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Memory is the Residue of Thought - a strong case for AFL

Posted by Scott Habeeb on January 1, 2013 at 12:49pm

Last spring during our division's professional development day I attended a presentation led by Curtis Hicks and Mark Ingerson.  Their presentation was based on the book Why Students Don't Like School by author and cognitive scientist, Daniel Willingham.  There was one statement in particular they shared from his book that really stuck with me.  In his book, Daniel Willingham says MEMORY IS THE RESIDUE OF THOUGHT.

Think about that statement for a moment - MEMORY IS THE RESIDUE OF THOUGHT.  All teachers are trying to get students to remember content.  If Willingham is correct, then we must first get students to THINK about content.  There can be no residue of thought if there isn't first thinking.

Reflect on your own classroom and teaching practices.  Is the truth behind this statement evident in your classroom?  I would contend that it's worth asking yourself the following question: "Am I doing enough to give students opportunities to THINK about my content?"

If it's true that MEMORY IS THE RESIDUE OF THOUGHT then the following statements are probably true as well:

  • The more one thinks on something, the more "residue" that is left.
  • More residue leads to greater memory of content.
  • Greater memory of content leads to an increase in learning.

As you're thinking about your classroom and how much opportunity for thought your students have, I think it's worth noting an important distinction.  There is a huge difference between LISTENING to content and THINKING about content.  

Students often listen to content and listen to information and we fool ourselves into believing they've been thinking about it just because they heard us.  However, we all know that there have been many times when we have been listening to or hearing a speaker while our thoughts were a million miles away.  Or maybe we have a few students who are engaged in a meaningful class discussion about the content, which also then fools us into thinking that our class as a whole was really thinking about the content.

If we want students to actually THINK about the content, then we need to structure activities IN class that require them to engage with the content, to form opinions, to use facts, and to apply.  We have to create opportunities to really think.  This concept applies to ALL levels of students.  Just because your students are IB or AP students who know how to sit and listen politely doesn't mean that they are thinking about your content.

This is where AFL comes in.  Strategies that are based on the philosophy of AFL are strategies that lead to students thinking about content and assessing their own understanding.  AFL strategies inherently lead to students THINKING about content.

As you head back to school from your Christmas/Winter break, consider what you can do this year to ensure that your students are actually thinking about content and building the residue that will lead to memory.  For AFL strategies and ideas that will help you accomplish this goal, check out https://salemafl.ning.com/profiles/blogs/practical-examples-of-afl-to right here on Assessment FOR Learning.

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AFL - IT'S ABOUT STUDENTS TAKING OWNERSHIP OF LEARNING - Practical Examples

Posted by Scott Habeeb on December 2, 2009 at 3:30pm
This post is excerpted from an article written by Stephen Chappuis and Richard Stiggins. It was originally published in Educational Leadership in 2002 and was then reprinted in the book, Assessment FOR Learning: An Action Guide for School Leaders. While professional reading can sometimes be dry, Chappuis and Stiggins really capture the heart of AFL. This excerpt can be used by a school as an overview of what AFL is all about - teaching and learning and getting students to take ownership of their progress. This article also includes practical examples of how teachers and students would practice AFL.
Classroom Assessment for Learning

Classroom assessment that involves students in the process and focuses on increasing learning can motivate rather than merely measure students.

Imagine a classroom assessment as a healthy part of effective teaching and successful learning. At a time when large-scale, external assessments of learning gain political favor and attention, many teachers are discovering how to engage and motivate students using day-to-day classroom assessment for purposes beyond measurement. By applying the principles of what is called assessment for learning, teachers have followed clear research findings of the effects that high-quality, formative assessment can have on student achievement.

… largely absent from the traditional classroom assessment environment is the use of assessment as a tool to promote greater student achievement (Shepard, 2000). In general, the teacher teaches and then tests. The teacher and class move on, leaving unsuccessful students, those who might not learn at the established pace and within a fixed time frame, to finish low in the rank order. This assessment model is founded on two outdated beliefs: that to increase learning we should increase student anxiety and that comparison with more successful peers will motivate low performers to do better.

