with Doug Fisher and Nancy Frey
February 17, March 3, 25 and April 8. All webinars start at 3:45 p.m.
Registration fee: $95/$145 (Level 1/Level 2)
Credit: One optional university credit is available for attending all webinars and participating in online assignments and discussions ($145)
Learning; that’s our goal. But how do we know if our students have learned what we taught? Assessment connects the teaching and the learning and allows us to design additional experiences to close the gap between what students already know and what they need to know. Distance learning has created an assessment challenge as everything is now “open book.” Thankfully, there are new tools and formats that teachers can use to assess students’ understanding. These new ways of assessing learning will impact schooling for years to come as they are better and more authentic than many of the tools we had been using before the pandemic.
Participants will:
- describe the challenges of assessment in regards to learning from a distance.
- Be able to identify and choose specific assessment tools and strategies in the right moment to evaluate student learning.
- evaluate the current application of existing assessment practices and make necessary upgrades for students learning from a distance.
- use data from assessments to evaluate and inform their practice.
Target Audience: K-12 Educators
Credit: One optional university credit is available for attending all webinars and participating in online assignments and discussions.
Session 1 – Nancy Frey – Universal Response and Teach Back Opportunities
This first session focuses on some enduring lessons related to assessment. We think of these as “assessment cookies,” or bits of advice that stick with you. In this session, we will examine the impact of these assessment cookies on our instruction. Each assessment playlist achieves a particular purpose, an acknowledgment that no single assessment could ever do everything you need. Universal responses are those techniques used by the teacher to allow for simultaneous replies from every member of the group, rather than isolated answers. Teach-back is at its heart a form of assessment for you to gauge your students’ learning by providing insights into their cognitive and metacognitive thinking.
Session 2 – Nancy Frey – Composing, Self-Assessment, and Peer Assessment
Composition is an umbrella term for all the sophisticated skills that go into the act of writing. While writing itself is a general term for the action of putting ideas onto paper or in a digital format, composition includes all of those cognitive skills and processes that are needed to do so. Quality self-assessments require students to use their metacognitive skills and move beyond yes/no dichotomous answers. Peer assessments enhance the feedback loop. The student receiving the feedback profits from another set of eyes, to be sure, but arguably the larger benefit is to the one posing the feedback.
Session 3 – Doug Fisher – Evaluation of Learning
There are a number of ways to document learning and use that information as feedback about our impact. Of course, like any upgrade, it’s based on a system that is already in place. You have tools that you have used to document students’ learning and to evaluate proficiency. Some of these will work perfectly well from a distance; others will not. This section session seeks to improve upon existing assessment strategies to make them applicable in a distance or blended learning environment.
Session 4 – Doug Fisher – Taking Action Based on Assessment Data
In evaluating the results of Assessments and feedback provides us an opportunity, as a next step, to take action based on the data gathered. What are the next steps in utilizing that data, what is your plan to support and ensure even during the pandemic that every student is learning, “not by Chance, but by Design” making your impact with students and ensuring your efforts are applicable in a distance or blended learning environment.
Registration and more information>>
Dr. Douglas Fisher and Dr. Nancy Frey are professors of educational leadership at San Diego State University and teacher leaders at Health Sciences High and Middle College. Together they have authored numerous books and articles on improving student achievement, with a focus on literacy. They frequently present at national and international education conferences. Last year they co-authored, The Distance Learning Playbook: Teaching for Engagement and Impact in Any Setting, with John Hattie.