The Handbook for the New Art and Science of Teaching. Robert J. Marzano
2 focuses on assessing students often and giving them feedback on how they are progressing toward their goals. There are seven strategies within this element.
1. Using formative scores
2. Designing assessments that generate formative scores
3. Using individual score-level assessments
4. Using different types of assessments
5. Generating summative scores
6. Charting student progress
7. Charting class progress
The following sections will explore each strategy to provide you with guidelines to effectively implement this element. Read through each before creating a plan for your classroom. Teachers may use the strategies individually or in combination. Remember, these are not merely activities to be checked off; they are methods of creating a practice that combines your art with the science of tracking student progress. Reflect on your use of each strategy by filling out the “Strategy Reflection Log” on page 331.
Using Formative Scores
Using formative scores throughout a unit of instruction helps teachers and students monitor progress and adjust as necessary. This strategy works in conjunction with proficiency scales, as the class is familiar with the levels of learning progression featured on the scales. Teachers give assessments periodically throughout a unit or term, which allows students to progress up the scale.
To create assessments that generate formative scores, the teacher designs assessment tasks that correspond to 2.0, 3.0, and 4.0 content (as specified on the scale for each learning goal). For 2.0 content, forced-choice or selected-response tasks (multiple-choice, matching, true or false, or fill-in-the-blank items) are common. For 3.0 and 4.0 content, short- or extended constructed-response tasks (short written or oral responses, essays, oral reports, demonstrations, or performances) are common.
The teacher then grades these assessments using scores from the proficiency scale. When students review their scores, they know where they are on the learning progression and what they need to do to get to the next level.
Designing Assessments That Generate Formative Scores
An assessment for formative scores should contain items or tasks that correspond directly to levels 2.0, 3.0, and 4.0. Level 2.0 items and tasks address basic details and processes that are relatively easy for students. These items are often forced-choice recognition and recall questions or fill-in-the-blank items. Level 3.0 items and tasks address ideas and processes that are more complex but were still taught directly in class. Level 3.0 informational items and tasks are often open ended and ask students to write a few sentences. Level 4.0 items and tasks require students to make inferences or applications that go beyond what was taught in class. These items ask students to generate original ideas and often take the form of comparing, classifying, creating analogies, or analyzing errors.
An assessment may cover more than one proficiency scale. If this is the case, the teacher must provide formative scores for each scale represented on the assessment; otherwise, the score is not able to be used formatively.
Planning an assessment system to generate formative scores involves the teacher identifying which topics to assess, when to assess them, and whether a specific assessment will address more than one topic. Although a teacher does not have to identify every assessment to use for each topic for a grading period, it is useful to rough out a general plan. For example, the following chart in figure 1.6 from Classroom Assessment and Grading That Work by Robert J. Marzano (2006) depicts a general plan for assessing six topics (each with its own proficiency scale) over a nine-week period. Xs denote when the teacher will assess a topic. As the class will assess more than one topic most weeks, the teacher might choose to give multiple separate assessments or one that covers numerous topics.
Source: Marzano, 2006.
Figure 1.6: General plan for assessing six measurement topics over nine weeks.
Using Individual Score-Level Assessments
Assessments for formative scores do not always have to cover the whole range of the associated proficiency scale; some can evaluate only one level of a scale (for example, only 2.0 content). Such assessments allow students to progress at their own pace through the levels of the scale.
Since this strategy requires the teacher to use assessments that evaluate only one level of a scale, the teacher should design several assessments during an instructional unit. For example, the teacher could design three assessments to be given over the course of a unit. The first assessment comes near the beginning of the unit and covers only score 2.0 content. For this assessment, the highest score students could receive would be a 2.0 because the assessment only addresses this level of the scale. The second assessment comes later in the unit, after the teacher has covered the target content, and is focused on level 3.0 knowledge. At the end of the unit, the teacher provides an assessment that covers score 4.0 content. Of course, students must first demonstrate competence with a level before being given an assessment at the next level. With this approach, the whole class progresses together. The teacher continues teaching and assessing a level of content until the whole class (or close to it) has mastered that level.
Using Different Types of Assessments
Teachers use different types of assessments to collect formative scores. Each has its time and place in the classroom.
Obtrusive assessments interrupt the normal flow of activity in the classroom. The most common is the traditional pencil-and-paper tests involving true-or-false, multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blank, and constructed-response items. However, this category also includes demonstrations, performances, and probing discussions between the teacher and a student.
Unobtrusive assessments do not interrupt the flow of instruction, and students might not even be aware the teacher is assessing them. Such assessments typically involve the teacher observing students, in person or via recording. They are most easily applied to content that is procedural or involves a skill, strategy, or process.
Student-generated tasks are a powerful alternative to the other two categories of assessments—and are the most underutilized in classrooms. Students generate their own tasks to demonstrate competence for specific levels of the scale. This approach is often used when a student receives a score on a teacher-designed assessment and wants to move up to the next score value on a proficiency scale. He then develops an idea for a task to show he has mastered the content of the next level and presents it for teacher approval. Student-generated assessments help develop student agency because they give some decision-making power to those being assessed.
Generating Summative Scores
A summative score indicates a student’s status at the end of a specific interval of time such as a grading period. There are four different approaches to assigning summative scores.
• Approach 1: Each assessment over a specific interval of time allows students to score at the 2.0, 3.0, or 4.0 level. The students graph their scores throughout the unit, and the teacher uses that group of scores to assign a summative score at the end of the unit.
• Approach 2: The first assessment within a specific interval of time allows students to score at the 2.0, 3.0, or 4.0 level. After the first assessment, students move at their own pace, taking individual score-level assessments to move up to the next level.
• Approach 3: The teacher administers individual score-level assessments to the entire class, only moving up to the next level once the majority of students in the class has mastered the content at the current level.
• Approach 4: The teacher assigns scores at the end of each unit, but students are allowed to improve those scores at any time during the year by demonstrating