By contrast, assessment for learning occurs during the teaching and learning process rather than after it and has as its primary focus the ongoing improvement of learning for all students (Assessment Reform Group, 1999; Crooks, 2001; Shepard, 2000). Teachers who assess for learning use day-to-day classroom assessment activities to involve students directly and deeply in their own learning, increasing their confidence and motivations to learn by emphasizing progress and achievement rather than failure and defeat (Stiggins, 1999; 2001). In the assessment for learning model, assessment is an instructional tool that promotes learning rather than an event designed solely for the purpose of evaluation and assigning grades. And when a student become involved in the assessment process, assessment for learning begins to look more like teaching and less like testing (Davies, 2000).

STUDENT-INVOLVED ASSESSMENT

Research shows that classroom assessments that provide accurate, descriptive feedback to students and involve them in the assessment process can improve learning (Black and William, 1998). As a result, assessment for learning means more than just assessing students often, more than providing the teacher with assessment results to revise instruction. In assessment for learning, both teacher and student use classroom assessment information to modify teaching and learning activities. Teachers use assessment information formatively when they:

• Pretest before a unit of study and adjust instruction for individuals or the entire group.
• Analyze which students need more practice.
• Continually revise instruction on the basis of results.
• Reflect on the effectiveness of their own teaching practices.
• Confer with students regarding their strengths and the areas that need improvement.
• Facilitate peer tutoring, matching students who demonstrate understanding with those who do not.

We tend to think of students as passive participants in assessment rather than engaged users of the information that assessment can produce. What we should be asking is, “How can students use assessment to take responsibility for and improve their own learning?”

Student involvement in assessment doesn’t mean that students control decisions regarding what will or won’t be learned or tested. It doesn’t mean that they assign their own grades. Instead, student involvement means that students learn to use assessment information to manage their own learning so that they understand how they learn best, know exactly where they are in relation to the defined learning targets, and plan and take the next steps in their learning.

Students engage in the assessment for learning process when they use assessment information to set goals, make learning decisions related to their own improvement, develop an understanding of what quality work looks like, self-assess, and communicate their status and progress toward established learning goals. Students involved in their own assessment might:

• Determine the attributes of good performance. Students look at teacher-supplied anonymous samples of strong student performances and list the qualities that make them strong, learning the language of quality and the concepts behind strong performance.
• Use scoring guides to evaluate real work samples. Students can start with just one criterion in the guide and expand to others as they become more proficient in scoring. As students engage in determining the characteristics of quality work and scoring actual work samples, they become better able to evaluate their own work. Using the language of the scoring guide, they can identify their areas of strength and set goals for improvement - in essence, planning the next steps in their learning.
• Revise anonymous work samples. Students go beyond evaluating work to using criteria to improve the quality of work sample. They can develop a revision plan that outlines improvements, or write a letter to the creator of the original work offering advice on how to improve the sample. This activity also helps students know what to do before they revise their own work.
• Create practice tests or test items based on their understanding of the learning targets and the essential concepts in the class material. Students can work in pairs to identify what they think should be on the test and to generate sample test items and responses.
• Communicate with others about their growth and determine when they are nearing success. Students achieve a deeper understanding of themselves and the material that they are attempting to learn when they describe the quality of their own work. Letters to parents, written self-reflections, and conferences with teachers and parents in which students outline the process they used to create a product allow students to share what they know and describe their progress toward the learning target. By accumulating evidence of their own improvement in growth portfolios, students can refer to specific stages in their growth and celebrate their achievement with others.
Source: From "Classroom Assessment for Learning," by S, Chappuis and R.J. Stiggins, 2002, Educational Leadership, 60(1), pp. 40-44. Copyright 2002 by ASCD.
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The 2x10 Method - Building Relationships with Students

Posted by Scott Habeeb on February 25, 2011 at 8:34am

The 2 x 10 Method: Building Student Relationships One Kid at a Time

January 10th, 2011, By: Diane Trim in Articles, Classroom Management

This has been reposted from Inside the School. Click here to read it in its original location.

