Week 16: Effective Learning Environments

In what ways does assessment help create a highly effective learning environment? Explain your answer in 1 paragraph.

The website Teach Thought had a great graphic that outlined 10 characteristics of a Highly effective learning environment. In some of these characteristics, assessment can actually lead to the creation of a highly effective learning environment. These characteristics are as follows. First, assessment is persistent, authentic, transparent, and never punitive. Assessment should only be about evaluating student progress and providing feedback to help them improve. Second, criteria for success is balanced and transparent. Criteria on assessments should be balanced and transparent in terms of the skills needed to be demonstrated. Standards Based Grading should be communicated with clarity. Third, there are constant opportunities for practice. Opportunities for practice can lead to formative assessments, as students practice the content, the teacher can be adjusting instruction going forward. Lastly, learning is personalized by a variety of criteria. Assessments can also be personalized so that students can demonstrate knowledge through a method that aligns with their strengths. 

In what ways do you see evidence of highly effective learning environment being cultivated in your classroom through assessment? 

Three examples of the use of strategies to create a highly effective learning environment are: purposeful lines of questioning, providing relevant feedback, and tracking student progression using mini formative assessments. Purposeful lines of questions meets the characteristic that questions are more important than answers; good questions should lead the learning. Tracking student progression meets the characteristic that there are constant opportunities for practice and evaluation. Providing relevant feedback meets the characteristic that ideas come from a divergent sources so that students are receiving information in a variety of ways. 

 The found the following excerpts in my previous journal entries. 

    Purposeful Lines of Questioning 

"After reading Knowing What Students Know: The Science and Design of Educational Assessment (2001), I learned that teachers should give students extended time to think through given questions and talk to their peers. Teachers then followed this practice with asking students to explain their reasoning without the teacher evaluating the accuracy of the response. By then opening up the discussion to the class for the class to evaluate the student's response and add on, a teacher can collect data. For example, if a student provides a claim and reasoning about why the image is an ionic bond, the teacher can ask students to put thumbs up on down to express agreement or disagreement. Based on this small assessment, the teacher can alter instruction for the rest of the lesson and lessons to come" 

Tracking Student Progression

"I will use mini formative assessments daily to measure student progress. Formative Assessment can provide information about the present state of the learners, clear view of the learning goal, and action to close the gap. Learning goals can be found and changed within the curriculum and the the present state of the learner is learned from the given assessment. Based on data from a formative assessment, a data-driven action plan can be created. Formative assessments can use used" 

Providing Relevant Feedback

"From Brookhart (2008), I learned that when students have goals or learning targets that they're working towards overtime, a teacher should be observing patterns in the student's work so that they can provide relevant feedback to the students. I do this by recording data based on exit tickets with my students so I can see how they're developing with writing and argumentation over time. This helps the teacher provide suggestions that benefit the student and is informed by data"