Formative Assessment and Feedback Every Day

The use of formative and summative assessment forms the backbone of a teacher’s instructional planning. They are used to monitor students’ progress through oral language, questioning, writing, projects, and testing. In addition, they meet to discuss results using common formative assessments that guide future teaching. This session will describe how competencies and assignments form the basis for innovative policies on homework, academic recovery, and response to intervention at the presenter’s school.

Join Doug Fisher as he outlines a clear-cut, realistic, and rewarding approach to formative assessment. Four discrete steps work in tandem to create a seamless, comprehensive formative assessment system—one that has no beginning and no end. This ongoing approach enhances an active give-and-take relationship between teachers and students to promote learning.

• Step 1: Where am I going? Feed-up ensures that students understand the purpose of an assignment, task, or lesson, including how they will be assessed.
• Step 2: Where am I now? Checking for understanding guides instruction and helps determine if students are making progress toward their goals.
• Step 3: How am I doing? Feedback provides students with valuable and constructive information about their successes and needs.
• Step 4: Where am I going next? Feed-forward builds on the feedback from step 3 and uses performance data to facilitate student achievement.

By enabling teachers and students alike to see more clearly what they need to do for learning to be successful, this approach builds students’ competence, confidence, and understanding.

Target Audience: MS and HS educators, instructional coaches, and literacy leaders

Continuum Level: 4 = Extending Implementation

NESA's Learning Continuum:

Learn more about how NESA plans Professional Learning

Blended Learning

The evolution of blended learning has its roots in the use of technology as a key element in traditional, face-to-face classroom instruction. However, true blended learning is not simply applying more technological tools to supplement brick-and-mortar learning environments. Rather, the intent is to blend classroom and digital environments, understanding that each offers its own advantages. These digital environments include both online learning and mobile technologies.

In an earlier time, it was the technologies that dominated, and in fact the early leaders in the field had a strong educational technology background. As its use has become more widespread, curriculum developers and instructional leaders have joined the conversation. Blended learning can be delivered in a variety of ways, and in fact, it is this flexibility of delivery that can derail cohesive planning.

We recommend a schoolwide approach to blended learning in order to ensure that there is a thoughtful scope and sequence. In the same way that other content areas such as mathematics, English, history, science, and the technical subjects are carefully planned across several years, so should blended learning. Accomplishing that requires understanding the range of options.

This session will include four key principles:

1. Blended learning means that some learning must occur outside the classroom.
2. Blended learning requires that students develop self-regulatory skills.
3. Blended learning requires a progression of learning as students gain skills.
4. Blended learning works best with schoolwide approaches.

Target Audience: MS and HS educators, instructional coaches, and literacy leaders

Continuum Level: 4 = Extending Implementation

NESA's Learning Continuum:

Learn more about how NESA plans Professional Learning

Save paper and effort where possible!

For your convenience, and to support our efforts in being "green", all handouts/files posted here have been notated with an A, B, C or D indicating the following:

(A) hardcopies needed at workshop
(B) electronic version on laptop is sufficient (for viewing during the workshop)
(C) required reading PRIOR to the workshop
(D) file not needed for workshop itself, but simply material of additional interest/reference

Workshop 1

(B) PowerPoint Presentation (9MB)

(A) COLOSO Plan

(B) COLOSO Example

(A) Checking for Understanding

(A) Eisenhower's Message to the Troops

Workshop 2

(A) or (B) Teaching with Tablets

(B) Blended Learning PowerPoint Presentation (4MB)

Background Knowledge: The Missing Piece of the Comprehension Puzzle

Background knowledge is too often neglected in our push to raise test scores, despite the fact that we know background knowledge is a critical component of comprehension. Background knowledge simply has to become an instructional focus if we want to help students make sense of school. In this session, you'll learn to:

• distinguish incidental knowledge from core background knowledge;
• check students’ understanding prior to a unit with tools such as opinionnaires, interest surveys, and anticipation guides;
• model how to activate and apply prior knowledge so kids can wrestle with new content;
• build up students’ background knowledge through virtual field trips, guest experts, and more;
• provide collaborative ways for students to develop expertise, show what they know, and own their learning.

Major topics will include assessing background knowledge, anticipating misconceptions, and building and activating background knowledge through vocabulary instruction and wide reading.

This session is designed around a needs-assessment rubric for determining how background knowledge is fostered across the school day. Special attention will be devoted to helping students move beyond the shift-and-surf mode to deep analysis of texts.

Target Audience: MS and HS teachers, instructional coaches, and literacy leaders

Continuum Level: 4 = Extending Implementation

NESA's Learning Continuum:

Learn more about how NESA plans Professional Learning

Close and Critical Reading in Secondary

Attending to the information presented in the text, while recognizing assumptions, background knowledge, and biases held by the reader helps the reader deeply understand what is being read. Close and critical reading is an instructional approach that teaches students to engage in all of these behaviors.

As part of close reading, students encounter a text and read that text several times, often for different purposes and based on different questions. Some questions can be answered without having read the text; others require a deeper understanding and evidence from the text.

In this session, we focus on the questions that require repeated close readings in order to be answered. These questions move through a four-part model:

1. What does the text say? (literal level of meaning)
2. How does the text work? (structural analysis)
3. What does the text mean? (inferential level of understanding)
4. What does the text inspire me to do? (interpretive level of meaning)

In addition, this session addresses the quantitative and qualitative factors of text complexity as well as the ways in which readers can be matched with texts and tasks. It also examines how close readings of complex texts scaffold students’ understanding and allow them to develop the skills necessary to read like a detective.

Lastly, we will examine the challenges and debates in the field regarding how the issue of text complexity is influencing the ways we talk about, plan, teach, and assess student learning.

Target Audience: MS and HS English Language Arts educators, instructional coaches, and literacy leaders.

Continuum Level: 4 = Extending Implementation

NESA's Learning Continuum:

Learn more about how NESA plans Professional Learning

Save paper and effort where possible!

For your convenience, and to support our efforts in being "green", all handouts/files posted here have been notated with an A, B, C or D indicating the following:

(A) hardcopies needed at workshop
(B) electronic version on laptop is sufficient (for viewing during the workshop)
(C) required reading PRIOR to the workshop
(D) file not needed for workshop itself, but simply material of additional interest/reference

Workshop 1

(B) Building Vocabulary, Building Background (slides)

(A) Background Knowledge Rubric

Workshop 2

(B) Close and Critical Reading (slides - 8MB)

(A) Close Reading: Salvador, Late or Early, by Sandra Cisneros

(A) Close Reading: Why Eat Insects?