In a recent online seminar with school psychologist Dr. Allen Mendler, Mendler talked about the 2 x 10 method of connecting with students, especially tough students. Here’s what he suggested:

Take two minutes a day for 10 consecutive days to engage the student in personal conversation.

I haven’t tried this myself, but I can see how this 2 x 10 method would work well to improve classroom management. Personal connections are so important to learning. If a student knows the teacher cares, the student is more likely to be engaged in class. If the teacher and student have created a personal bond, it’s harder for either one to depersonalize and disrespect one another.


The two minutes need to be personal and not about math, science, or business communications. What did you do over the weekend? is always a good start. So are: Did you catch last night’s game? What do you think about the new movie? Could you recommend a video game my son might enjoy? The conversation should be about the student, not about the teacher. Listen and learn. Respond. Smile. Treat the kid as if she is the most interesting kid in the room.


If I were to use the 2 x 10 method, I’d first target my influential student leaders – the ones who are more likely to lead the class in mayhem, like Tim or Ashley, rather than those who edit the yearbook, like Charisse or Karen.Charisse and Karen already tell me all about their weekends and show me their yearbook layouts. They connect with everyone. Tim and Ashley connect with their peers just fine, but love to strengthen the us-versus-them students-versus-teachers mentality.


It might be an interesting experiment to use 2 x 10 on the student leader’s buddy first rather than approach Tim or Matt head on. Clint feels more approachable to me than Tim does; at least he’s more predictable. Hannah is less likely to be fashionably rude to me than Ashley. Winning over the best friends could be a good first step to winning over the student leaders.


I’d also use the 2 x 10 method on those kids who are hard to reach, like Aaron, who doesn’t come to class very often, or Kurt, who rarely puts pen to paper.


I’m sure that the 2 x 10 method isn’t a miracle cure for classroom management. But I have two minutes to strengthen a bond between myself and a student. One caring adult can make a huge difference in a student’s life. And maybe, my two minutes over 10 days will yield benefits beyond the personal connection: improved classroom management and more student learning.

Allen N. Mendler, PhD, is an educator, psychologist., and author. His most recent book published by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, Connecting with Students (2001), provides numerous practical strategies that help educators to connect effectively with their students. He can-be contacted at: Discipline Associates, phone: 1 /800/772-5227; fax: 773/549-6515; e-mail: tammy@disciplineassociates.com; Web site: www.disciplineassociates.com

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Part 2 - What we WANT students to do v. What we TRAIN students to do

Posted by Scott Habeeb on December 14, 2010 at 3:30pm

This post is a follow-up to an earlier post. It will make the most sense if read in that context.

After reading over my recent post entitled What we WANT students to do v. What we TRAIN students to do, I began to hear in my mind (yes, I sometimes hear voices) questions that some people might have as a result of what I had to say.


The more I think about and experience AFL, the more I feel that I am challenging many of the norms of teaching. In fact, I often end up wishing I could go back to the classroom and do things differently. While I feel I was a very good classroom teacher, much of what I did and many of my practices were:

1. examples of what my favorite teachers had done, and/or

2. examples of the conventional wisdom of education.


Very few of my own teaching practices came about as a result of an overall educational philosophy. I am convinced that AFL is a sufficiently large and all-encompassing enough philosophy as to be worthy of being used by teachers to govern how they teach and create lessons.


As I learn more about AFL, therefore, I continue to find new challenges to the merit of the practices that many of my favorite teachers used and/or that are the conventional wisdom of teaching. Since I know I am not the only one out here whose practices developed from a combination of these 2 factors, I know that posts such as the one I recently made end up raising questions in the minds of many teachers. They are questions worth asking and worthy of answers. Here are some attempts to answer some of those theoretical questions:


1. You talk about internal v. external motivation, but isn't it human nature to be motivated by rewards? Are you saying we should completely change human nature and remove external motivations from our classrooms? Isn't that unrealistic?

