Book Summary: Instructional Coaching by Jim Knight

Instructional Coaching—A Partnership Approach to Improving Instruction, by Jim Knight (Corwin, 2007)

Chapter 1 Why Coaching?

This chapter discusses what instructional coaching is and presents some research about why coaching is a far more effective method for professional development than the traditional one-shot presentation.

Chapter 2 What Does Coaching Look Like?

Knight says that there really is no typical day for an IC, that each brings its own set of activities and challenges.  In this and other chapters he shares interviews he’s had with other ICs.  These coaches all agree that their biggest fear is that “teachers will not want to work with them” (p. 20).  But, they found that even teachers who were very reticent in large-group PD sessions were much different when approached for a one-on-one conversation.  Some advice for enrolling teachers is to:  (1) start by listening and respecting teachers with whom the coach is interacting, and (2) communicate that the coach is another teacher willing to help.

Coaches are encouraged to focus on high-leverage topics so as not to waste the time of teachers.  These topics are called the “Big Four”:

• Behavior:  Coaches can help teachers to create safe, productive classrooms.
• Content knowledge:  Coaches can help teachers access standards and plan how to translate those standards into lessons.
• Direct instruction:  Coaches can help teachers to be more effective instructors.
• Formative assessment:  Coaches can help teachers use formative assessment.

Coaches need to build emotional connections with their teacher partners.  The premise of the book is that coaching is a “partnership mindset.”  Knight explains several of the principles for this mindset:  equality, choice, voice, dialogue, reflection, praxis, reciprocity.  I understood all of these except for praxis (a brand new word for me).  Apparently it means “believing that learning is most meaningful when we reflect and recreate knowledge so that we can use it in our personal or professional lives” (p. 54).

Knight describes the major forms that the coaching partnership will take: 

• Collaboration
• Modeling
• Observing and providing feedback
• Support

Chapter 3 What is the Partnership Philosophy?

This chapter expands on those core principles of the partnership mindset.

Chapter 4 Partnership Communication—Creating Learning Conversations

Six aspects of effective communication:

• Understanding the communication process
• Employing authentic listening
• Understanding our audiences
• Recognizing stories
• Interpreting nonverbal communication and facial expressions
• Building relationships through emotional connection

The communication process:  Speaker > Message > Listener > Interference > Perceived Message > Feedback

Authentic listening:  Misconceptions, Attentiveness, Self-Awareness, Honesty and Authenticity, Empathy and Respect

Listening strategies:  Developing inner silence, Listening for what contradicts our assumptions, Clarifying, Communicating our understanding, Practicing every day, Practicing with terrible listeners

Understanding our audience—Focus questions:

• What are my collaborating teacher’s most pressing concerns?
• What does my collaborating teacher know about this topic?
• What are my collaborating teacher’s learning preferences?
• What are my collaborating teacher’s values?

Chapter 5 Getting Teachers on Board and Finding a Starting Point

The chapter begins with a review of some of theory around the concept of “change.”  That is, the stages people go through as they are working toward change.  Next, three components of coaching are presented:  (1) enroll, (2) identify, (3) explain.  Basically there are countless ways to enroll, or begin, a partnership with a teacher or teachers.  And, for step 2 (identifying an area that the partnership can explore), there are several questions given that can be used to decide if one of the Big Four or some other topic is most pressing.  Step 3 is where the IC explains the new, to-be-tested-out teaching practice. 

