness to looking at student work as evidence of student thinking.

This book provides 25 easily administered assessments of learners' math knowledge that help teachers monitor learning in real time and improve all students' math skills.

Assessment is messy. Day-to-day, in-the-moment assessments not only reveal information that drives future instruction but also offer a comprehensive picture of students’ abilities and dispositions toward learning. As teachers, we might know what this looks and feels like, yet it can be hard to put into action—hence the messiness. Say hello to digital student portfolios—dynamic, digital collections of authentic information from different media, in many forms, and with multiple purposes. Using digital portfolios to capture student thinking and progress allows us to better see our students as readers, writers, and learners—and help students see themselves in the same way! Matt Renwick’s Digital Portfolios in the Classroom is a guide to help teachers sort through, capture, and make sense of the messiness associated with assessment. By shining a spotlight on three types of student portfolios—performance, process, and progress—and how they can be used to assess student work, Renwick helps educators navigate the maze of digital tools and implement the results to drive instruction.

When teachers get together and apply their combined knowledge and experience to the challenges of teaching and learning, amazing things can happen. In this book, you'll find out how to set up collaborative analysis of student work in your school. Developed and refined with more than 100 elementary and secondary teachers, this adaptable system combines the best of action research, study groups, standards-based learning, student assessment, teacher reflection, and portfolio assessment. The authors guide you through each component with concrete, detailed descriptions and authentic examples. You'll learn * ideas for setting up effective study groups * strategies for documenting students' progress toward learning standards * methods for reflecting on professional growth * ways to share the benefits with colleagues and students. This system of professional inquiry challenges you to examine your beliefs about what students can do and helps you identify which teaching methods are working most successfully. You and your colleagues can acquire deeper insight into the link between your instruction and each student's learning--and enhance your ability to help every student succeed.

In How to Make Decisions with Different Kinds of Student Assessment Data, best-selling author Susan M. Brookhart helps teachers and administrators understand the critical elements and nuances of assessment data and how that information can best be used to inform improvement efforts in the school or district. Readers will learn— * What different kinds of data can—and cannot—tell us about student learning; * What different analyses reveal about changes in student achievement; * How to interpret, use, and share relevant data; and * How to create a model to go from problem to solution in a data-based decision-making process. With easy-to-understand explanations, supplemented by examples and scenarios from actual schools, this book offers a path to better understanding, more accurate interpretation of assessment results, and—most important—more effective use of data to improve teaching and learning.

Revolutionize the walkthrough to focus on the endgame of teaching: student learning. Authors Connie M. Moss and Susan M. Brookhart present the proven practice of formative walkthroughs that ask and answer questions that are specific to what the student is learning and doing. Learn the value of having the observer examine the lesson from the student's point of view and seek evidence of seven key learning components: * A worthwhile lesson * A learning target * A performance of understanding * Look-fors, or success criteria * Formative feedback * Student self-assessment * Effective questioning Drawing upon their research and extensive work with K-12 teachers and administrators, Moss and Brookhart delve into the learning target theory of action that debuted in Learning Targets: Helping Students Aim for Understanding in Today's Lesson and show you how to develop a schoolwide collaborative culture that enhances the learning of teachers, administrators, coaches, and students. They present detailed examples of how formative walkthroughs work across grade levels and subject areas, and provide useful templates that administrators and coaches can use to get started now. Grounded in the beliefs that schools improve when educators improve and that the best evidence of improvement comes from what we see students doing to learn in every lesson, every day, Formative Classroom Walkthroughs offers a path to improvement that makes sense and makes a difference.

A proven program for enhancing students' thinking and comprehension abilities Visible Thinking is a research-based approach to teaching thinking, begun at Harvard's Project Zero, that develops students' thinking dispositions, while at the same time deepening their understanding of the topics they study. Rather than a set of fixed lessons, Visible Thinking is a varied collection of practices, including thinking routines?small sets of questions or a short sequence of steps?as well as the documentation of student thinking. Using this process thinking becomes visible as the students' different viewpoints are expressed, documented, discussed and reflected upon. Helps direct student thinking and structure classroom discussion Can be applied with students at all grade levels and in all content areas Includes easy-to-implement classroom strategies The book also comes with a DVD of video clips featuring Visible Thinking in practice in different classrooms.

Take the guesswork out of grades 3-5 math assessment! Quickly pinpoint and reverse your students’ common math difficulties with this detailed and easy-to-follow resource from best-selling authors Cheryl Tobey and Carolyn Arline. Twenty research-based assessment probes help you ask the right questions to uncover just where your students get confused – while learning is already underway. These CCSM-aligned probes eliminate all guesswork and will help you: Systematically address conceptual and procedural mistakes Plan targeted instruction and remediation in multiplication and division, problem solving, the four operations, factorization, and beyond Master essential CCSM mathematical processes and proficiencies for Grades 3-5

Discussing standards, research, and more, these 30 probes help secondary teachers assess students' grasp of core mathematics concepts and modify their instruction to improve student achievement.

Pinpoint and reverse math misconceptions with laser-like accuracy Here’s the middle-grades math resource you’ve been waiting for! Bestselling authors Cheryl Tobey and Carolyn Arline are back with 25 entirely new assessment probes that pinpoint subconcepts within the new Common Core Standards for Mathematics to promote deep learning and expert math instruction. Learn to ask the right questions to uncover common student misconceptions. Get practical instructional ideas that build new and accurate skills--while learning is already underway. It’s all here in this detailed and grade-level specific guide. Organized by strand, the probes will enable you to: Quickly and objectively evaluate common misconceptions around fractions and decimals, linear equations, ratios and percents, statistics, and more Systematically address conceptual misunderstandings and procedural mistakes--before they become long-term problems Help students better understand areas of difficulty Plan targeted instruction that builds on students’ current understandings while addressing areas of struggle Master the essential CCSM mathematical processes and proficiencies for Grades 6-8 You’ll find sample student responses, extensive Teacher Notes, and research-based tips and resources. Eliminate the guesswork and join thousands of busy middle-grades teachers who’ve used these easy-to-implement tools to foster solid math proficiency! "This book will definitely help mathematics teachers now that the CCSS are becoming such a big part of our teaching." —Debra A. Scarpelli, Middle School Mathematics Teacher RIMLE President, PARCC/CCSS ELC Cadre for Rhode Island, and Adjunct Professor