I firmly believe that there is a role for external motivation in all aspects of life. As a believer in capitalism, I know that people are naturally motivated by their own good, and I have no problem with this. The Pilgrims learned a long time ago what happens when there is no incentive to work, and the same holds true today. The problem that I perceive lies in the overuse of rewards - in particular the overuse of grades as a reward. I would recommend reading Whale Done by Ken Blanchard. It compares the methods used by Shamu's Sea World trainers to family and business life - which parallel nicely with the classroom. Even when training animals to do tricks, multiple rewards are used. The trainers don't want Shamu to learn that fish are the only acceptable reward for a job well done. When grades are used as the sole or primary motivator in the classroom then the grade begins to become more important than the learning.

2. Are you saying we shouldn't give grades at all?

I am absolutely not saying that we should not give grades. What I am saying is that grades should not be used rewards - ex. do this and get a good grade. There's no reason to turn the whole world on its head by getting rid of grades. Perhaps there might be an idealistic benefit to it, but it's an unrealistic goal that doesn't seem worthy of my time. Grades are a part of schooling. They are not all bad. They should be used - PROPERLY.

3. So what's the proper way to use grades?

Grades should not be used as rewards. The way I see it, grades should be used for 3 main reasons:

1. To communicate how well a student is mastering content/skills so that the student can guide his or her learning.

2. To communicate how well students are mastering content/skills so that the teacher can guide his or her teaching.

3. To summatively communicate the students' final level of mastery.

When I first started teaching I did what my favorite teachers - and what the conventional wisdom of teaching - told me to do. I gave lots of grades so that no one assignment hurt my students.


Today, I would say that giving lots of grades is a good thing IF AND ONLY IF the grades are used for the first 2 reasons listed above. The problem with my grading was that all the grades went into the grade book. I rarely - if ever - used the feedback I received from the grades to guide my teaching. And I hardly ever attempted to train my students to view their grades as feedback that could help them guide their learning. These grades were simply used to average together and get a final grade.


The problem with that is that if I had been honest with myself I would have realized that many - if not most - of the grades in my grade book didn't reflect mastery. They were "practice" assignments or assignments whose outcome was negated by a later similar assignment. Therefore, there was no guarantee that the summative grade to which they averaged was representative of mastery.

This is why I am so thankful for AFL. It's much more than just another professional development effort that my school/system is undertaking. Instead, it is a philosophy that, when truly adopted, turns much of the conventional wisdom on its ear. It is a philosophy that, when applied to a classroom, will lead to teachers being more aware of student needs, students being more likely to take ownership of their progress, and grades that better reflect what they are meant to reflect - mastery.

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What we WANT students to do v. What we TRAIN students to do

Posted by Scott Habeeb on December 9, 2010 at 5:26pm
Here is a conversation you will probably never hear:

Sea World Trainer 1: "I am so tired of these seals. They always want a fish every time they do anything!"
Sea World Trainer 2: "Tell me about it. It's like they don't understand how important the show is. They only care about getting fish!"
The other day I was talking with Jamie Garst, a Chemistry/IB Biology teacher at Salem High School. He mentioned that he recently decided to use Smart Pals (a plastic sleeve that allows an ordinary piece of paper to be used like a small dry erase boards) as a way to review in his classroom. (See previous post on using white boards to review) This was his first experience doing this with his students. As he was instructing them on what to do he told them that they would also need a blank sheet of paper. As he started to tell them the reason why, the kids said, "We know - it's to keep track of what we don't know." This was the first time Jamie had done this with his students. Therefore, their knowledge of what to do is evidence of the fact that someone had trained them. It's not natural for students to get out paper to assess their understanding. These kids had been trained by another teacher or other teachers in the school.
As educators, what do we want students to do?

We want them to learn for the sake of learning.
We want them to work hard because it's the right thing to do and because it leads to learning.
We want them to be internally motivated to do their best.
We want them to care more about learning than they do grades.

I think you'd be hard pressed to find a teacher who wouldn't agree that he or she wants those previous statements to be true for his or her students. However, we train them quite differently.

