Formative Assessments with Shurley English

Formative Assessment plays an important role in education for both students and teachers.  It’s a powerful tool that can enhance learning and education when aligned with outcomes and instructional methods. 

Students clearly benefit from the feedback they receive on formal assessments.  It tells them how they are doing and helps them improve their performance on future assessments.   Research shows that immediate feedback increases student engagement and improves academic achievement.

Assessments also provide a benefit to the teacher.  The information derived from an assessment can help identify what the teacher taught well and what they need to work on. 

So what about Shurley English?  Does the curriculum provide Formative Assessments? YES!  Shurley English provides two ancillary items that contain formative assessments: The Shurley English Student Workbook & the Shurley English Test Book.   

A Shurley English Student Workbook contains three important learning tools: 

1. Classroom Practice pages are used to give students several opportunities to practice new concepts in each chapter.  They can also be used to give daily grades, and the number of points possible for each section is provided in the Teacher’s Key.   (*See suggested grading below.)

2. Chapter Checkups can be used as a review or as a formative assessment.

3. Student Writing Rubrics are used by students as a roadmap for their writing.  When their writing is graded, the Student Rubric will be used to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the paper and to help determine the points for a grade.

A Shurley English Test Book contains three important learning tools: 

1. Pretest information shows what the students know or do not know about grammar, mechanics usage, editing, and writing. (You can learn all about the value of the pretest here!)

2. Chapter Tests can be used as a review or as a formative assessment.

3. Posttest information shows what students have learned during the school year.  A comparison of pretest and posttest scores will show the gains students have made with Shurley English.  These scores can be used to compare first year scores with subsequent years to verify the tong-term success of the curriculum.

These tools are used in conjunction with the Student Textbook to increase students’ learning.  The teacher must follow the Student Objectives and Teacher Instructions closely as Classroom Practice pages are assigned. 

*Suggested Grading:  Most Classroom Practices, Chapter Checkups, and Chapter Tests are divided into three sections:  Grammar, Skills, and Editing, and the number of points possible for each section is provided in the Teacher’s Key.  Most Shurley English Writing activities are completed on a separate sheet of paper and a Writing Rubric is used to assist with scoring the paper.

·  You may total all the sections on the page to give one grade per page, or

·  You might consider giving separate grades for each section.  The advantage to giving separate grades for each section is that you can visually identify a student’s strength or weakness in each section at a glance.  

Authentic Assessments: How Shurley English integrates real assessments

So, what’s happening “testing-wise” in your school and in your classroom? Let’s continue the conversation about real or authentic assessments.  (If you missed part one, click here.) In my opinion, it is vital to add these authentic assessments to your “testing bag-o-tricks.” Just look at some of the benefits:

Authentic assessments…

*provide direct measures;

*capture the true nature of learning;

*focus on the process-integrating teaching, learning, and assessing; and,

*provide a myriad of ways for students to demonstrate their knowledge.

Did you know that Shurley English integrates authentic assessments throughout the curriculum?  Let's take a deeper look...

Shurley English provides the opportunity for students to learn grammar and the connection to writing at such great depth that, when the process is taught correctly, the evidence of this knowledge is seen in a child’s writing. We teach students how to really think about using the knowledge they’ve acquired…we teach them to know the content, think about the content, and process the content correctly. 

By demonstrating a Jingle, the teacher is showing the student how to learn a language arts definition and think about it, not just memorize it. 

The questions asked during the Question & Answer Flow are the set of criteria by which we measure a student’s understanding of specific grammar concepts.  So, that’s your rubric, and when your students correctly identify the parts of speech of each word in a sentence or classify a sentence type, using the Q & A Flow, you have an authentic assessment opportunity!

Even though the Classroom Practices/Chapter Check-ups are essentially paper assessments, they’re still authentic.  Students take the information learned and apply it to questions they’ve never seen.  This is teaching them how to think about using the knowledge they’ve learned.

Have you ever witnessed your students revising their Sentence Blueprints/Practice & Improved Sentences and discussing word choice with another student, or simply thinking through the process of finding a synonym/antonym to improve their word choice?  These actions will eventually become second nature to them.  This is a form of an authentic assessment…because it is observable.

