Designing with Assessment Patterns/OG

Designing with Assessment Patterns
Contributors	Steven Warburton, Joseph Bergin, Christian Kohls, Christian Köppe, Yishay Mor
Last modification	March 15, 2017
Source	Warburton et al. (2016)
Pattern formats	OPR Alexandrian
Usability
Learning domain
Stakeholders

The example below is an assessment scenario that was designed by a teacher using the ‘assessment driven course design’ pattern set. It is presented in the form of a lesson plan. This was delivered to two classes of Year 8 students and was targeted at improving their self-evaluation skills.

Context

Assessment design scenario as used in a lesson plan

The text below was written by the teacher. The design patterns that were used in this scenario are indicated in [square brackets]:

“…

This is a simple lesson idea that can have a positive impact in learner's understanding of the assessment criteria for writing, peer assessment, self-assessment and improvement of their work. I'm going to try this with my two Y8 classes today:

- sharing of the objectives of the lesson [ Constructive Alignment (Constructive Alignment)];

- distribution of the writing assessment grid that learners glue in their books [ Rubric (Rubric)];

- distribution of two assessment templates per learner;

- distribution of one exemplar of anonymized work, chosen by the teacher for its’ outstanding qualities;

- learners read the piece all together, and guided by the teacher they learn to apply the writing assessment grid: I start with the conditions under which it has been prepared, go to word count making remarks about the value of repetition against a varied piece, then we checkmark each different idea or piece of information "à la ‘ level", then the number of topics, then with a highlighter we outline opinions explaining that adjectives, comparisons, superlatives can also be a form of personal opinion, then we go to the connectives outlined in a different color, then finally to identify the tenses, including possible modal verbs. [ Peer Assessment with Confidence Indicator (Peer Assessment with Confidence Indicator)]

- in pairs the learners agree on a mark for that piece discussing their points of view. Results are shared in class. [ Peer Review (Peer Review)]

- Individually they assess their own piece. Of course the assessment of the accuracy is always difficult but they could eventually hand the piece to a partner to see how easy to read and understand is. They use a paper clip to attach the self-assessment to the writing piece then hand to the teacher at the end of the lesson.

- In pairs they discuss what would be the most important thing to improve their writing. Each learner writes on a post-it and puts the post-it in a corresponding place on the whiteboard, that will be filled with as many ‘post-its’ as there are learners.

- The teacher finishes the grouping (all post-its addressing similar issues together), commenting, discussing, and asking questions. [ Showcase (Showcase), This Is Feedback (This Is Feedback)]

- Finally the learners answer in their books in silence: "what am I going to do to improve my writing" giving explanations based on the analysis of their own piece. [ Act on Feedback (Act on Feedback)]

…”