We train students to learn for the sake of getting a grade.
We train them to work hard or else they'll get a bad grade and because it leads to good grades.
We train them to be externally motivated by grades.
We train them to care more about grades than learning.

Think about it for a moment. The typical classroom at any grade level is not all that different from the seal show at Sea World. The student does the work; he gets a grade or points. The seal does the trick; he gets a fish. The student doesn't do the work; he doesn't get the grade or the points. The seal doesn't do the trick; he doesn't get the fish.

Have you ever assigned something and had students say, "Is this graded?" Have you ever felt like your students wouldn't work as hard if they weren't getting a grade? Have students ever complained that you weren't grading them after they put effort into an assignment or activity? Does it ever seem like all the students (and parents) care about is the grade on the report card or transcript?

Look back at the start of this post. Wouldn't it be ridiculous for the Sea World trainer to complain about the seal always wanting a fish for the tricks it does? Why is it not just as ridiculous for an educator to complain about a student always wanting to know if something is graded or about a student being motivated by grades rather than learning?

Perhaps the answer is because unlike the seal, the student is capable of rational and logical thought processes and should, therefore, know better. However, think about how students have been conditioned from day 1 in school. Do the work - get a reward. Now consider that this has been the case for generations. Is it any wonder that our students tend to be more externally than internally motivated? Is it any wonder that they tend to focus so much on grades and lose sight of the bigger picture of learning?

So what can be done about this? Is it possible to change years of conditioning to get to what we really want from students? Of course, if all teachers in the educational system made a change then we could definitely alter the situation; however, that's probably (definitely) a bit of a stretch. So can students be trained to be more internally motivated and to look at grades differently?

The story of Jamie and his students tells me that the answer is "yes". From my experience, the typical student expectation of a review activity is that the teacher will tell the student everything he or she needs to know - or ask all the questions he or she will eventually be asked - and then the student goes home and studies everything that will be on the test. (Or in some cases, doesn't study at all.) However, what Jamie found out was that his students were being conditioned to expect something different. They now expected that when a review was finished each student would leave class with a personalized list of what that student had not yet mastered. This personalized list would become the student's unique study guide. What Jamie experienced is an example of the fact that student expectations can be changed.

So what if teachers in your building stopped practicing AFG? AFG is Assessment FOR Grading. AFG is what I did very intentionally as a new teacher. I assigned lots of graded assignments so that I could have lots of grades in my grade book. The main purpose of my assignments and my assessments was to get grades in the grade book which could then average together to get a final summative grade. I used points as rewards and withheld points as a consequence. This use of AFG would naturally lead to my students thinking that everything they did had to be graded. I was training my seals - I mean, students - to work hard for the fish - I mean, grade.

AFL is so different. AFL is about assessing and assigning to gain feedback. It's about teachers and students using that feedback to guide learning. The whole point of the assessments and assignments is learning - thus the name, Assessment FOR Learning. This site is full of resources and ideas for applying AFL principles to the classroom.

I think that we can train kids to think differently about grades. It will take effort and a lot of change on our part. It will take great consistency, but it can be done. Until we truly begin applying AFL principles with this goal in mind, does it make sense for us to complain that students react exactly as we have trained them to react?

The best part of this is that if we alter their view of grades, we will ultimately increase their level of learning.
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Assessment FOR Learning + Enthusiasm = Powerful Instruction

Posted by Scott Habeeb on April 23, 2010 at 11:33am
What a privilege it is to be able to observe great educators practicing their craft!

Recently I had a chance to be in the classroom of Michelle Kovac, Salem High School's Marketing teacher. She was teaching Advanced Marketing. Two things stood out to me.

1. Mrs. Kovac did an excellent job of weaving AFL strategies and techniques into her classroom.

2. The strategies employed by Mrs. Kovac were highly successful IN PART due to the strategies themselves but MAINLY (in my opinion) due to the enthusiastic manner with which she employed them.

