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Managing Alternative Assessment
Teacher Activity:
Reflecting on Learning Goals
1. Develop four or five
significant goals of learning to
be met by your students at the end
of a selected unit or course.
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
2. Examine the course
of study, syllabus, or curriculum
guide for the selected unit or course.
Practice "selective abandonment"
by eliminating those elements that
do not relate to the significant
goals you developed. Identify the
elements that contribute to those
goals. List below the elements to
be eliminated and kept.
Class Name or Content:
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What can you
eliminate?
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What should
you keep?
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3. Reflect on how you
feel about abandoning those instructional
elements. In what ways would their
elimination help you do a better
job with the elements you have left?
Compare your list with that of a
colleague who teaches the same material
to see if you both agree on what
should stay and what should go.
Discuss your decisions. Your advisory
committee could also be used to
help you abandon particular units
or lessons.
You can incorporate the strengths
listed in the above Teacher Activity
by using authentic assessment tasks.
Such tasks are designed to do the
following or have the following
characteristics:
- Ask students to perform, create,
produce or do something.
- Require use of intellectual
and social skills, including
practical problem solving and
critical thinking.
- Encourage student self-appraisal.
- Require integration of skills
and knowledge.
- Elicit real-world applications.
- Provide criteria for success
up front.
- Yield student work samples
that require process analysis
as well as judgment about the
products of learning.
- Provide immediate and specific
feedback.
- Engage students in problems
and questions of importance
and substance in which students
must use knowledge and construct
meaning effectively and creatively.
- Simulate the challenges facing
workers in a field of study
or real-life tests of community
and personal life.
- Are nonroutine and multifaceted.
Recall is insufficient; authentic
tasks require a repertoire
of knowledge and good judgment
in clarifying and solving problems.
- Focus on the students' ability
to produce a quality product
and/or performance.
- Involve interactions between
the assessor and the student.
- Emphasize the consistency of
student work, the assessment
of habits.
This resource last updated: May 14, 2002
Database Information:
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Source: From a 1998 Fall Forum workshop given by Excelsior High School
Publisher: Other
School Level: All
Focus Area: Classroom Practice
STRAND: Classroom Practice: assessment
Assessment: Planning Backwards
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