I like your idea of student check lists to encourage time management skills.

I like how you stress that assessments need to be clearly tied to the standards.

How does formative assessment play a role in a PBL experience, and leads to the final assessment?
Project Based Learning lets the educator assess the students as the information is being learned so adjustments can be made in teaching or concepts can be re-taught. Giving constant feedback to the educator assures students are learning the correct concepts. I love the ladder analogy, if a rung is missing, the educator simply adjusts their lessons to secure the missing “rung” is in place.

What are important qualities for a PBL assessment to support standards and student engagement?

I think that the PBL assessment needs to support the standards because that is what we are required to teach. We should correlate the assessment with the standards. They should "match". Sometimes there is is "fluff" in the classroom and it is important to keep in mind that the standards are essential to the learning, therefore the assessment should be, too. Engaging the students in both the actual project and in the assessement, is important because they will learn MORE from the whole process and more importantly, they will RETAIN that knowledge and isn't that what learning is all about?

A formative assessment acts as a checkpoint for the teacher to see if students are moving in the right direction. It provides higher levels of success in the classroom as struggling students are identified early when intervention can help them become successful. Unlike traditional models of assessment (do the unit and take the test), there is still enough time to get kids “back on track” and help them master skills that they find challenging. It’s also provides a feedback loop for the teacher to see if students as a whole are making adequate progress. By having frequent checkpoints, teachers can identify misunderstandings and adjust their instruction early in the PBL unit (or break new skills/content into more manageable bites).

•What are important qualities for a PBL assessment to support standards and student engagement?

The beauty of PBL is that teaching the standards from more than one subject are are integrated into the projects. This can create difficulties in assessing learning for these objectives. Rubrics are important to assessment for PBL because they allow for multiple aspects of a project to be assessed under one assessment. When I created my rubrics, I looked back at my standards and made sure the expectations are covered by the rubrics. Always going back to the standards is required. In one of the videos I watched for this module, the teacher said he involves students in creating of rubrics. I think this is critical to student engagement because anything that is from within means more to us than what comes from an outside source. It's just like when I create rules with my students at the beginning of the year - I have in mind what the rules will be, and help guide the discussion, but the rules come from them. So even though I've created rubrics for my project, the actual ones I use will be worded by the students each year.

I think the difficulty stems from the fact that we are teachers and often did well in the traditional assessment system, so we trust it more than we should. That's my case, anyway! Number and letter grades are pretty and easy, and rubrics can be messy and unclear. It's no longer right vs. wrong answers - there is all sorts of grey matter! Bottom line, though, is it is worth it to put in the time and effort to assess this way.

In our school, we have created common assessments (a.k.a. pen and paper tests) for all of our major science and social studies glce's. These don't go away now that I plan to use PBL to teach many of these standards. I guess we'll definitely have the balance of traditional and project assessments!

I think one of the most important qualities to consider when creating your assessments in PBL is determine which standards are you really assessing and how does the outcome of that assessment direct the remainder of your project. I think we often become stressed with having to monitor student achievement through "standardized assessments" that we can become distracted to the use of simple formative assessments that really let you see what your students are learning. This gives us the chance to change course or readdress a concept that students need to learn. If we focus only on the summative assessments then it is much easier to lose students along the way without a chance to recover.

What a great perspective on it! I couldn't agree more! We ask our students to recheck themselves often enough, we need to do the same for ourselves.

Our school is also very data-driven, so using formative assessments definitely guides the progression of learning.

How does formative assessment play a role in a PBL experience, and leads to the final assessment?
The formative assessment I consider to be more of a reflection on how I am doing as a facilitator rather than how the students are doing. If they are not doing well, I need to change something. If students aren't "getting" something, I always step back and say "what am I doing wrong?" I don't think a summative assessment should be given until I'm sure I've done everything I can to make sure they do well on it. The only way to do that is to check with a formative assessment.

I agree that journaling throughout a project can be so valuable. You really get some insight that you may not get any other way.

Question: How does formative assessment play a role in a PBL experience, and leads to the final assessment?

Answer: Formative assessment within the PBL plan gives both teachers and students the chance to determine level of understanding as the project progresses. As stated in one of the videos, assessments should not simply be used to evaluate understanding at the end of a project but rather they should be used as a teaching tool throughout the project. If ongoing assessing and redirecting is done, students should feel very prepared for their final assessment.

Erin, I like how you gave ideas of reviewing and reteaching. It is interesting how some students mimic appropriate learning behaviors and yet when you talk to them one on one, you find they really do not understand what they are doing or that they are holding fast to those misconceptions.