Chapter 6 Modeling, Observing, and Collaboratively Exploring Data

Tips are given for how coaches should approach modeling of a lesson/practice, as well as observing in a classroom and collaboratively looking at data.  I also found very helpful the suggestions given for what to do when teachers don’t want an IC in their classrooms.  Knight approaches this problem from the viewpoint that it’s a negotiation to encourage teachers to invite ICs into their classes.  And so, he brings in Fisher and Shipiro’s (2005) Five Core Concerns for Negotiation:

• Appreciation:  (1) Understand each other’s point of view, (2) Find merit in what each of us thinks, feels, does, (3) Communicate our understanding through words and actions.
• Affiliation:  Build it by (1) Arrange to meet in an informal setting, (2) Sit side by side, (3) Refer to the importance of their interests, (4) Emphasize the shared nature of the task you both face, (5) Avoid dominating the conversation.
• Autonomy:  The least effective way to utilize coaching is for the administration to tell a staff member he or she must work with a coach.
• Status:  The IC should be presented as a “second set of hands” so as not to undercut teachers’ expertise and status as classroom leaders.
• Fulfilling role:  The IC must not threaten teachers’ roles.  The teacher always is the leading mentor, supporter, and teacher in the classroom.

Chapter 7 Focusing on the Big Four:  Behavior, Content Knowledge, Direct Instruction, and Formative Assessment

I really appreciated the disclaimer at the beginning of this chapter that stated that if districts want their instructional coaches to be highly effective, then they need to provide them with extensive professional development in the Big Four areas.  In my own case, what real expertise do I have in these areas over and above any of my colleagues at BHS?  There are teachers at BHS who are far better at classroom management than me; I certainly don’t have the content expertise of any teacher who’s in a field other than mathematics; I am perhaps better read in instruction and assessment theory than most, but that doesn’t mean I have any more classroom experience with these things.  Instructional coaching partnerships will be a huge learning experience for me which will depend greatly on my colleagues’ patience during this learning process.  What I can bring to the partnerships is that opportunity for support and that person with whom to dialogue and reflect.  I can be a second set of hands and another pair of eyes in classrooms.  And, since I am responsible for pretty much anything data-related, I can work with teachers to examine classroom data and search out alternative instructional strategies that might lead to better results.  Jim Knight goes into some detail about the Big Four, but I’m not going to summarize it here because it has a lot of overlap with other resources we’re all familiar with:  the “notable nine” instructional strategies, classroom management strategies, formative assessment, and so on.

Chapter 8 How Coaches Can Spread Knowledge

Chapter 9 Coaches as Leaders of Change

Book Summary: Rethinking Homework

Rethinking Homework—Best Practices that Support Diverse Needs (Cathy Vatterott, ASCD 2009)

Chapter 1 The Cult(ure) of Homework

Vatterott is a professor of education and former middle school and high school teacher and middle school principal.  She begins by identifying homework as a long-standing tradition that began when school consisted mainly of reading, writing, and arithmetic.  Rote learning was the norm, and memorization and practice were easy for children to do at home.  But, homework has changed and now sometimes involves complex projects.  The problem is that learners are very diverse, yet most teachers continue to assign the same homework to all.  There have been research studies that give a positive effect size for homework (at least at the secondary level, see for example my book summary of Classroom Instruction That Works in which homework is one of the “notable nine”).  And there have been studies that don’t support homework.  So, who’s right?

Vatterott traces the history of American homework “policy” from the 19^th century to the modern day, explaining that it has gone back and forth from “there’s too much homework” to “there’s not enough homework.”  She refers to several books by various authors (Kralovic & Buell 2000, Kohn 2006, Bennett & Kalish 2006) that give an anti-homework stance.  Vatterott summarizes their arguments to conclude that the culture of homework is based on beliefs.

• Belief #1:  The role of the school is to extend learning beyond the classroom.
• Belief #2:  Intellectual activity is intrinsically more valuable than nonintellectual activity.
• Belief #3:  Homework teaches responsibility.
• Belief #4:  Lots of homework is a sign of a rigorous curriculum.
• Belief #5:  Good teachers give homework; good students do their homework.

Here are some more “beliefs” that influence our viewpoint on homework:

• Moralistic views:  Children are basically lazy and irresponsible.
• Puritan Work Ethic:  Hard work builds character.
• Behaviorism:  Homework completion can be controlled through rewards and punishments.

But, what if some of these beliefs are wrong?  Or, if not outright wrong, what if there’s more to the story with each of them?

