Brandee Spencer
April 6, 2016
Chapter 5: A Seven-Module plan to Build Teacher Knowledge of
Balanced Assessment
6. In which areas of assessment do you feel your knowledge
and understanding are particularly strong? Which areas of
your own assessment literacy need further development?
As the year comes to an end and our state summative
assessment STAAR is taking place, I find myself reflecting a lot on my
own assessment practices used throughout the year. Have I done
enough to make sure my students are prepared to take an assessment
reflective of the skills they should have mastered while in my
classroom? Did I appropriately use my common assessment, and short-
term assessment data? Did I work efficiently enough with the results to
close the gaps? It is easy to forget all of the purposeful daily work I put
into my lessons, but I feel reassured in my teaching knowing that I
have a pretty good knowledge and understanding of common interim
and short-cycle assessments.
As a Professional Learning Community my campus has a large
focus on creating common assessments. My team and I have grown
tremendously in this area, and personally I feel as though these mid-
cycle assessments are one of my personal strength. Last year we
adopted a new math curriculum that provided an abundance of unit
assessments and learning checks. While we did used them as is last
year, this year we dug deeper into how they relate to our TEKS, how it
supports our essential outcomes, and what was a Readiness vs.
Supporting standard. We have since been able to adjust and modify
these assessments so that the results give us just the data we are
looking for. Since math seemed to be going well we also took on this
task with language arts and science. Creating common assessments
for these two subjects, where the curriculum is not as laid out for us,
has really developed my understanding of the TEKS and what exactly
the curriculum is stating. After giving our common assessments we
review and discuss the data as a team and take time to look at each
student. We are then able to involve our intervention specialist and
Special Education support in making decisions for our students. This
also allows us classroom teachers to also have a focus for review and
re-teaching in our classrooms, and to have discussions about teaching
strategies. I am excited to continue to develop this area we are strong
in and in turn get better in an area I do not feel as strongly in: short-
cycle assessments.
Short-cycle assessments is and area of assessment literacy that I
want to develop more in the future. These types of assessments are
done daily in my classroom but I am not sure I am doing it with enough
purpose to make them as useful as they can be. I feel most confident
with this type of assessment in math, because that subject is more
black and white to me. I can see quickly who is getting it and who is
not, which allows me to quickly intervene on the spot. I am also better
able to focus in on specific skills the students need more practice with
to close those gaps. However, science and language arts are not as cut
and dry. While I do short-cycle assessments daily in these subjects I am
not sure I am using their results appropriately for intervention. I want
to get better at asking higher level questions that allow me to really
assess where the students are, and then have a plan for supporting
them in the needed areas. Since these types of assessments are
generally not common with my other teachers, I find it hard to really
compare classrooms. We still very much discuss these results, but it
doesnt go much past just sharing out what I saw from my students. I
want to become more confident in being able to adjust my teaching
day to day, based on the results from a daily assessment of my
students learning. The quicker I can address misunderstandings, the
better chance the student will have in learning and comprehending the
skills being taught.
Resources:
Heflebower, T. (2009). A Seven-Module Plan to Build Teacher Knowledge of Balanced
Assessment. In T.R. Guskey (Ed.) Theprincipalasassessmentleader(pp. 93-
117).Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press.
