This year in my role as STEM Coach, I spend a good chunk of my time looking at and discussing assessments with my teachers. While I administered and wrote many assessments in my teaching career, I've been spending time researching more about creating assessments. I came across this article from Edutopia and wanted to share it because it had so many good ideas and reminders in it. I will be sharing it with my teachers in my next newsletter as well!

https://www.edutopia.org/article/how-teachers-improve-assessment-test-makeover

I have been reading a lot about assessments and assessing students to reduce anxiety for students. I came across this idea and I immediately fell in love with it. I also wished I would have seen this as a classroom teacher. What I love about it is that it gives students an opportunity to build their thinking capacity before testing and increase their thought process when working on questions. I know students can't do this before high-stakes testing, but I think using this will build students' confidence and expand their thinking.

Thoughts about this? What are some other strategies you have tried?

"'I'm gathering evidence of learning.'
That shift in language in how I approach the assessment process opened so many doors for how l assess students and what I pay attention to in order to determine
where a student's at in their learning." --Tyler Rabin, educator

I read this quote recently on Edutopia (I went back to try to find the article but unfortunately, I couldn't find it. My notes weren't thorough enough I suppose!) and it helped me figure out how to frame this for teachers. Students don't need to be afraid of assessments and changing how we speak about them could change their mindset. How do you frame assessments for your students? Any tips on how to change teachers' mindsets around assessments or students'?