Instructional Minute

We’re leading the charge with an important topic: leaders. It’s easy to take for granted some things that were once “out of reach” for women. Use this week’s lessons to shed light on some of the women leading the way for future generations with content and activities on:

• The first Black woman on the U.S. senior national hockey team
• The life and work of activist Malala Yousafzai
• Expanding the literary canon (with Taylor Swift-inspired literature courses)
• Women who are leading advancements in science
• Influential women leaders from different eras in U.S. history

The formative assessment process involves continually collecting and using evidence to inform teaching and learning. It operates as a feedback loop in which both teachers and students play active, complementary roles in enabling learning by consistently working to build student understanding and skills during the course of a lesson as opposed to evaluating the learning after a period of teaching. Within the formative assessment process, a teacher uses strategies and tools to gather accurate and complete information about students’ current understanding in order to make informed instructional decisions and provide feedback to advance student learning.

• Student Self Reflection
• Peer to Peer
• Feedback
• Goal Setting
• Questioning

• Portfolios
• Learning Logs
• Exit Tickets
• Concept Maps

The video below is an example of the formative assessment process in action throughout a lesson following Direct Instruction.

Please read the following scenario about a lesson taught in a classroom and decide whether this is a Formative Assessment or a Summative Assessment.

At the end of a history lesson on World War II, the teacher distributes an exit ticket to each student. On the exit ticket, the students are asked to respond to a few questions or prompts related to the day's lesson. The questions might include:

• Summarize one key event from World War II that we discussed today.

• Name two countries that were major powers during the war and briefly describe their roles.

Students are given a few minutes to jot down their responses. The teacher collects the exit tickets as students leave the classroom and records them in the grade book. Based on the exit ticket responses, 91% of students summarized one key event and 95% of students named two countries.

Keep reading the Instructional Minute to find the answer!

A copy of this template is attached at the end of this newsletter if you are interested!

While the teacher originally thought this was a formative assessment, they entered it into their grade book and thus, it became a summative assessment. It was used to evaluate learning, it was not used to inform instruction or to move learning forward while learning was in the process of developing.

Familiarize yourself with the digital format, types of questions, and digital tools students might encounter on standardized tests. The following link offers online assessment tutorials.

To review grade level and content area sample items, click the link below.

Sample Item Sets

Below you can find the new, updated required instructional minutes by grade level and content area. Each grade level also includes a sample schedule.

The documents attached outline K-8 curricular resources, standards and pacing. This can also be found by clicking here on the LSD website.

The document attached outlines 9-12 curricular resources, standards and pacing. This can also be found by clicking here on the LSD website.

This on-demand professional learning resource provides micro-learning videos about every IXL feature and best practices for implementing IXL. Teachers must be signed into their IXL accounts to access these videos. https://www.ixl.com/resources/elearning-library

A resource to use as you see fit.