I often dig into my overly highlighted, annotated, broken in version of our PLC bible, Learning by Doing (You all SHOULD have a copy..if you don’t please ask me and I will get you one!). In thumbing through it this week, I refreshed on CFA ideals and practices. A few notes/reminders/thoughts to keep in your back pocket from rereading pieces of Chapter 6 (I highly encourage you to do so too!):
· Team developed CFA (Common Formative Assessments) are the lynchpin of the PLC process. CFA’s serve two purposes: The first is to better meet individual student needs through timely and targeted intervention or extension. The second is to help teachers improve their individual and collective teaching practice.
· Clarity precedes competence, so we will struggle in our attempts to develop and implement a CFA assessment process until we fully establish shared understanding of what that process entails (WE WILL BE REVIEWING THIS PROCESS IN STAFF MEETINGS SOON)
· Summative assessment is an assessment of learning while a formative assessment is an assessment for learning. Educators should use formative assessment process when they use assessment to help students understand the following 3 items:
- The target they are aspiring to
- Where they are now in relation to the expectation
- How to close the gap between the two
· A formative assessment gives the student the opportunity to improve on his/her learning because it informs both the teacher and student as to appropriate next steps in the learning process.
· Effective teachers use formative assessment during instruction almost minute by minute to check for student understanding so they know where to go next with instruction.
· Formative assessments that give both the teacher and students insights as to what should come next in the teaching learning process occur when teachers:
- Randomly direct purposeful questions to students and have others in the class respond to the answer
- Ask students to write their answers in their notes as the teacher circulates the room to determine student responses
- Have students use clickers, whiteboards and exit slips to gain insight into student thinking
- Create signals for students to indicate their level of understanding.
· In high performing PLCs, the assessment process also must include team-developed common formative assessments as team members attempt to answer the second critical question of PLCs: “How do we know our students are learning?” The team members then use the evidence of student learning from their CFAs to inform their individual and collective practice in four ways:
- To inform each teacher of individual students who need intervention because they are struggling to learn or who need enrichment because they are already proficient
- To inform students of the next steps they must take in learning
- To inform each staff member of the team of his or her individual strengths and weaknesses in teaching particular skills so each member can provide or solicit help from colleagues on the team
- To inform the team of areas where many students are struggling so that the team can develop and implement better strategies for those areas
· How the results of the assessment are used determines what type of assessment (summative or formative) it actually is
· Use of CFAs: In far too many schools, team developed CFAs are viewed as tools to determine which students need interventions but not as powerful tools for informing and improving teacher practice. …This collective analysis of the evidence enables team members to make informed adjustments to their teaching.
· Unless collaborative teams are using EVIDENCE of student learning (CFAs) to inform and improve their individual and collective professional practice, the school is not fully engaged in the PLC process.
More to come on CFA protocols and tools to guide the work of the collaborative team in a follow up bulletin!