Let's start with the second thing I noticed - enthusiasm. In my interactions with teachers at various schools over the years I have often heard teachers bemoan the fact that while they have tried to use creative or new strategies they have been unsuccessful due to the weak level of their students. I would be overly "Pollyanna-ish" if I said that students had no bearing on the ability of a teacher to be effective. However, what I have noticed more often is that strong students mask poor teaching much more frequeently than weak students destroy great teaching.

Mrs. Kovac's Advanced Marketing class was an example of this situation. Advanced Marketing students are a diverse group. Some of them have been excellent students over the years. Some have struggled greatly. Some have had no disciplinary issues while others have had quite a few. Here's what they have in common, though. They are seniors in the spring - a time when seniors can be difficult to motivate.

I was amazed at what I saw in class that day. Mrs. Kovac's enthusiasm for the content was absolutely infectious. She acted as though Marketing was the coolest thing in the world, and as I sat in her class I began to to agree! She was a cheerleader, an entertainer, and a motivator - and the kids appreciated it. It was obvious that this was who she was in class on a daily basis because the kids thought it totally normal. Try faking enthusiasm on an occasional basis and students will see right through you.

The atmosphere is Mrs. Kovac's class was almost the way I envision an elementary classroom. What I mean is that these kids - these seniors - were excited to be there. They laughed. They joined in. When it was time to start working on projects they actually got up and RAN to get their supplies. One kid begged Mrs. Kovac to let her correct her quiz from the day before - not for points, not for a higher grade, just to be able to be correct. Mrs. Kovac finally "relented" and gave the student "permission" to correct her quiz!

When one student asked a particular question Mrs. Kovac said, "I feel a song coming on!" The entire class broke into a song about marketing. Seniors in high school willingly singing a song about Marketing in class - wow! That's what enthusiasm can do. It's what Parker Palmer describes in his book, The Courage to Teach. A teacher can lift up a class with his or her enthusiasm if the teacher has the courage to step out from behind the wall of safety that educators often erect. The courage that Mrs. Kovac showed to be herself, to be enthusiastic, and to share her love of her content is what made the assessment strategies she used work so well.

Here are the strong assessment strategies used that day by Mrs. Kovac:

Do Now Assignment - Predict Your Score
On the smart board were the numbers 3, 7, and 5. There were also 3 statements: "Guessed Correctly", "Guessed Wrong - Scored Higher", and "Guessed Wrong - Scored Lower". Students had to match a number with a statement. The day before students had taken a quiz and had predicted what their grade would be based on how well they had prepared for the quiz. For this day's Do Now assignment students had to match the numbers with the correct phrase. In other words they were trying to figure out that 3 students had correctly predicted their grades, 7 students had guessed wrong but scored higher, and 5 students had guessed wrong and scored lower.

So what are the assessment strengths here? Mrs. Kovac was training her students to analyze their preparation which in turn should help her students understand the role that preparation has in a student's success. This sort of feedback will hopefully encourage students to prepare more effectively in the future. Going back and analyzing how accurate their predictions were should help this knowledge sink in even more. It also gave Mrs. Kovac an opportunity to build them up by (enthusiastically) pointing out that they tended to underestimate themselves.

Why Did You Miss What You Missed?
When Mrs. Kovac handed back the students' quizzes she asked them to go over them and write down next to each question they missed why they missed it and what messed them up. She was not going to go over the quizzes with them that day. Instead, she told them that she first wanted to collect their feedback on why they missed what they missed. She told them that this feedback could alter how she goes over the quiz with them. She wanted it to be a learning experience rather simply listing out correct answers. When she went over the quiz with them the next day she wanted to be able to reteach/explain to them what they NEEDED to hear so they wouldn't miss the question next time around. This was a great example of a teacher collecting assessment data to guide instruction. She also told the students that she wanted them to get feedback for themselves so that they could ask appropriate questions. (By the way, this was when the one student begged to be able to correct her quiz.)

