Seven+Practices

=Seven Practices for Effective Learning by Jay McTighe and Ken O'Connor = =Ed Leadership, Nov. 2005 = =The best teachers recognize assessment as a tool and use it to adjust their practice and guide their students to improve. =

Alice Barr's Summary & Ratings: This article suggests 7 ways to grade students. Using formative, summative and diagnostic assessments, each step has a brief description of the practice and a couple of challenges.The steps are meaningful performance goals, show criteria and models first, assess before teaching, give choice, provide feedback, encourage self assessment and goal setting, and allow new evidence of achievement to replace the old. This article describes theory, but gives few suggestions for practice. It’s a good review of multiple grading practices. A. 5 B. 7 C. 7

Marc Brown's Summary & Ratings: This article gives a good overview of various assessment practices and their purposes. The paper includes brief descriptions of summative, formative and diagnostic assessments, authentic performance assessments, rubrics, the use of choice in assessments, immediate and descriptive feedback, self-assessment, and retakes. Their is a very breif description of how these assessment practices affect a student’s motivation to learn. The paper also includes a graph of four students who attain the same level of mastery at different rates. The case studies are bland. They describe the practice but do not offer how the practice changes or does not when faced with challenges of time, student and teacher behaviors, and curricular needs (e.g. covering AP content). A.3 B.6 C.5

Anne Tommaso's Summary & Ratings: This mostly practical article feels like something one would be assigned in an Instruction and Assessment course. Philosophically framed by the philosophy that grades should motivate learning, it gives 7 principles of grading practice with detailed (sometimes too much so) explanations and brief case studies. For classroom teachers, there is good information that makes one consider current assessment practices connected to different content and learning goals. It does not mention grading policy or school wide goals; instead it is very focused on designing assessment that promotes learning. A. 5 <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #674ea7; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">B. 6 <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #674ea7; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">C. 6