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Portfolio Entry: Dear Reader Introduction Letter Sherri Dennstedt2/25/13

Dear Reader:

As a teacher leader in the classroom and as an instructional coach, my practices and beliefs aboutassessment and evaluating students have changed immensely in the last 10 years. Some of the drivingfactors for the change in my beliefs were two staff development experiences I had. The first one was

using the “Assessment for Learning” book (Stiggins, Arter, Chappuis, & Chappuis, 2007) whiledeveloping an online biology course for my school district. We also used “Understanding by Design”

(McTighe & Wiggins, 2004) to develop the course learning projections and sequences, as well asdetermining learning targets and assessments. The strategies I learned while developing the online courseinstantly transformed my classroom instruction. I began to plan units differently and aligned theassessments to learning targets. My beliefs about grading changed when I attended a gifted and talentedworkshop of differentiation and the affective characteristics and social needs of gifted students. Theinstructor presented an example of a grading report that included total points. The overall grade includedeverything from homework completion, extra credit, test scores, and performance tasks. In one example,the gifted student completed none of the homework, but received an A or a B on all tests and quizzes.The average grade at the end of the quarter for this student was a C. In the other example, a studentcompleted all of the classroom and homework assignments but received an F or a D on all tests andquizzes. They also received a C in the class. I immediately changed my grading practices in the classroomto weighted grades, and led others in my department to do the same.My current experiences with working with teachers in different school settings, and taking on the perspective of an administrator during this course, have created some new learning and beliefs that willtransform my practices and policies as a leader.In my portfolio, you will see evidence of a clearer understanding and distinction betweenformative and summative assessments and how to use them to effectively provide evidence of student

learning. For example, the reflections in my “I used to think” archive and the “Analyzing Your Own

Portfolio Entry: Dear Reader Introduction Letter Sherri Dennstedt2/25/13

Grading Practices”, include evidence of the growth I have made in not only

the distinction betweenformative and summative assessments, but how to use them in school-wide grading practices. There weresome discussions with other class mates about whether formative assessments should be graded. I believethat it is ultimately up to the teacher, but there must be a balanced approach. One way that formativeassessments could be graded is if a rubric is used, the scores can be converted to points or percentages.This is something I would do to grade student portfolios.

I have also included some examples of formative and summative assessments and a unit plan thatI used in my classroom last year (, or developed with my PLC team. After analyzing these assessments,there is evidence that they would need to be revised in order to reflect the criteria necessary for effectiveassessments. As a principal, I would spend a lot of time with PLC teams to fully train them in the use of data, unit development, to deconstruct standards to create student-friendly learning targets, how to alignassessments to learning targets, how to critique assessments for alignment, (see data analysis artifact andthe selected response and extended written response critique artifacts) and how to use student self-reflections and tracking sheets in a portfolio to document growth. I have included several examples of student reflections in my portfolio (Learning targets tracking sheet (one example and one template), and atest self-reflection and goal-setting sheet). In addition, teachers would encourage students to le

arn “Level2 formative assessment” strategies as shown by one of my artifacts.

Instructional coaches would also assist teachers by planning, observing, and debriefing usingstudent evidence to determine strategies that are being used effectively for assessment (formative andsummative), as well as how teachers are communicating, assessing and giving student feedback towardsthe learning targets. The PLC and school data teams would also triangulate data to determine areas of discrepancy to determine areas of strengths and needs. Using this data, the PLC team and school datateam can create SMART goals for the UIP plan (see SMART goal artifact), and for action research andsummative assessment data on student achievement.