Analyzing the Competency List
Marketing classes teach based on a Marketing competency list the same way other courses might teach specific state or national standards. Mrs. Kovac had her students pull out their competency lists. The fact that they all had them and quickly pulled them out spoke volumes! Then they went through the competencies that they had recently covered and each student rated each of those competencies on a scale of 1-5 based on how well the student understood the specific competency. These students were fully involved in analyzing their own progress. Their competency list was becoming a study guide for the end of the year and a way for them to take ownership of their studies. Mrs. Kovac's students obviously did this sort of activity regularly because they were very familiar with the competency list. One of them even pointed out that she had forgotten to mention 2 of the competencies they had covered. Another kid excitedly pointed out that they were almost done with the list. When Mrs. Kovac (enthusiastically) asked, "Doesn't it feel good?" A chorus of students answered, "Yes!"


Mrs. Kovac's classroom is a good example of small ways to use AFL strategies to give students ownership of their own progress. Would those strategies work in any classroom? Yes - but they will work BEST when coupled with genuine enthusiasm.

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How do you really know if you taught "it"?

Posted by Scott Habeeb on November 11, 2010 at 10:00pm
Note to teachers from Salem High School: This is a post about teaching, teachers, and students in general as opposed to a post about specific situations at Salem High School.
So after all the lesson plans have been created, all the class time has been spent, and all the papers have been graded, how do you really know if you've taught your content well?
I might get under some people's skin with this post, but I want to get us to really think about our profession and WHY we teach.
So what's the answer to the question of how we know if we have taught our content well? If we're really going to live up to our calling, we must answer it this way: We know we have taught our content well if all our students have learned it and their grades reflect this.
Let's clear up one misconception before it has a chance to grow - our job is not to make sure all students get good grades. Our job is, however, to make sure that all students learn our content. That's the whole point of being a teacher - to get students to learn. It's also our responsibility to grade in a way that reflects the amount of learning. So while good grades are not our focus, learning is. And when learning occurs, if we grade properly, good grades will follow.
Ok, let's clear up another misconception before we proceed - saying that it's our job to make sure that all our students have learned does not absolve students of their role in the learning process. Obviously poor decisions by our students will end up impacting the amount of learning that occurs. However, we cannot control their decision making. We can, though, control how we teach and how we grade. Therefore, if what we are doing is not leading to the mastery of content, and if our grades are not accurately reflecting the level of mastery reached by our students, then it is incumbent upon us to do something about it. There is no room in education for complacency. Our attitude must be that IF THEY HAVEN'T LEARNED IT, THEN WE HAVEN'T TAUGHT IT.
I remember taking Macro-economics in college. Without going into too much detail, suffice it to say that while the professor may have "known his stuff", he was an absolutely lousy teacher. There must have been about 400 students in the class. I was only taking the class Pass/Fail. I really felt bad for my classmates as I looked at the posted grades after each test we took. I remember earning a 60 on the mid-term and having it curved to a B+. I really didn't care since it was Pass/Fail, but I remember thinking what a joke it was to say that this person was teaching. Obviously many of the students - myself included - were not putting the amount of effort into the class that we should, but how could that professor be satisfied with himself knowing that almost none of his 400 students were mastering the content in his course?
I envisioned this professor sitting with his colleagues in the departmental office complaining about "college students these days". While I wasn't around in his day, I really doubt there ever was a time when college students enjoyed boring lectures, no descriptive feedback, and undecipherable tests. We didn't learn it, and he didn't teach it.
So what is an appropriate level of failure for your students? Should you be satisfied if 70% master your content? 80%? 90%? While it's important to keep a certain level of reality mixed in with your idealism so that you don't go crazy, WE MUST HAVE THE ATTITUDE THAT WE ARE GOING TO STRIVE FOR 100% MASTERY. Notice I said strive. This means we will not be complacent. We will continue to tweak, change, try, experiment, etc. to always try and bring more students to mastery level.
This is where Assessment FOR Learning has it's greatest power. To some degree, it saddens me when teachers have difficulty incorporating - or worse, don't try to incorporate - an AFL philosophy into their teaching. The reason is because an AFL philosophy will lead to greater content mastery. To not incorporate AFL strategies into one's teaching is to be satisfied with the fact that you're not doing the best that you can to teach your students. Let me give an example of what I mean:
If you "teach" content and then give a summative assessment (a traditional test, for example) without lots of assessment along the way, you know what will happen. The students who are very dedicated workers and/or the students who can sit in class and "get it" will do very well on the test. The students who do little to no work outside of class or who can't just sit in class and "get it" will do very poorly. Another group of students will score somewhere in between. For years, teachers have satisfied themselves with this outcome by "blaming students". In other words, because some students almost always do well, the teacher convinces himself or herself that all students could have done well if they had either worked harder, paid more attention, or were more academically gifted. The teacher "knows" he or she taught the content because SOME students have mastered the content. This is a convenient defense strategy for teachers as it absolves teachers of the responsibility of making sure that students learn. YES, students have a role in it (as stated earlier), but we can't control all of their decisions. We CAN control how we teach, though.

