| OVERVIEW: |
Embedding Formative Assessment
There is now a large and growing evidence base that helping teachers develop their use of minute-to-minute and day-by-day assessment is one of, if not the most powerful ways to improve student learning. However, adopting formative assessment, or assessment for learning as it is sometimes called, involves far more than adding a few “quick fixes” to teachers’ classroom repertoires. It involves a fundamental shift in focus, from what the teacher is putting into the process to what the students are getting out of it. In this series of five 90-minute online workshops, participants will learn:
- Why formative assessment needs to be the priority for every school;
- What formative assessment is (and isn’t);
- Practical techniques for implementing formative assessment; and
- How to sustain the development of formative assessment with teacher learning communities.
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Session 1 – Formative Assessment: What it is and What it isn’t – When it Works and When it Doesn’t
A number of studies have shown that helping teachers develop their use of formative assessment can have a significant impact on the achievement of their students. However, these studies are today often cited in support of formative assessment practices that bear no relation to those that the research shows makes a difference. In this session, participants will learn to distinguish between different kinds of formative assessments (including benchmark, interim, and common formative assessments) and, more importantly, know when to use which to make the most difference to student learning. |
Session 2 – Eliciting Evidence – the Starting Point for Good Feedback
Questioning, and a range of related techniques for eliciting evidence about student achievement, is a staple in classrooms all over the world, but in most classrooms, the greater part of the “intellectual heavy lifting” is performed by the teacher, with students delegated to a supporting role, or even, in many cases, “absent without leave.” In this session, participants will learn about a range of classroom techniques to improve questioning, including how to create, and capitalize upon, more “teachable moments” and the defining characteristics of effective diagnostic questions. |
Session 3 – Providing Feedback that Moves Learning Forward
Feedback can have a huge impact on learning, but most of the feedback received by students in schools is, at best, useless, and can, in many situations, actually lower student achievement. In this session, participants will learn about different kinds of feedback, the eight possible kinds of responses that students can make, and why only two of them will actually improve learning. As well as learning about a number of ready-to-use classroom techniques for providing effective feedback, participants will also learn how effective day-to-day feedback practices can be integrated into a classroom grading system that can be used both formatively and summatively. |
Session 4 – Formative Assessment – The Learner’s role
Although the teacher has a key role in the creation of effective learning environments, ultimately, learning is optimized only when students come to “own” their own learning. This session provides participants with a number of practical techniques for teachers to increase learner involvement in the direction, pace and structure of their own learning, including ways of sharing learning intentions and success criteria, peer assessment and self-assessment. |
Session 5 – Supporting Professional Development with Teacher Learning Communities
Teacher professional development has been a national priority in most developed countries for well over twenty years, and yet the results have been modest at best. Although the reasons for the failure of teacher professional development to increase student achievement are complex, the most significant factor appears to be that they have mis-diagnosed the problem. Teacher quality is assumed to be a matter of knowledge, and sessions of professional development have been focused on giving teachers the knowledge they are assumed to lack. Such sessions have been largely unsuccessful in increasing student achievement because the “problem” is not lack of knowledge—it is how to change practice. In this session, participants will learn about five key elements of effective professional development (choice, flexibility, incrementalism, accountability, and support), and how these can be enacted with building-based teacher learning communities. |
| DYLAN WILIAM |
| Dylan Wiliam is one of the world’s leading authorities on the ways that assessment can be used to improve student learning and has authored or co-authored over 300 articles, books, and book chapters on education. After 7 years teaching English, mathematics and science in urban secondary schools in London, he joined Chelsea College, University of London, which later merged with King’s College London. During his time at King’s College London, he ran the mathematics teacher education programme, co-ordinated a large scale testing programme, served for five years as Dean of the School of Education and from 2001 to 2003, was Assistant Principal of the College. In 2003 he moved to the United States, to take up the post of Senior Research Director at the Educational Testing Service in Princeton, New Jersey, and in 2006 returned to the UK as Deputy Director of the Institute of Education, University of London. Since 2010 he has worked as an independent consultant, advising schools, districts, and regional and national governments on how education can be improved, but he retains his link with the University of London as Emeritus Professor of Educational Assessment. |
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DATES & TIMES:
8th, 15th, 22nd May & 5th, 12th June 2021
London 12:00 am | Hong Kong, Perth 6:30 am | Adelaide 8:00 am | Melbourne 8.30 am
Which corresponds to 7th, 14th, 21st May & 4th, 11th June PDT 3:30 pm | EDT 6:30 pm |
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INVESTMENT
USD 400 per participant
USD 350 per participant for a group of 4
USD 300 per participant for a group of 10 or more.
INCLUDES: Certificate of Participation for 10 Professional Development hours.
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