     #1:  “Perhaps our role in extending learning beyond the classroom is to instill in students the value of learning and the joy of learning, and to expose them to the vastness of the universe—how much there is to learn.  Perhaps our role is to help students find something in life they feel passionate about and to help them find their purpose in society” (p. 10).

    #2:  “In reality, physical, emotional, and social activities are as necessary as intellectual activity in the development of healthy, well-rounded children” (p. 11).

    #3:  There is no research that supports that homework promotes responsibility, and really what people mean isn’t responsibility, but obedience.  In fact, homework doesn’t promote responsibility or time management because it has to be coerced by an adult.  To promote responsibility or time management we have to use tasks that give students responsibility.

    #4:  “More time does not necessarily equal more learning….  Rigor is challenge—but it is not necessarily the same challenge for each student” (pp. 12 – 13).

    #5:  This is a moral judgment based on faultily equating students who complete homework with being compliant and hardworking.  If a student lacks a supportive home environment to complete homework to the same standard as his peer, does that make him bad?

Chapter 2 Homework in the Context of the New Family

The context of school may have remained fairly stable over time, but families have changed greatly.  They are more economically and culturally diverse, family composition is more varied, and parenting styles and values may be “mismatched with the values of teachers and schools.”  With all of these changes it’s sort of ridiculous for schools (i.e., teachers and school leaders) to continue assigning homework in the same old way. 

Vatterott explores several ways in which parents (which in today’s family could mean grandparent, step parent, foster parent, sister, etc.) may hold different values than teachers:  not wanting to be a teacher’s “homework cop,” different beliefs about the place of academic work in life, balancing academics with family-chosen activities, the place of paid work.  And she explores the diversity of parent involvement in homework which often has a component of “haves” vs. “have-nots.” 

Vatterott has the following tough advice for teachers:

• Get real.  “Principals and teachers must accept that they are not totally in charge of a child’s free time and that they do not have the right to demand that parents be involved with and support homework” (p. 46).
• Resist the temptation to judge.  “Judging, blaming, and whining solves nothing.  Teachers must accept the limitations of parental involvement and find ways to work with the support they have” (p. 47).
• Revise expectations of parental support.  “Parents should not be expected to teach their child a new skill.  If the child has been given an assignment but has not yet acquired the skill, then the homework is inappropriate” (p. 48).
• Suggest (do not mandate) guidelines for the parent’s role in homework.  “Parents should be encouraged to be less involved with the child’s actual homework task and more involved in communicating with the teacher—writing notes when students don’t complete work, asking for adaptations, or documenting how much time the child spent on the task” (p. 48).
• Establish formal methods of parent-teacher communication.
• Set parents’ minds at ease about homework.  This refers to having a policy of no retribution against a student should a parent question a teacher about homework-related concerns, and a policy that no student can be failed because of incomplete homework.
• Endorse a set of inalienable homework rights.  (Quite frankly I’m still surprised that BHS has no homework policy when homework is such a ubiquitous and potentially harmful strategy if ineffectively used.)

Chapter 3 Homework Research and Common Sense

Vatterott examines several homework studies (some that are the same as those studied by Marzano and other meta-analysis researchers when they cite particular effect sizes).  She points out that the validity of the studies is problematic because of their design, and that any homework research should be weighed against common sense tenets.