What are important qualities for a PBL assessmant to support standards and student engagement?
In the reading they kept coming back to creating a balanced assessment. They need to know the content and also how to apply and use it.

I couldn't agree with you more Christine. There should be a balance between formative and summative assessments in the classroom. I too feel that students need more real world relevancy when they are learning, which would lead to more organized, authentic formative assessments. Rubrics that our students understand.

I really liked the video about a student/teacher generated rubric too. I thought that students who help create a rubric will have a vested interest and would be more inclined to remember the comments from their peers as well as their teacher. I think journaling is a great way for students to reflect on their learning as well as integrate their writing skills.

Question: How does formative assessment play a role in a PBL experience, and leads to the final assessment?

I feel that the ongoing formative assessments are great tools to help students and teachers monitor the learning that it taking place. I am constantly making adjustments to my teaching based on student learning and this is just a more planned assessment that might not always take place. I like the idea of actually planning the formative assessments throughout the entire project.

How does formative assessment play a role in a PBL experience, and leads to the final assessment?

Formative assessments are imperative in the PBL structured classroom. Since PBL focuses on learning along the way and not just a project "after" the learning, formative assessments allow the student as well as the teacher to reflect and evaluate during the learning process. If formative assessments are not in place, both student and teacher are not aware of the learning or lack of learning that may be occurring during the project, and adjustments to the process to heighten the learning cannot be addressed.

How does formative assessment play a role in a PBL experience, and leads to the final assessment?

Formative assessment provides the teacher with critical information about student understanding while the project is going on. This infomation helps the teacher make modifications to the project along the way to meet student needs. This is important so that students gain the knowledge of the standards while completing the project. By checking for understanding along the way the teacher ensures that most students will be successful with final assessment.

I agree completely with your answer. Formative assessment must happen so that teachers know where their students have misunderstandings and where the students are "getting it".

Yes, yes, yes. I'm going to ask you what I asked another colleague. What strategies do you use that others might benefit from?

What are important qualities for a PBL assessment to support standards and student engagement?

It was interesting to learn that in latin assess means to sit down beside. As an elementary school teacher I know that kindergartner and first grade teachers do a lot of their assessing one on one with students, sitting next to them. But it seems like the older the student's get and the more demanding the curriculum gets the harder it becomes to assess students by sitting beside them. Assessment in education has become mainly based around paper pencil test and standard tests. I think PBL uses assessments throughout the project to observe and listen to students to see what they are learning through checklists or rubrics. Students are motivated and engaged rather then stressed out about studying for a paper pencil test. I like the idea of assessing students throughout the project on each standard.

What are important qualities for a PBL assessment to support standards and student engagement?

My assessments usually show what areas I need to improve my delivery of. I might need to take more time on certain parts or come up with a completely new lesson. The nice thing about PBL is that your students are working on projects that cover standards over multiple subjects and much of their learning can come from each other. The variety in a PBL project will hopefully take care of the engagement.

How does formative assessment play a role in a PBL experience, and leads to the final assessment?
Formative assessment is an important aspect of the PBL experience. It provides the teachers and the students the opportunity to continuously assess and reflect upon what is being taught and learned. It gives the teachers the ability to progress monitor as they are teaching and to further expand on or teach a concept in a different way depending on the needs of the individual students. Formative assessment enables teachers to be cognizant of what their students are learning throughout the entire process.

How does formative assessment play a role in a PBL experience, and leads to the final assessment?

I love the statement that formative assessment is like the "cook tasting the stew." Formative assessment is a way of providing feedback as the project progresses. This could be in the form of students keeping reflection journals through the process. This feedback can be for the teacher and the students to reflect along the way. Summative Assessment is also necessary but it is like, "the patron tasting the stew" and often comes too late to change the product. In the real world our work needs to be edited and improved on before it is accepted. We should be preparing our students for the real world experience.

I also like this analogy. It is a lot like the cook tasting the stew (formative assessment) and the patron tasting the stew (summative assessment).

Post your PBL assessment, and explain how it meets the needs of your driving question and learning outcomes?

Our (this is a collaborative project) PBL assessment will be the student's creation of a modern day myth. There are either 2 or 3 rubrics that will be used on the final product, as the writing teacher will be grading on writing elements (Writing GLCEs: W.GN.07.01, W.GN.07.02, W.GN.07.03), and the ELA teacher will be grading on the incorporation of myth elements, Greek tradition & characters (R.NT.07.02, R.CM.07.03, R.CM.07.04).