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. 

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 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 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 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 One: Coherent and Effective Local Assessment Systems

The purpose of this course is to build an understanding of local assessment systems and the key characteristics that make them coherent and effective. As a leader, you shape the conditions that enable effective assessment practice through policy decisions, resource allocation, professional learning priorities, and the messages you communicate about assessment's purpose. You will review the purpose and appropriate use of various assessment tools and practices, including those available through the ATLAS system, explore how assessment and data literacy play a critical role in supporting student learning, and develop your own knowledge for assessment and data leadership.

Learning Goals

• develop an understanding of the purpose and appropriate use of different assessment tools and practices in a coherent and effective local assessment system, including assessments from the ATLAS system;
• explore the characteristics of an assessment system that is coherent and effective; and 
• gain an understanding of how assessment and data literacy leadership enable a coherent and effective assessment system that improves student learning outcomes.

Success Criteria

Understanding the IEP Process

This course provides learners with an overview of the individualized education program (IEP) process and the collaborative responsibilities involved in developing an effective IEP for students with disabilities. Learners will explore how IDEA, FAPE, LRE, and specially designed instruction guide the development, implementation, and revision of IEPs that support meaningful student progress.

The course also examines the roles of required IEP team members, the importance of meaningful parent participation, and the use of current data to develop the PLAAFP, special factors, measurable annual goals, services, assessment decisions, transition planning, and post-meeting implementation. By the end of the course, learners will understand how each part of the IEP process works together to support access to the general education curriculum, individualized progress, and preparation for further education, employment, and independent living.

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 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 Six: Eliciting and Using Evidence During Learning

In this course, you learned that formative assessment is an ongoing process—one in which both teachers and students collect and use evidence to keep learning moving forward, minute by minute and day by day. You learned about the Ten Dimensions of Formative Assessment Practice.

In this course, you will take a closer look at the first five dimensions:

• learning goals,
• success criteria,
• tasks and activities that elicit evidence of student learning,
• using questions to elicit evidence, and
• using evidence in the moment to decide what to do next in instruction.

Learning Goals

• understand how to intentionally gather evidence of learning during lessons, 
• understand how to use everyday classroom routines to collect evidence during instruction, and
• explore ways to act on evidence in real time during a lesson.

Success Criteria

• plan ways to elicit evidence that gives every student a chance to show where they are in their learning, and
• describe how to bring new instructional routines into your lessons so you can interpret and respond to evidence of students learning while it is happening.