• Tenet #1:  Quality Teaching Matters.  This includes organization and structure of the learning process, the teacher’s homework behavior, and the teacher’s attitude about homework.  That is, the effective of homework might greatly depend upon the general learning environment (is it orderly or chaotic, focused or distracting), how much and how often homework is given, if the homework is used to inform lessons, if nonpunitive feedback is given, and even a teacher’s comments or facial expressions in reaction to homework.
• Tenet #2:  Skills Require Practice.  Mastering a skill requires focused practice, but we must first make sure that students are practicing the skill correctly.  “We must give students adequate time to practice before we assume they have internalized the skill correctly” (p. 77).  We should use distributed practice instead of mass practice.
• Tenet #3:  Time on Task Matters.  But time spent on learning isn’t the same thing as time needed to learn.  If all students are assigned the same homework task, some will be disadvantaged.
• Tenet #4:  Task Is as Important as Time.  “Students make decisions about whether to attempt homework based on their assessment of the task.  Is the homework perceived to be interesting or boring, simple or tedious?” (p. 79).
• Tenet #5:  Learning Is Individual.  “Homework needs to be personalized to fit the specific needs of individual students” (p. 80).
• Tenet #6:  Children Differ in Readiness and Developmental Level.  Homework should be differentiated.
• Tenet #7:  Children Differ in Learning Style.  Teachers should provide choice and flexibility in homework tasks.
• Tenet #8:  Children Differ in Motivation, Persistence, and Organizational Skills.  Students who have a feeling of competence about learning are more likely to do homework.  This self-efficacy is strongly influenced by their past history of success or failure with homework tasks.  Students with self-concept are more likely to persist when faced with difficult tasks.  Those who have difficulty persisting might lack strategies or metacognitive skills. 
• Tenet #9:  Frustration Is Detrimental to Motivation and Desire to Learn.  Teachers should adapt homework assignments to provide opportunities for maximum success and minimum frustration.  Another idea is to make the assignment time-based:  the student is to work as much as she can in a given time, then stop. 
• Tenet #10:  Homework That Is Not Completed Doesn’t Help Learning. 

Chapter 4 Effective Homework Practices

The first half of the chapter discusses the “old paradigm” for homework which by now we know Vatterott claims doesn’t work.  For some students, it not only doesn’t work, but it’s outright damaging.  Goldberg (2007) discusses the “homework trap” in which late work or work not done leads to reduced points or zeros, which leads to lower grades, which leads to actions from parents and the school, which leads to counteractions by the students.  “The problem is cumulative and colors the experiences these children have with school, affecting their attitudes and performance in later years” (p. 92, citing Goldberg).  Stiggins (2007) reminds us that there is an “emotional dynamic” to assessment.  “Simply stated, the old paradigm short-circuits our long-term goals by allowing students to fail by not doing homework.  It creates practical and motivational obstacles that converge to form the perfect storm for student failure” (p. 94). 

The second half of the chapter deals with a “new paradigm.”  Its practices are:

• Designing quality homework tasks
• Differentiating homework tasks
• Moving from grading to checking
• Decriminalizing the grading of homework
• Using completion strategies
• Establishing homework support programs

Each practice is explained in quite a bit of detail.

Chapter 5 Homework Completion Strategies and Support Programs

This chapter deals with the last two practices of the new paradigm.  First, teachers will need to confront a fairly typical attitude that “all homework must be done.”  But, is that really true?  If we’re concerned with learning, shouldn’t our attitude be less about finishing work and more about demonstrating learning?  (p. 125)  Second, teachers need to change their question when they encounter students who don’t complete their homework.  It shouldn’t be “How can I make them do it?” but rather “Why aren’t they doing it?”  Possible reasons are:

• Academic—The task is too hard or too lengthy for the student’s working speed.
• Organizational—Getting it home, getting it done, getting it back
• Motivational—Overload, too much failure, frustration
• Situational—Unable to work at home, too many other activities, no materials available at home
• Personal—Depression, anxiety, family problems, other personal issues

Next, Vatterott gives several suggestions for how to improve the rate of homework completion:

