ATLAS Guided Professional Series for Educators, Part Seven: Students’ Use of Evidence

In earlier courses, you learned that formative assessment is an ongoing process—one in which teachers and students notice, recognize, and respond to evidence of learning during daily lessons, while learning is happening.

In this course, you will take a closer look at four of the Ten Dimensions of Formative Assessment practice that focus on how students use evidence of their own learning:

• extended thinking through discourse,
• descriptive teacher feedback,
• peer feedback, and
• self-assessment.

Learning Goals

• understand the daily formative assessment routines—academic discourse, peer feedback, and self-assessment—that help students use evidence of their own learning;
• explore what productive student discourse looks like;
• understand what makes feedback effective;
• explore how peer feedback and self-assessment build students’ metacognitive skills; and
• understand how to help students act on evidence during instruction.

Success Criteria

• identify strategies to help students engage in richer academic discourse in your classroom,
• plan lesson structures that give students meaningful opportunities for peer feedback,
• identify new instructional routines that increase the use of descriptive feedback during learning, and 
• plan a lesson that integrates one of the four instructional routines to help students use evidence to guide their learning.

ATLAS Guided Professional Series for Educators, Part Eight: Strengthening the Student Role in Learning Through Formative Assessment

In this course, you will explore what it means for students to take an active role in their own learning—a concept called learner agency. You will examine four building blocks that enable agency: learner autonomy, self-regulation, self-efficacy, and metacognition. You will also explore how formative assessment helps students develop these skills.

Learning Goals

• understand what learner agency means in the classroom,
• understand how assessment expands student agency in classroom assessment,
• see how daily formative assessment routines build students' self-regulation and metacognition, and 
• understand what characteristics of a classroom environment support students in taking on a stronger role as learners.

Success Criteria

• describe learner agency using the four building blocks, 
• understand how the roles of teachers and students change in a formative assessment classroom, and 
• apply strategies to create a stronger learning environment in your classroom.

ATLAS Guided Professional Series for Administrators, Part Two: Assessment and Data Leadership

This course helps school and district leaders think systemically about assessment and data, how they use them, and how to support better practices to improve student outcomes. You will look at your role in setting a vision for assessment, improving your assessment system, supporting teachers with professional learning, and sharing data in ways that make sense to people who need to use them.

Learning Goals 

You will

• understand how leaders build strong assessment and data practices that support a shared vision for learning, and
• know the key things leaders can do to make assessment and data use more effective.

Success Criteria

You will

• explain how your assessment and data use practices connect to your school or district’s vision for learning,
• identify next steps to understand and improve your assessment system, and
• identify next steps to build a stronger culture of using data to make decisions.

ATLAS Guided Professional Series for Administrators, Part Three: Using ATLAS to Support Learning

This course introduces leaders to the Arkansas Teaching, Learning, and Assessment System—ATLAS—to make better decisions about teaching and learning. You will learn what ATLAS assessments are designed to do, how to use the data they produce, and why assessment literacy matters for student success.

Learning Goals 

You will

• understand what ATLAS is, what standards it measures, and how to use the data appropriately;
• know what role you play as a leader in making sure ATLAS supports instruction and school improvement; and
• become familiar with the different reports available in ATLAS and how to use them locally. 

Success Criteria

You will

• identify how to use ATLAS data for local decisions,
• review your school or district’s assessment policies and practices to make sure they support effective use of ATLAS, and
• choose specific ATLAS reports to use for school improvement.

ATLAS Guided Professional Series for Administrators, Part Four: Introduction to Formative Assessment

This course is about formative assessment practice—what it is, why it matters, and how it can change the way teachers and their students work together in the classroom.

Learning Goals

You will

• understand formative assessment as a process of using evidence to support learning—for both teachers and students, and
• see how the roles of teacher and student shift when formative assessment becomes part of everyday classroom life.
  

Success Criteria

You can 

• explain what formative assessment practice is—and what it is not, and
• describe how teachers and students take on new roles in formative assessment classrooms.

ATLAS Guided Professional Series for Administrators, Part Five: The Leader’s Role in Enhancing Student Learning with Formative Assessment

This course is about learner agency—what it is, how it connects to formative assessment, and what you, as a leader, can do to help it grow in your school and district. By the end, you will understand what learner agency looks like in the classroom, how daily formative assessment builds it, and how to create a school environment where both teachers and students can thrive as learners.

Learning Goals

• understand what learner agency is and what it looks like in the classroom, 
• understand how assessment practices can give students more ownership over their learning,
• understand how formative assessment builds students’ ability to reflect on and regulate their own learning, 
• understand how formative assessment strengthens your school’s overall assessment system, and
• understand what leaders can do to support teachers and students in this work.

Success Criteria

• describe learner agency using the four building blocks,
• describe how the roles of teachers and students shift in a formative assessment classroom,
• articulate what leaders can do to support this work, and
• apply strategies to build a stronger learning culture in your school. 

ATLAS Guided Professional Series for Administrators, Part Six: Instructional Leadership to Support Formative Assessment

This course explores how you, as a leader, can support formative assessment and learner agency across your school.

Learning Goals

• explore core leadership practices that support strong formative assessment implementation, and
• understand why initiatives like formative assessment—which require real shifts in how teachers and students work—call for specific leadership knowledge and approaches. 

Success Criteria

• articulate the practices used by leaders who have implemented formative assessment successfully,
• identify one practice you want to explore further with your leadership team, and
• identify actionable next steps to support formative assessment learning. 

Literacy Design Collaborative: Developing Literacy with LDC in Arkansas Schools

The Literacy Design Collaborative (LDC) offers educators an instructional design system for infusing literacy instruction across content areas while also engaging students in rigorous exploration of subject content. Teachers in Gentry High School adopted the LDC Framework in attempt to improve their instructional practice and student achievement. This course features four high school teachers who implemented LDC in their classroom; each sharing the challenges and achievements with building and utilizing LDC modules with their students. 

This course was taped on location at Gentry High School in Gentry, Arkansas from May 18-22, 2014.

Dyslexia Intervention: The Science of Implementation

Barbara Wilson, author and co-founder of Wilson Language Training, has worked with individuals with dyslexia for many years and has learned a great deal about the implementation of successful dyslexia programs. In this course, Ms. Wilson shares what she has learned about implementation science as it pertains to dyslexia and school reform, including the conditions that lead to full and effective use of evidence-based dyslexia programs. Ms. Wilson also discusses Arkansas dyslexia law and the challenges administrators and teachers are likely to face as new dyslexia programs are implemented. 

This course was recorded at the 2016 Teaching and Learning Conference hosted by Guy Fenter Co-op at the Fort Smith Convention Center on October 6, 2016. It pertains to the implementation of Acts 1294 of 2013 and 1268 of 2015 and the importance of ensuring teachers receive adequate professional awareness training on the characteristics of dyslexia and the importance of providing evidence-based interventions.

Improv in the Classroom: Using Improvisation to Teach Skills and Boost Learning

"Games" are sometimes looked down upon by teachers who overlook the intrinsic value of play in the educational process. Katherine McKnight, Ph.D. shares several creative ways to get students moving and thinking in the classroom. She introduces a brief history of and justification for play in the classroom before calling on several groups of volunteers to help her energetically demonstrate improvisation activities and discuss their application across content areas.

This course was recorded at the Teaching and Learning Conference at the Fort Smith Convention Center on October 6, 2016.