Assessment and Feedback That Move Learning Forward

Vicki Davis: Assessment and Feedback that Move Learning Forward. Episode 963 for Thought Leader Thursday.

The moment you put a grade on something, it stops being formative. Three tips.

One, if you use slides, add a quick formative question every student answers in the moment. Then pivot the lesson.

Two, run a review game. Pull the class stats and reteach only where they’re weak. Let them watch you use the data and tell them to use their own when they’re reviewing.

Three, pre-assess five vocabulary words you’ll use in class today. Don’t take a grade, but it does show them what matters and get class started.

Let’s think about assessment.

Announcer: This is the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast with your host, Vicki Davis.

Vicki Davis: Today, we’re talking with a longtime friend, Starr Sackstein. She has been on the show three times already. This is her fourth appearance. She’s educator, author, speaker, and she is one of the most passionate voices in assessment reform. She’s written numerous books on rethinking grading, including her newest, Actionable Assessment, co-authored with Michael McDowell.

She spent over two decades helping teachers move from traditional grading to meaningful feedback that actually drives learning. Starr, you and I were talking in the pre-show. I started blogging in 2005. When did you start blogging?

Starr Sackstein: Probably around 2008. And then I was lucky enough to blog for Ed Week a little bit thereafter. That was a game changer, for sure.

Vicki Davis: You’ve spent so much time in the classroom, and now you’re talking about actionable assessment. So this is really interesting, because you’re like, hey, when we think assessment, we think grades. But I know you — you’re not a fan of grades. So help me understand: what’s actionable assessment?

Starr Sackstein: So Michael and I both agree that teachers are super good at collecting data. And unfortunately, they don’t always know what to do with it when they have it. And sometimes the quality of what they’re collecting isn’t as good as it can be. So this book really lays a foundation in what formative assessment really is and how it is different than summative. Those are terms we throw around an awful lot, but I’m still convinced not everybody really knows what they mean.

Vicki Davis: Let’s define it. Define clearly, for everybody who’s a beginner or wants to explain it to another teacher: formative and summative.

Starr Sackstein: So formative assessment is more of a process. Sure, there are intermediary tasks and people have their formative benchmarks. Like, as soon as you put a grade, though, on something, it is no longer formative. Formative is supposed to be practice. It’s supposed to be getting data to the learner, to the teacher, so that adjustments can be made and practice can be continued until they’re ready for the summative, which is when we check for what they got from all of it.

And that’s really an endpoint. And I’m not saying that you can’t take data from summative and use it again in the future, but the purpose of it is really assessment of learning — things that have already happened. Formative is assessment for learning. The preposition in the middle there is what changes the meaning of all of it.

As I’ve really lived in this assessment work for such a long time now, I believe assessment is learning. Like, anytime we are watching kids learn, anytime we’re taking in new stuff, learning is occurring. And I think too often we think about them in moments instead of this ongoing process where we’re teaching kiddos to set goals, to track their progress, to deal with not having things right right away — because the stickier and the harder things we are learning, the more likely it is we’re not going to get it on the first try. And we need to normalize that a bunch more than we actually do in school.

If we could take the grade away from the formative parts of what we do, the fear of being wrong and the fear of engaging will be a lot less. And so this book, which is super practical — you have a short two chapters that basically give you the foundational work that help you understand how we’re using the terminology. And then the whole rest of the book is: at the beginning of the lesson, when you find out this, these are strategies you can use right in the moment to make changes, so that you don’t spend a whole 40 minutes on a lesson that isn’t going to get you the results that you think you need. And sometimes that information comes in the middle of the lesson. Sometimes it comes at the end.

And what’s really different about this book is we also have a lot of graphics, so that if you’re working with a PLC, it actually helps you visualize what this looks like when kids are at different phases in the learning too. So it breaks down kids who are at proficiency, kids who are approaching it, kids that are already past it, how you could extend the learning so that that rich data that you’re collecting in class really goes to good use.