• Limit homework to one assignment or one subject per night.
• Take time to discuss the homework assignment and give students a few minutes to begin in class.
• Avoid giving homework assignments at the end of the hour, when students are focused on leaving.
• Set a maximum amount of time that the student should work on each assignment.
• Provide peer tutors or study groups for some students.
• Assign students homework buddies.
• Give assignments further in advance of the due date.
• Provide homework packets or lists of weekly or monthly assignments.
• Establish intermittent due dates for parts of long-term projects.
• Allow some homework to lag two or three weeks behind the introduction of a concept to check for understanding.
• Make sure all students have the necessary materials at home to complete specific assignments.
• Use home-based strategies (e.g., parent or student feedback checklists, Home Study Plans, Taylor’s Homework Chain, Home Schedule Card) including providing a copy of the book to store at home or  giving parents specific guidelines on how to help.
• Be careful about using incentives.
• Force students to practice responsibility, not by using late policies and failing grades, but by requiring all homework to be completed.  The most effective support programs kick in when a student is missing just 2 or 3 assignments, not after they’re already far behind.  Also, effective programs aren’t punitive, for example they don’t cause students to miss their lunch with friends or to miss out on recess.  At BHS we’ve already accounted for this in the redesign plan with the creation of 7^th period, a 40-minute daily opportunity specifically to support students in completing the work assigned that day.  A related accommodation is for the school to develop a homework policy (e.g., each teacher would commit to not assigning more than 7 minutes of homework each day except in special and approved cases).  I say 7 minutes because if a student has six teachers during the day and each gave this amount of homework, then that would require 42 minutes of work time, already 2 minutes in excess of what 7^th period provides.  The challenge for teachers is to make the 7 minutes of homework/practice/study/reflection a worthwhile exercise for students.  And, since the 7^th period teacher’s effectiveness at being “homework cop” is probably not going to be any better than when parents try to be homework cop, classroom teachers will also have to pay attention to the other ideas mentioned in this book, to ensure that homework tasks are appropriate and engaging for students.

Remember, our overriding goal at BHS is to change our academic culture and this certainly includes moving to a culture where assigned tasks are completed, not avoided.  Each teacher needs to do his or her part to progress toward this goal including adapting homework policies and practices as needed.

All in all, this was a thought-provoking book and personally challenging for me since I’ve been a proponent of giving lots of homework in math class over the years.  But, I’ve found the arguments compelling, and I think BHS teachers should engage in some thoughtful reflection and dialogue about this issue.  We may find that there’s strong reason to change how we approach homework at our school.

Book Summary: Transformative Assessment

Transformative Assessment (W. James Popham, ASCD 2008)

We’ve been using formative assessments at BHS for a few years now.  Are we using them properly?  We’ve based our system of assessing students’ progress and tracking their progress toward learning goals on Marzano’s books.  But, he’s not the only researcher out there.  What do others have to share, and are their ideas helpful to us?  Popham is widely considered to be “the expert” when it comes to assessment.  It will be interesting to learn what he has to say on the matter, plus, he writes in a snappy casual style, which is refreshing.

In the preface Popham makes a bold statement that classroom assessment “can fundamentally transform the way a teacher teaches” (p. vii).  Already I’m feeling bad because even though I’ve supposedly used formative assessments for a few years now, I don’t think my instruction has been fundamentally changed.  Thus, I don’t think I’ve really been using “formative” assessments even if that’s what we’ve been calling these periodic tasks for which we’ve entered scores in Pinnacle gradebook. 

Popham identifies four “levels” of formative assessment:

•  Level 1:  Teachers use formative assessment to collect evidence by which they can adjust their current and future instructional activities.
• Level 2:  Students use formative assessment evidence to adjust their own learning tactics.
•  Level 3:  There is a complete shift in the culture of a classroom.  Classroom assessment isn’t used to compare students based on grades, but as a means to generate evidence from which teachers and students can adjust what they’re doing.
• Level 4:  There is schoolwide adoption of one or more levels of formative assessment.

Where are we at BHS?  No doubt some teachers are more successfully incorporating the various levels, but I think we’re well short of Level 4. 

Chapter 1 Why, What, and Whether

Popham explains the history of the term “formative assessment” and follows up with his definition:  “Formative assessment is a planned process in which teachers or students use assessment-based evidence to adjust what they’re currently doing” (p. 6).

