What sorts of technology tools are you using for the formative assessment? 

Was the problem of practice how teachers can use formative assessment for three dimensional learning? Or was it how to build a common language about formative assessment? In any event, what is the project doing to develop these formative assessments?

I am very interested in the idea of research practice partnerships, particularly, in school settings. How to cross boundaries between school leaders/ administrators who must deal with issues of accountability usually through summative assessments, teachers who must deal with teaching students at various levels where formative assessments would be most helpful, and researchers who have interests as well as a need to contribute to various research domains of study – including improving various school based practices is a difficult and key question. From your video I can see some of these tensions as you discuss teachers concerns. 

I understand some of this work in the beginning stages involves building a common language about formative assessment with the NGSS as a context. Could you give an example of this language that is helping to bridge these boundaries.

 I am also wondering how issues of diversity of students’ backgrounds are also being considered in this language about assessments.

Thanks for your question, Frank - we have done a lot of work to help teachers see formative assessment as something they already do everyday - that is, ask questions and attend to information about what students know and are able to do. From there we have worked to help identify compelling questions relevant to students’ lived experiences that can then be used as compelling phenomena that students want to explain, and which are the launching point for formative assessment activities. We have also done work to develop rubrics and checklists for formative assessment tasks that support students from diverse linguistic backgrounds.

Great video and very helpful explanation of how you approached this work. I really appreciate how you described the origin of the research and practice partnership, specifically that it came from the practice side of the partnership. 

Can you offer some insights for other researchers to establish the sorts of relationships or connections that might foster more research and practice partnerships? 

Thanks!

Nice story - thanks for sharing! I wonder if any of the collaboratively developed resources are already available for others to see? I'd be really interested to see some of the assessments (or the rubrics/ checklists for checking them).

Kind regards,
Susan

Thank you Susan - we are in the process of collecting all of our facilitation guides, checklists, and sample assessments for dissemination. You will be able to access them this summer at https://www.colorado.edu/cadre/.

How exciting! Thanks so much for listening to the teachers and engaging the leaders as a part of your challenging work.  I would love to learn more about the process teachers take to develop multidimensional tasks.

Hi Erin,

Not only do I find you work very interesting, but I also loved the narration and visual representations on the video.

Could you please give some examples of how the research team supports teachers in identifying next steps for instruction after enacting the assessments? Are you also working together on identifying next steps to further develop the assessments?

We are very interested in this because our teachers recently started using formative assessment surveys of students' understanding of the goals of discussions using scientific argumentation. We currently identify next steps during reflection discussion sessions in groups of teachers and professional learning leaders.

Thank you so much for sharing about this very interesting project!

Warmly,

Coralie

Nice video! Thanks so much for sharing about your partnership and how the project came about. There is so much to gain from collaborations between school districts and universities! What are some initial lessons learned from this project

What grade levels are you working with? Our project aligns to K-2 NGSS - however, we're running into the challenge of most NGSS aligned materials, assessments, etc. are developed for older students. Do you have insight as to why the focus is on older students (3rd grade and beyond)?

This is great work, Erin! It's a lovely model of research/practice partnership for those of us just embarking on the work.   I appreciate that you're building capacity for sustainability. Excellent representation of the work via this video! Thank you.