Talk+About+Assessment

**Talk About Assessment: High School Strategies and Tools (2010)**
by Damian Cooper

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**The 8 Big Ideas (pp 4-8)**

 * 1) Assessment serves different functions at different times: it can be used to find what students already know (diagnostic), it can be used to help improve learning (formative, AFL), it can be used to let students know what they have learned (summative, AOL).
 * 2) Assessment must be planned, purposeful, and accurate. It must align with curriculum, instruction, grading and reporting.
 * 3) Assessment must be balanced and flexible; it must include both oral and performance as well as written tasks ("write, do and say)
 * 4) Effective assessment informs or promotes learning.
 * 5) For assessment to be successful, it must inform USING WORDS, not just numerical scores or letter grades. The assessment must explain what has been done well, what has not been done well, and how the work can be improved.
 * 6) Assessment is collaborative: involving both the student and the teacher in the assessment process helps students to take ownership of their own learning.
 * 7) Criterion-referenced (absolute) standards, and not norm-referenced (relative) standards, are essential to effective assessment.
 * 8) Grading and reporting student achievement is a responsive process that requires teachers to exercise their professional judgement.

Backward Design Model
Cooper often cites Wiggins and McTighe's //Understanding By Design// which he considers a landmark resource. This diagram has been adapted from that original 1998 resource.