The scenario in the above paragraph is very common in schools. Essentially, it is being satisfied with the bell curve of life. As educators, we have the privilege of smashing the bell curve. We have the opportunity to be the "difference-maker" in a kid's life. Too often this opportunity is squandered as we sell short our ability to alter the outcome of a student's learning. AFL - formative assessment - can be a powerful tool in our attempt to maximize that opportunity. And it really doesn't require much additional work on our part.
Take the example from 2 paragraphs above. If instead of "teaching" and then giving a summative assessment, the teacher would instead assess EVERYDAY, then an incredible difference could be made in the typical bell curve outcome. For example:
  • If everyday the students left class knowing what they know and being aware of what they have not yet mastered - this happens because of specific classroom assessment activities led by the teacher - then students will perform better on the summative assessment. Have you ever experienced a situation as a student where you thought you knew what was going on until you took the test? You studied, and you thought you understood the content. Then you took the test and realized you didn't know it at all. This is all too common - but it shouldn't be. If this is happening to students in your class then you need to apply more AFL strategies. This is a clear sign that you need to provide activities that require your students to assess themselves throughout the learning process so that they are acutely aware of how well they're doing and what they need to do to prepare for the summative test.
  • If students were quizzed/tested/assessed repeatedly leading up to the summative assessment, then the summative assessment would not catch them by surprise. Do you ever hear your students complain that they understood the content but were surprised by the types of questions on the summative test? Unfortunately, this is a common occurrence as well. It's a clear sign that a teacher has not employed an AFL philosophy. AFL is about using assessment FOR learning. Teaching and then giving a summative assessment only is AFG - Assessment FOR Grading. It's using assessment to find out how much people know. While this has to happen eventually - there is nothing wrong with a summative assessment - it does little to help the learning process. If students are assessed regularly - DAILY - then the feedback from the assessments will actually help them learn - thus the name, Assessment FOR Learning.
Let's clear up 2 more misconceptions:
  1. But what about students who still refuse to work? They could still come into class completely unprepared and fail the assessment? Of course. But they are also the outliers. Let's focus on the majority of students - the ones who do what we ask. Let's not lose a good strategy just because a few students continue to make bad decisions. HOWEVER, I would contend that those poor decision-making students would learn more if they were assessed daily and provided with opportunities to assess themselves - even if they didn't work hard outside of class.
  2. But what about rigor? Shouldn't a rigorous class by its very nature lead to a bell curve of sorts? The rigor in a class should not be demonstrated by the student grades that result. The rigor of the class is inherent in the difficulty of the content. However, assuming that the students who are in the class have been properly prepared and have academic strengths on par for the class, then there is no reason that students shouldn't enjoy great success in a rigorous course. Our job as teachers is to get students to learn. That is no less true in a rigorous class than it is in a "general level" course. Unfortunately, it is common for teachers in rigorous classes to feel that the rigor of the course justifies the lack of success of some students. Again - grades aren't the goal. Learning is. But if AFL strategies can lead to students in rigorous courses getting higher grades that are reflective of increased learning, then how could we not employ those strategies?
So, how do you know if you've taught your content? You know it if your students have learned it. And AFL strategies will help increase that learning - which is, after all, WHY we teach.
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