Vicki Davis: Okay, so there’s so much to unpack here. Let’s kind of start with the beginning of class. So you’ve probably read the book Small Teaching by James Lang. And one of his biggest things was: ask five questions that you’re not expecting them to know at the beginning of class and see what they already know. And that that primes the pump for learning, because they know, hey, this is what we’re going to learn about in class so that I can answer these questions. Right?

And when I started doing that in my AP CSP class — I read that during my first class, which, you know, had 100% pass rate that first year while I was still learning. And I think a lot of it had to do with that method, right, of doing that. It was like, you mean I’m supposed to ask them stuff that they don’t know, to see if they know it or see if they don’t? And the first thing my kids asked, of course, was, are you taking a grade on this? No. I explained to my students, this is formative assessment. So they know when I say formative, that’s testing — like, in some ways I feel like it’s testing me. They can relax and just like, hey, what have we learned?

So what is one of the most surprising assessment methods that you recommend, that teachers come back to you and say, I had no idea that would be so awesome?

Starr Sackstein: I think we lean in a lot to things like four corners activities and different things that mix modalities, so that you’re not using the same stuff all the time. You’re getting kids out of their seats. You’re getting them to, like — kind of like what you said before — you’re getting them to think about what they think. And using activities like that in different parts of a lesson, you could activate a lot of different things as a pre-assessment. What do they know? What are their feelings? How does this get them primed to go deeper and to test what’s going on for them at the beginning? It could be in the middle.

Vicki Davis: Okay, so let’s talk about four corners for a second, because honestly — so I’ve been teaching 24 years, and I didn’t learn this technique until like eight or nine years ago. So describe what that is, because it is really great.

Starr Sackstein: It’s one of my absolute favorites. I love to do it with adult learners, also in PDs that I do, because adult learners need to learn the same way kid learners need to learn — like multimodalities, not sitting and getting.

Four Corners is: you have different statements. You have four different spots in the room. You could do it a dozen different ways. We actually have tons of different models for how you could do it, even in a math class. The most typical way is agree, disagree, strongly agree, strongly disagree. Make a statement, have them think about where they belong in the room — not watching their friends and deciding where to go based on where their friends go — because they do have to defend why they’ve gone where they have gone. And then you have them discuss and share out. And then in some circumstances, after they hear all of the justifications, you might ask them if they want to switch where they are in the room based on the justification of others.

I’ve seen English teachers use it with characterization. Like, you could do it by a specific kind of topic. In science, you could do it where you’re thinking about — you have a question and you have like multiple choice answers around the room. Like, where do you find yourself in answering this question based on the data you collected in your lab? And same with math, thinking about different ways to move it around.

So it’s really just this great kid-to-kid discussion tool where they have to first think, have a lot of conversation, and then move. You have the movement, you have the discussion, and then you could get some writing pieces out. I’ve seen folks use like Post-it notes so that certain people don’t monopolize conversation too. And the teachers collect the Post-it notes, so that once your Post-it note is collected, you can’t speak again until everyone else’s Post-it notes. So it’s an easy way to collect who’s done talking already and who still needs to talk, in order to have that equity of voice in the classroom.

Vicki Davis: And see, you combine so many different things, because you can use the Post-it note example with just about any class conversation. Help it include all the voices. And then some students, they’re so observant, and watchers — but if they know that they need the answer to be part of class that day, they will speak up. And then it like changes everything, and you’re thinking, why doesn’t this student speak more? They just have such good things to say.

So that is an awesome strategy. And that’s been around a while, hadn’t it?

Starr Sackstein: It sure has. It always baffles me a little bit how many folks don’t use it.

Vicki Davis: Everybody’s looking for the new thing, you know? And sometimes these timeless things that have been around forever — are there any other timeless things in the book that you’re like, hey, this may have been around for 50 years, but it’s pretty doggone good?

