Last week I facilitated a training for Michigan's FAME initiative. When discussing the Planning component of the formative assessment process, I mentioned that I use planbook.com and set up a tab where I can keep track of when and how I use the components of the process. The screenshot below shows my planbook open to my plans page, but with the Go to button selected. In the third row of icons, you can see the My Strategies option. This is an area that planbook allows teachers to customize, and this is where I created my formative assessment elements.
There are already some difference sets of Instructional Strategies built into this feature. Here you can see some of the Marzano strategies:
In this screenshot, you can see the area where you create your items. So far, I have included the 3 Modes of Assessment (conference, product, and observation.) I think that teachers are used to intentionally planning for conferring with students and for the products we assign, but I find that planning what I am going to be watching for in my students has really helped me to figure out what they need. I also include the main 6 Strategies of FAME. There are many different conceptualizations of the formative assessment process. In FAME we think of the strategies as the metacognitive ways we want students to think. And in FAME we call the actual "things" that we use to gather evidence "tools." I will continue to add to the tools over time, but the three listed below are ones I use frequently.
So, once you've set your items up in My Strategies, you select them by going to the Instructional Strategies tab and choosing My Strategies from the drop down.
Select the ones you want and they are added to that tab for that lesson. It's that easy!
On planbook, the teacher has the option to set up tabs in any way. So, I thought I'd do a quick share of my tabs. Because I am teaching two groups of reading intervention, my first tab lists the text for the day. The next tab is the Standards. Then I have Learning Targets. This tab was originally called My List and it is another area of planbook that the teacher can customize. I just added all of my Learning Targets to it and selecting them is as easy as pie! My next tab is the Essential Question for the lesson, followed by tabs for Materials and Assessment. In the assessment tab I give a bit more explanation of the assessment and how it will be used. The next tab is the Instructional Moves, where I explain the procedure for the lesson of the day. Next comes the Instructional Strategies. I will note, that you can choose your own strategies (like my formative assessment process ones) AND the other options as well. So if I used a Kagan structure in addition to the formative assessment components, I can list it all on this tab. The next tab is the Notes and Reflection tab. This is where I make any special notes about the lesson. I also add instructional decisions based on the student evidence in this section. So if I'm making groups the next day based on information from this lesson, I note it here. I think I have my lesson plans well set up to be in line with the dimension of assessment in the 5D Teacher Evaluation system! (The last tab is School List and it is not one that I use!)
So that's my planbook! Feel free to leave comments if you have any questions or suggestions!