At BHS our redesign plan gives a lot of attention to this.  The building-wide lesson plan form, along with the data team process, constitute a planned process to adjust instruction based on in-class checks for understanding (assessments).  Our whole approach to lesson planning is changed.  No longer are teachers to plan out a unit or week’s worth of material, submit it to the principal, and then rigidly stick to that plan.  Instead, lesson planning is to be responsive to the needs of the students in the classroom as identified using regular checks for understanding.  The lesson planning form is to be completed and submitted (e.g., each Monday), but it is to be continuously updated throughout the week.  Plus, differentiated strategies are to be applied to students at different performance levels with respect to the learning goal(s) being studied. 

At BHS the redesign plan also calls for greater emphasis on students modifying academic behaviors based on assessment evidence.  Under our Marzano-influenced efforts teachers were to encourage students to track their own progress and create action plans, but, we didn’t seem to have much success with that intervention.  In fact, many teachers quickly abandoned having students even track their scores, let alone using class time to be responsive to their performance results.  In 2012 – 2013 this needs to change.  Teachers are to plan for opportunities to support students in taking personal (and perhaps cooperative) responsibility for their own learning.

The third crucial piece to the definition is the expectation that the formative evidence will be used to adjust what is currently being done.  For some teachers this will also be a change.  The data isn’t to be used to plan how you’d teach a topic differently next year, it’s to formulate how you’ll teach it in the next 30 minutes, or maybe more realistically, tomorrow.  For this reason, teachers may have to use completely different assessment tasks.  Timely feedback and opportunity for data analysis is essential.  A formative assessment cannot be a large test or project that will take the teacher several days to “score.”  This isn’t to say that you can’t use those tasks, but that they aren’t most appropriate for formative assessment. 

Chapter 2 Learning Progressions

“Formative assessment is all about decision making.  Those decisions, made by both teachers and students, invariably revolve around the following two-part question:  ‘Is an adjustment needed, and, if so, what should that adjustment be?’” (p. 23).  Popham says that it’s pretty much impossible to adjust everything in response to data, and so there needs to be a framework around which decisions can be made.  This framework is a learning progression (yes, the same thing we’ve created when following Marzano to make rubrics for our learning goals).  A learning progression is a sequenced set of subskills and bodies of enabling knowledge that, it is believed, students must master en route to mastering a more remote curricular aim.  Popham cautions:

• A learning progression isn’t unerringly accurate.  It's just what a teacher thinks is a sequence of steps to complete understanding of a concept or skill.
• A particular learning progression isn’t suitable for all students. 
• A learning progression isn’t necessarily better if it’s more complex.
• A learning progression tells teachers what and when to assess. 

1.      What should be assessed?  Answer:  The subskills and enabling knowledge identified in the progression.
2.      When to assess?  Answer:  Before proceeding to the next building block in the progression.

Marzano said all these same things, but we seemed to get caught up in worrying about gathering four scores for a learning goal instead of worrying about gathering the right evidence at the right time.  I’ve described elsewhere (see the Livebinder) how our approach to recording scores will change when we switch to TIES gradebook.  Briefly, before starting a unit or mini-unit over a LG give a pretest (this score is entered into TIES, but given 0 weight).  Use the results from this pretest to formulate your lesson plan for the unit (e.g., maybe you’ll need one or two weeks to adequately teach the LG) including making a start at differentiated strategies.  Check for understanding along the way (for what and when, see Popham’s advice).  These scores can also be recorded in the gradebook to identify learning progress (but they still carry 0 weight).  Continuously adjust lesson plans and differentiated strategies based on these checks.  Once all, or a majority of, students do well enough on a check for understanding that you predict success on a post-test, give a post-test.  In TIES, record a score that represents your best judgment of a student’s current understanding for the LG (and weight this 100%).  Later in the course if the LG comes up again (or a student shows improvement or maybe even goes backward) just change this “final” score.

There’s a cool overlap of Popham’s discussion of how to use learning progressions and formative assessments with the data team protocol we’ll be using in 2012 – 2013.  Data teams only meet once per week so teachers may need to use the protocol on their own when planning in order to remain timely.  A step in the protocol is to examine student data in order to make inferences.  Popham  suggests that the inferences we’re after are:  (1) has the student already mastered the building block?, (2) has the student partially mastered it?, (3) has the student not mastered it at all?  And, if there’s lack of mastery, to try to figure out why.  From there, plan next steps.

