UbD Chapter 7 Thinking Like an Assessor

Once I get through Stage I and establish the big ideas and essential questions, I move into Stage II of UbD, and I must begin to think and plan like an assessor. How will I know if the desired results have been achieved by my students? Chapter Seven helps me to determine what evidence shows this. What assessments will anchor or guide the curriculum and instruction and what should I look for to evaluate the level of student understanding? On page 150 the authors provide three basic questions that an assessor would ask. First, what kind of evidence do we need? Second, what specific characteristics in student responses, products, or performances should we look at? Third, does the evidence align with the goals? Chapter Seven focuses on the first question what kind of evidence is needed. Teachers become very comfortable relying on one type of assessment especially in scripted programs all the assessements are already built into the curriculum. I am thinking about the OCR curriculum that I am very familiar with and the Success For All curriculum that was implemented in San Jose Unified when I was teaching in that district. More recently coming as a sub from Alum Rock I am familiar with the OCR assessements that were given religiously every five days. A good assessor should not just rely on this one type of assessment. Chapter Seven gets us away from thinking of assessments at only "the one big test" that counts by itself. Included as other meaningful assessments there are informed checks for understanding, observations and dialogues, tests and quizzes, academic prompts, and performance tasks. As a teacher I need to recognize this and design assessments around real performance where students are given opportunities to show transer to different situations. Furthermore, we can use the six facets of understanding to provide more clarity of how to construct assessments for our students. We must always keep in mind what understanding looks like and use the six facets to help us in the design of assessments. I liked how this chapter went through each facet and provided examples in different subject areas what an assessment of that particular facet would look like. I liked the idea on page 169 for an ongoing assessment and what that would look like. The authors call it a "one minute essay" and here at the end of class I would ask the students to write down what is the big point they learned that day and what is the big unanswered question that they have or simply put what is it that they still don't understand. I can see myself implementing this kind of ongoing assessment with my first grade math students at Rocketship.