Mastering Formative Assessment Moves: 7 High-Leverage Practices to Advance Student Learning

by Brent Duckor, Carrie Holmberg

Overview

How do you know if students are with you at the beginning, middle, and end of a lesson? Can formative assessment offer a key to better teaching and learning during instruction? What if you could blend different formative assessment moves in your classroom, with intention and care for all students, to help make better instructional decisions on the fly and enjoy more teachable moments?

Educators Brent Duckor and Carrie Holmberg invite you on the journey to becoming a formative assessor. They encourage you to focus on these seven research-based, high-leverage formative assessment moves:

• Priming--building on background knowledge and creating a formative assessment–rich, equitable classroom culture
• Posing--asking questions in relation to learning targets across the curriculum that elicit Habits of Mind
• Pausing--waiting after powerful questions and rich tasks to encourage more student responses by supporting them to think aloud and use speaking and listening skills related to academic language
• Probing--deepening discussions, asking for elaborations, and making connections using sentence frames and starters
• Bouncing--sampling student responses systematically to broaden participation, manage flow of conversation, and gather more “soft data” for instructional use
• Tagging--describing and recording student responses without judgment and making public how students with different styles and needs approach learning in real-time
• Binning--interpreting student responses with a wide range of tools, categorizing misconceptions and “p-prims,” and using classroom generated data to make more valid and reliable instructional decisions on next steps in the lesson and unit

Each chapter explores a classroom-tested move, including foundational research, explaining how and when to best use it, and describing what it looks like in practice. Highlights include case studies, try-now tasks and tips, and advice from beginning and seasoned teachers who use these formative assessment moves in their classrooms.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781416624783
Publisher:	Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development
Publication date:	06/27/2017
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Brent Duckor, PhD, is an associate professor in the Department of Teacher Education at San José State Uni¬versity. He taught government, economics, and history at Central Park East Secondary School in New York City in the 1990s before returning to the University of Califor¬nia, Berkeley, to study educational measurement, testing, and assessment with the passage of No Child Left Behind. Brent’s research on teachers’ understanding and use of formative assessment in the K–12 classroom and validation of teacher licensure exams in state, national, and international contexts seeks to integrate a develop¬mental perspective on teachers’ growth in the profession. He has coedited sev¬eral international journals including Psychological Test and Assessment Modeling and Pensamiento Educativo. Brent’s most recent scholarship has appeared in Teachers College Record, Journal of Teacher Education, Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School, and The English Journal. He can be reached at [e-mail]. Carrie Holmberg is a lecturer and preservice teacher educator at San José State University. She taught at a Title I comprehensive high school in Silicon Valley for nearly a decade and has extensive experience mentoring new teachers. A National Board Certified Teacher and Bay Area Writing Project teacher consultant, Carrie earned a Bachelor of Arts in English from Stanford University and a Master of Arts in education from the Stanford Teacher Education Program. In addition to supervising teacher candidates, co-authoring articles, and writing a book, she is pursuing her doctorate at San José State Uni¬versity in Educational Leadership program. Carrie is committed to researching, developing, and celebrating educators’ knowledge, skills, and professionalism. She is an enthusiastic ambassador for teachers, educational leaders, and the peo¬ple and systems that support them. Carrie lives in Silicon Valley with her family. She can be reached at [e-mail].

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Foreword by John Hattie
Introduction
1. Priming
2. Posing
3. Pausing
4. Probing
5. Bouncing
6. Tagging
7. Binning
Conclusion
References
Index
About the Authors

What People are Saying About This

Lorrie Shepard

"In Mastering Formative Assessment Moves, Brent Duckor and Carrie Holmberg elaborate specific instructional moves to help both novice and seasoned teachers deepen their formative assessment practices. Their vision is not to be added on top of other reform initiatives but fits perfectly within equity-focused, ambitious teaching practices aimed at deeper learning. I like that the authors push back against quantitative indicators as the best means for tracking learning progress and offer ways, instead, for triangulating and building upon qualitative windows into student thinking."

Jim Popham

"For two full decades, formative assessment's prevalence in our schools has fallen far short of its proponents' predictions—particularly given the research evidence supporting its effectiveness. Drawing on their own experiences as practitioner-researchers, Duckor & Holmberg have come up with a marvelous set of implementable guidelines, for both prospective and seasoned teachers, showing how the formative-assessment process can sparkle."

Ben Daley

"The authors have performed a rare feat, they explain the "why" of formative assessment at a high level, but Duckor and Holmberg also get into the nitty gritty of actual classroom level practice. Educators, both new and experienced, will find much they can use here."

Editorial Reviews

"The authors have performed a rare feat, they explain the "why" of formative assessment at a high level, but Duckor and Holmberg also get into the nitty gritty of actual classroom level practice. Educators, both new and experienced, will find much they can use here." -- Ben Daley, Chief Academic Officer "High Tech High"

From the Publisher