Popham spends the rest of the chapter explaining a procedure to develop a learning progression.  It is quite similar to the procedure that we used when following Marzano.  I’ll just list the steps:

1. Thoroughly understand the target curricular aim.
2. Identify all requisite precursory subskills and bodies of enabling knowledge.
3. Determine whether students’ status with respect to each preliminarily identified building block can be measured.
4. Arrange all building blocks in an instructionally defensible sequence.

Chapter 3 Teachers’ Instructional Adjustments

Here are four steps in Level 1 formative assessment:

1. Identify Adjustment Occasions.  *Note:  this is not referring to those on-the-spot responses teachers make such as giving one-on-one help on a math question or asking a follow-up question to a student.  Instead, these represent the “most significant choice-points associated with students’ movement toward mastery of the target curricular aim” (p. 53).  This is about teachers looking forward into their lesson plans to identify occasions to gather evidence in order to adjust instruction.  Fortuitously the building-wide lesson plan form anticipated this recommendation and has a field for teachers to identify their planned assessment occasions.
2. Select assessments.  There are lots of choices:  traditional, letter cards, questioning during discussion, whiteboard responses, traffic-signal, item sampling
3. Establish adjustment triggers.  This refers to teachers deciding ahead of time what will trigger a decision to adjust instruction.  Almost all instructional adjustments boil down to either increase instruction or decrease instruction, so teachers need a trigger for both.
4. Make instructional adjustments.

Chapter 4 Students’ Learning Tactic Adjustments

“Level 2 formative assessment consists of student-determined adjustments to their learning tactics, not teacher-dictated adjustments that students are supposed to make” (p. 72).  Teachers must play a supportive role, not a decision-making one.  But, teachers cannot only be permissive of students taking personal responsibility, they need to be strongly encouraging.  Teachers will need to teach students what a “learning tactic” is and why it’s important that students become personally responsible for their own adjustments.  This requires initial orientation and ongoing support.  One type of support is clarifying curricular expectations:  (1) the nature of the immediately upcoming curricular aim, (2) the evaluative criteria to be employed in judging students’ mastery, (3) the chief building blocks involved in mastery.  In all this, use language that the students will understand, explain assessment procedures, and share extreme responses (i.e., really strong vs. really weak student or mock responses).

The same four steps that apply in Level 1 formative assessment work here too. 

1. The teacher tells students when the assessments are (i.e., when there will be adjustment occasions).
2. The teacher will most likely have to prepare/direct assessments (because most students don’t have the initiative or capacity to do if for themselves).  Some student choice can be brought into play if there are optional assessments or maybe peer assessment.
3. Students also need to establish adjustment triggers.  The teacher’s role here isn’t to tell a student what trigger to use, but to monitor periodically and make suggestions when the student’s learning tactics aren’t working.
4. The teacher probably will have to suggest alternative learning tactics.  But, the teacher doesn’t make any decisions for the student.

Popham uses the rest of the chapter to discuss Level 3 formative assessment.

Chapter 5 Schoolwide Implementation

Chapter 6 What It Can’t Do

Much of this chapter is a rather high-level explanation of why using formative assessments in the classroom doesn’t necessarily correlate with increased achievement on standardized tests.  Popham goes through many of the arguments that most of us are familiar with (test bias in relation to SES, instructionally insensitive instruments (they’re designed to rank students, not compare quality of instruction), aptitude-linked questions, too many curricular targets, dysfunctional reporting of results (e.g., at the strand level instead of focused curricular aims).  Anyway, so after a whole book touting formative assessment, we’re left with his conclusion that we probably won’t see increases on standardized tests due to the very way these tests are designed and revised over time.  I guess our hope then is that properly utilized formative assessments will lead to more effective instruction and greater student success in classrooms, which in turn will lead to more engaged and motivated students willing to persevere and give greater effort during the MME.