Common Formative Assessments 2.0: How Teacher Teams Intentionally Align Standards, Instruction, and Assessment - Softcover

Ainsworth, Larry B.; Viegut, Donald J.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1483368823 ISBN 13: 9781483368825

Publisher: Corwin, 2014

Synopsis

Assessments that improve the speed and quality of learning―fully updated for teacher teams!

 

In this expanded, all-new edition, author Larry Ainsworth provides a system of intentionally aligned components (standards, instruction, assessments, and data analysis) that all work together to improve student learning. Readers will learn to:

• Build the "highway" to aligned assessments
• Decide the learning intentions and student success criteria for a unit of study
• Evaluate and revise assessment questions for quality
• Plan the learning progressions for students to attain the learning intentions
• Create quick progress checks to coincide with the learning progressions
• Use assessment results as feedback to adjust instruction and student learning strategies

Upgrade your CFAs using CFA 2.0! 

CFA 2.0 is so much more than assessment design. It shows teachers how they can intentionally align standards, instruction, assessment, and data analysis in every unit of study.

About this title

About the Author:

Larry Ainsworth is the author or coauthor of numerous published books, including: Common Formative Assessments 2.0 (2015), “Unwrapping” the Common Core (2014), Prioritizing the Common Core (2013), Rigorous Curriculum Design (2010), Common Formative Assessments (2006), “Unwrapping” the Standards (2003), Power Standards (2003), Five Easy Steps to a Balanced Math Program (2000 and 2006), Student Generated Rubrics (1998), and Getting Started with Rigorous Curriculum Design: How School Districts Are Successfully Redesigning Their Curricula for the Common Core (2013). His Corwin workshop, “Learning Intentions and Success Criteria” (2016), is a step-by-step process PreK-12 educators use to bring clarity to student learning targets.

Currently an independent education author and consultant, Larry served as the Executive Director of Professional Development at The Leadership and Learning Center in Englewood, Colorado, from 1999 to 2013.  He traveled nationally and internationally to assist school systems in implementing best practices related to standards, assessment, curriculum, and instruction across all grades and content areas. Throughout his career as a professional developer, Larry has delivered keynote addresses and breakout sessions across North America and in Latin America and regularly worked onsite in school systems to assist leaders and educators in understanding and implementing powerful standards-based practices, including prioritizing and “unwrapping” state standards and Common Core standards, developing common formative assessments, designing authentic performance tasks, and creating rigorous curricular units of study in all content areas, PreK through grade 12.

Drawing upon 24 years of experience as an upper elementary and middle school classroom teacher in demographically diverse schools, Larry brings a varied background and wide range of professional experiences to each of his presentations. His primary goal is to help all educators and leaders positively impact student learning using proven practices with standards, assessment, curriculum, and instruction.

Visit Larry’s website at www.larryainsworth.com to learn how “Timeless Practices Work Together” to improve student learning.  

Review:

"Formative assessment’s essence is its reliance on evidence-informed judgments about the need for instructional adjustments. Ainsworth relied on an analogous strategy in refining the recommendations he made in 2006 regarding common formative assessments. Based on nearly a decade’s worth of real-world evidence obtained by watching educators implement those earlier suggestions, Ainsworth has clearly refined his thinking about group-guided formative assessment. To most of us, a designation of 2.0 represents a "new and improved" version of whatever’s being described. Well, in every sense of its definitely deserved designation, this powerful book represents Common Formative Assessments 2.0."

 

Author: W. James Popham Published On: 2015-01-05

"One of the hardest tasks for teachers is to align pre- and post- classroom assessments to best measure the change or progress made between two occasions.  Such assessments need to have questions anchored on a common scale (i.e., whatever is measured on each occasion should be the same construct) and anchored on a common difficulty scale.  Larry Ainsworth spells out how classroom teachers can work together to create such tasks, which allows a major focus, as it should, on using progress to help monitor learning and adapt teaching.

The new material in this book is critical to its value:  Ainsworth introduces constructive alignment of learning objectives, standards, success criteria, classroom and larger-scale assessments, and emphasizes the quality of assessments leading to excellent diagnostic interpretations of data. He does not ask teachers to do all this alone but in a community of experts led by instructional leaders (the chapter on PLCs is worth buying the book in itself). He does all of this with the intention of maximizing our positive impact on student learning.

There have been many who have written about the power of success criteria, growth and progress, and assessment for teachers, but not how to do it. Ainsworth spells it out to perfection.  It seems so obvious―create the pre- and post- measures as part of the lesson planning, then make the links between pre- and post- and this is the learning progression.  So why do we not do this? Because it requires a major transformation in how we think about our role―no  longer just teach and then see how well the students listened to us by creating an assessment at the end focused on what we covered. Changing this thinking is the power of this book.

There are so many gems in this book. For example, Ainsworth is not talking about ‘tests’ but about ‘tasks,’ which opens up so many more possibilities. The sections on the qualities of measures are directed to classroom tasks, and the many varied examples based on the Common Core will make it so much more practicable for teachers using those standards to implement many of the major purposes of the nationally consistent curriculum."

Author: John Hattie Published On: 2015-02-20

About this edition

• Publisher: Corwin
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1483368823
• ISBN 13: 9781483368825
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304