Virginia Department of Education
Office of School Improvement
AARPE Part 2, 2015-2016
Session 2: What Do You Say? Formative or Summative?
1. Each year, the teachers at fourth grade meet together to review students’ performance on a standardized reading assessment and, in particular, to look at the percentage correct for different kinds of items on the test. Where percentage correct is lower than expected, they look at how the instruction on that aspect was planned and delivered and determine ways that instruction can be strengthened in the upcoming year.
2. Every nine weeks, teachers in a school use an ‘interim’ test to check student progress. Any student who scores below the set threshold set for making adequate progress is invited to attend additional instruction. Any student who scores below the established threshold on two successive interim tests is required to attend additional instruction.
3. A teacher has just discussed with his class why historical documents cannot be taken at face value. As the lesson draws to a close, the student is given an index card and is asked to write an answer to the question “Why are historians concerned about bias in historical sources?” As they leave the classroom, the students hand their cards to the teacher. After the students have left, the teacher reads through the cards and then decides how to begin the next lesson.
4. The mathematics department from a school meets to discuss their professional development needs. They analyze the scores obtained by their students on a standards assessment and see that, while scores are, overall, acceptable, their students scored less well on items involving ratio and proportion. They decide to make ratio and proportion the focus of PD activities for the coming year, meeting regularly by department to discuss changes they have made in the way they teach this topic. A year later, they find that their students are scoring well on ratio and proportion on the standards assessment, making their scores well above district and state expectations.
5. A science teacher plans a unit on Pulleys and Levers. Fourteen days are available to teach this unit; however, the teacher makes sure that all content is covered in 11 class periods. In period 12, the students take a test on what they have covered in the 11 lessons and the teacher collects the tests, reads them, and on the basis of what she learns about student understanding of the topic, she plans what to do in lessons 13 and 14.
6. A sixth grade class has been learning about figurative language. To check the students’ understanding, the teacher gives each student a set of six cards showing letters A, B, C, D, E, (blank). On the interactive board, the teacher displays:
Wiliam, D. (2011). What is assessment for learning? Studies in Educational Evaluation, 37, 1. Retrieved from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191491X11000149
Session 2: What Do You Say? Formative or Summative?
Virginia Department of Education
Office of School Improvement
AARPE Part 2, 2015-2016
A. Alliteration
B. Onomatopoeia
C. Hyperbole
D. Personification
E. Simile
F. Don’t Know
Wiliam, D. (2011). What is assessment for learning? Studies in Educational Evaluation, 37, 1. Retrieved from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191491X11000149
Session 2: What Do You Say? Formative or Summative?
Virginia Department of Education
Office of School Improvement
AARPE Part 2, 2015-2016
The teacher then reads aloud a series of statements.
1. He was like a bull in a china shop.
2. This backpack weighs a ton.
3. He was as tall as a house.
4. The sweetly smiling sunshine…
5. He honked his horn at the cyclist.
As each statement is read, the each student holds up a letter card to indicate the kind of figurative language s/he heard. The teacher realizes that almost all students assumed that each sentence could only be one type of figurative language. She points out that #3 can be simile or hyperbole. She re-polls students on the last two statements and finds that most can correctly identify the two kinds of figurative language in those two statements. She makes a mental note of three students who answer most of the questions incorrectly so she can follow up with them individually.
7. A high school chemistry teacher has been teaching students to balance chemical equations. To test the students,
she writes an unbalanced equation for the reaction of mercury hydroxide with phosphoric acid. She then invites
students to change the quantities of the various elements in the equation, and when there are no more suggestions
from the class, she asks the class to vote on whether the equation is now correct. All vote “yes”. The teacher
concludes that the class has understood and moves on.
Wiliam, D. (2011). What is assessment for learning? Studies in Educational Evaluation, 37, 1. Retrieved from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191491X11000149
Session 2: What Do You Say? Formative or Summative?