Writing is the obvious authentic assessment in Shurley English!  Whether it’s an entry in a journal, a short constructed response answer, a presentation, or the final paper of a formal piece of writing, the teacher can observe a student’s depth of knowledge.  The teacher can see and hear where grammar, usage, capitalization, punctuation, and spelling have been used correctly or incorrectly.  In Shurley English, the Writing Evaluation Guide (WEG) and Teacher Rubric are key components to the process. The WEG teaches students how to start thinking about what they write and how to apply the skills they’ve learned to their writing.  The Teacher Rubric is used to measure the student’s work against specific criteria. 

I’m suggesting this…

If you imagine the process that the student experienced in learning specific information, understanding the information, and then actually applying the information in a meaningful and realistic scenario, it’s clear that IS an effective form of assessment.

So, don’t just leave your academic assessment up to the paper test, AND AVOID TEACHING to TEST! Be creative and assess your students’ knowledge with authenticity and purpose.

“Not everything that counts can be counted and not everything that can be counted, counts." -Albert Einstein

Authentic Assessments: Breaking the Paper Test Cycle

When you think of testing, do any of these statements come to mind?

“I want to see what my students have learned at the end of each chapter.”

“I want to make sure I’m teaching effective lessons.”

“My administrator says I have to have a certain number of scores in my grade book.”

“I’d like to see the strengths and weaknesses of each student so I can know how to differentiate my instruction.”

We’re all familiar with national standardized testing, the numerous true/false or multiple choice tests a teacher gives throughout a school year, along with the benefits these assessments can provide.  One school of thought says that assessments are a key component of learning because it helps students see how well they understand subject specific material.  Others say assessments can help motivate students.  Still, testing often feels like a necessary evil that all teachers must do to show evidence that students have learned the content teachers worked so hard to teach.

I’d like you to consider looking at the way you assess your students through a different lens.  What if your student assessments consisted of noting missed cues while a child reads from a real book; recognizing correct or incorrect grammar usage and punctuation in a student’s essay or hypothesis in Science; or the actual act of using measurement to build a raised garden bed as opposed to solely using typical paper, true/false, or multiple choice assessments?  Assessments do come in all forms!

If you’re differentiating your instruction for students in the classroom, then differentiating the way your students are assessed is a strategy for best practice.  To me, it makes sense why, in school, I thrived with hands-on and oral work, but struggled taking paper tests; I’m still a horrible paper test-taker, but ask me to “show” you how something applies to a real life scenario, and I’ll nail it all day long. That’s what a REAL Assessment or Authentic Assessment is all about!  You might have heard the terms, Performance Assessment, Alternative Assessment, or Direct Assessment-all common names for the Authentic Assessment.  These kinds of assessments ask students to demonstrate the knowledge and skills they’ve learned when applying them to real-world tasks— then measuring their performance against a set of pre-determined criteria in the form of a rubric.  REAL Assessments value the thought behind the work and the process, as much as the finished product.

So, before you start planning all of your paper tests, consider learning more about and creating a real, authentic assessment. Your students will welcome the opportunity to show their knowledge in a new way! 

“Not everything that counts can be counted and not everything that can be counted, counts." -Albert Einstein

-You have just read part one of a series on Authentic Assessments. Are you ready for part two? Click here.

What is the value of a pretest?

What is the value of giving the Shurley English Pretest if students are not familiar with the curriculum?  As a consultant, I’ve heard this question before, and I want to urge you to listen up!  Even though the pretest may appear extraordinarily difficult, you should never avoid it!  Let me explain. 

You may be new to the curriculum, but as the classroom teacher, you must always keep the main goal of Language Arts instruction in mind.  The goal, of course, is to give students the tools they need to become competent, confident communicators!  Simply stated, you want your students to be able to speak and write with fluency.  

One way to support this goal is to allow students to see their own progress for themselves. The Shurley English Pretest can be used to compare with the Posttest at the end of the year.  You do not need to formally grade the Pretest; all you have to do is file it away in a safe place and pull it out at the end of the year.  Then, students will see the value of the Pretest and the Posttest as they compare the two assessments. They (and their parents) will be amazed at what they have learned during their first year in Shurley English.

So, why give our Pretest? It is simply a benchmark which measures the beginning of the journey into making the grammar/writing connection. As your students grow in their skills, both you and they will be glad you took the time to mark where they began the trip.  That, my friend, is the value of our Pretest.