Starr Sackstein: Yeah, I mean, honestly, I just opened up to like a random chart that we have. Some of the stuff on here is just so evergreen. Think, pair, share. Whiteboard responses. Reading records. And stuff like this was for data outputs for different kinds of sometimes ineffective versus effective assessments that we do in class. So it names a lot of those things, and then it gives different scenarios of what teachers might do, what it looks like, the data you collect, and then how you use such things.

Those of you who see the little — our little teacher over here — it could be just about anybody. And then throughout the whole thing, the middle section is just all pictures. And there’s reflection phases, quick poll examples, informal discussions.

Vicki Davis: So let’s ask this question then. You talked about effective and ineffective. What are some of the biggest mistakes that people make, and you’re like, oh, this would be really good to kind of move out of the classroom?

Starr Sackstein: A lot of times we get very attached to things that we do and we love, as educators. Sometimes I was definitely guilty of that too, when I thought something was awesome and it wasn’t necessarily best for kids. And sometimes they’re not even aligned to the standards or anything that we’re actually trying to assess. I think the biggest challenge generally is that our assessments don’t always match what we’re trying to assess.

My very first few projects, for example — I had ideas. I didn’t even think about the standards. I just thought about the things that I wanted them to do. And when I asked kids to think about their own learning, and even in what I got from them, everybody’s interpretation of my directions were so very different that my lack of clarity created this amorphous blob of information that came back at me.

Because I think as a teacher, we’re inclined to blame the kids for not doing what we asked them to do. But when you have that many kids not doing what you asked them to do, there’s clearly an issue on your side, not their side. Like, the only kids who really got it were the ones who came for extra help, who I had an opportunity to like talk them through what was going on inside my brain — because it was evident, but it was not a good, it was not well designed.

So like the situation — what I learned then was how important to bring reflection, metacognition, into this. Tell me about your learning experience throughout that. And those were as important for kids as they were for me, because it kept me honest.

Vicki Davis: Sometimes you do get a hard class. You know, I was talking to somebody the other day and I said, just because you have a hard class doesn’t mean you’re a bad teacher. Right? Because sometimes you just have a hard class, right? And you have to shift some things you do. And so sometimes these assessments look a little different depending on the class. You might have a group of rough and tumble boys, and you might be doing more stuff in the corner, except certain ones of them can’t go in the same corner. Right? You’re like, you two got to always disagree. I’ve had that before.

But you know, assessment is so important, and it doesn’t always mean you’re taking a grade. What’s one encouragement that you can give to teachers as we finish up, as they look at their assessments for the week this week?

Starr Sackstein: I’d say be super intentional about the assessments that you’re doing. Think more of it like a process and not like an end result necessarily — unless of course it’s summative that you’re working on. And don’t be afraid to ask your kids for feedback on them. Too often we keep the separation between teacher stuff and student stuff. And I think that the more we could think of a classroom as a partnership of learning, and less about I’m in charge, you’re doing what I tell you to do — like, that power dynamic kind of shifts, the more equitable that space is really going to feel for the kiddos. And they might invest a little bit more if what they’re telling you actually impacts what you’re doing.

You’re looking at your assessments — think, is this going to help each child in my room become a little bit better than they were before, based on the things that we’re learning?

Vicki Davis: Today, we’ve been talking with Starr Sackstein. She has written so many books, and her newest is Actionable Assessment, co-authored with Michael McDowell. And just a great topic here. Assessment’s always something we’re discussing, and lots of resources online that Starr has. So take a look and take advantage of those, and buy the book. So thanks, Starr, for coming on the show.

Starr Sackstein: Thank you for having me, Vicki.

Vicki Davis: Thanks for tuning in to the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast. Watch the video version of this podcast and catch my new radio and TV show, Cool Cat Teacher Talk, on YouTube and a radio or TV station near you. Join my Cool Cat Teacher Classroom Matters newsletter at coolcatteacher.com forward slash newsletter. Leave a review if you found this helpful. See you later, educator.