System of Assessments to Demonstrate Mastery
About This Strategy
In a Mastery-Based progression, we gradually move away from a system in which the teacher dictates the pace, and organize the curriculum in a linear fashion. Instead we give access to students right away to a Mastery Map with all the different standards/skills of a given curriculum or unit with the intent to give them opportunities to practice at their own pace the skills they need the most help with.
The natural continuation of this effort is to give students access to simple standard/skill-based assessments allowing them to test for mastery when they feel ready; an "A La Carte-At Your Own Pace" system of assessment so that students can prove themselves and their teachers that they have indeed become a master of a given competency.
This strategy will give you ideas and tools to create a system in which students can prove mastery of a skill when they are ready and in different ways. It is applicable at any grade level and to any content area.
Implementation Steps
- Use the Mastery Map and Standard-Based Peer Tutor strategy in the BetterLesson Lab to help create a map of the different standards/skills students should master in a given unit or year, and set up a student-centered system of support.
- For each given standard/skill create first two short assessments that students could take when they are are ready to prove they are masters at this. The number two is not arbitrary, it will allow you to have a back-up assessment they could use the 2nd time around if the first assessment score does not indicate mastery. A website like Problem-Attic or Mastery Connect (which are both explained in the tech tool section below) can make the creation of these mini-assessments much easier thanks to their expansive banks of questions.
- Consider next how students will access, take and get a score on these assessments when they are ready to take them:
- Would you like them to take them on paper copies? If so where will you store these different assessments in your room? Will you be the one scoring them or will students have access to an answer key?
- Would you like students to take the assessments digitally for immediate computer-based scoring? If so, how will they access the link to a standard-based assessment? (QR Code, link in a site like Google Classroom, etc). Tech tools like Mastery Connect or Formative (which are both further explained in the tech tools section below) can help you deliver these self-paced digital assessments.
- Would you prefer for them to take them quickly one-on-one with you at a station? If so check out the “Battling the Boss” strategy in the BetterLesson Lab and have an organized battery of questions at your disposal every day to quickly be able to assess their level of mastery on the spot.
- Finally consider what students will do once they get a score on these assessments:
- If the score indicates mastery, what will students do? Options can include:
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Updating the status of this standard on a public Mastery Map (See “Mastery Map and Standard-Based Peer Tutoring” strategy in the BetterLesson Lab )
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Updating the status of this standard on a private Mastery Tracker (consult the “Progress and Mastery Tracker” strategy in the BetterLesson Lab )
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Updating you in person by showing you the knowledge they learned
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If the score does not indicate mastery yet, what will students do? Options can include:
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Joining a small group intervention about this skill
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Meeting with the teacher for tutoring during class or after
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Re-taking the course/playlist aligned with this standard
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Meeting a standard-based peer tutor to analyze mistakes
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Having access to specific remediation resources
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- If the score indicates mastery, what will students do? Options can include:
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As you iterate on this system, consider the idea of giving students over time choice over how they can be assessed for mastery beyond the mini-quiz. Options can include:
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Battling with the Boss, a strategy located in the BetterLesson Lab that puts the teacher or other students gatekeepers in charge of organizing a quick "video game like battle" with students who think they are ready to show mastery.
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Create and teach (or record) a mini lesson that would demonstrate mastery of this skill.
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Creating a product that would demonstrate mastery of this skill.
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EL Modification
Traditional paper-based, written methods of assessment may limit ELs' ability to demonstrate their learning. In conjunction with traditional assessments, consider giving ELs the opportunity to demonstrate their learning through:
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Conferences
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Take-home reflections
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Oral presentations or re-tellings
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Learning logs
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Graphic organizers
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Cloze exercises
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Visual/image representation
Coach Tips
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Start small with two short multiple choice assessments per standard and try to keep up with the system first before adding elements of choice
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If you are providing opportunities to assess when ready, have students track their progress in a public and private tracker at the same time. It is the combination of these strategies that really creates momentum and help students feel in control of their learning progression. When this feeling comes, your students can reach a new level of motivation and engagement.
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Do not feel like you have to throw away traditional unit or benchmark assessments in such a system. They can and probably should co-exist as our students are expected to take longer assessments at the end of the year, with a combination of skills tested at the same time.
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One way to create synergy between a mastery-based progression and traditional assessments is to allow for the mastery based progression to support also re-mediation after a benchmark assessment. In other words, a student might have moved all his standards to mastery via short standard-based assessments, but a unit test shows that once assessed on all of them at the same time, the score is different. Help students reflect on this contradiction to identify what needs to happen differently moving forward. Some options are:
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Student needs additional practice on this particular standard despite having reached mastery at some point.
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Student needs to make better decisions when an assessment is not focused on one standard. If so, what methods could you teach them to support this decision making process
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Student needs regular practice with mixed skills assignment alongside the standard-based assignments.
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Tech Tools
Formative
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Formative allows students to take a digital assessment when they are ready and teachers to track progress and scores live! Assessment can be created based off their library or any of your own assessments. It includes a PDF transformation option so that you don’t have to type up questions and answers inside the tool.
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This tool makes creation of digital assessments easier. Students can take multiple standard-based assessments using links generated by Formative, and data is tracked inside the tool.
Mastery Connect
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Masteryconnect makes it possible to create standard-based digital trackers for your classes as well as standard-based assessments that can be easily scored digitally if taken on the site directly or scanned by a webcam or a phone/tablet camera. The scores are then automatically versed into the digital tracker
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Mastery-Based digital tracker makes the process of monitoring progress easier. Assessments can be easily delivered and scored, on paper or digitally.
Problem-attic
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Problem-attic is an expansive database of test questions taken directly from State assessments. You can create an assessment in seconds, as well as an answer key. You can also deliver the assessment digitally or print out a PDF version of it.
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In a mastery based progression, it is vital to be able to create quick multiple versions of standard based assessments. This tool can help streamline this process.
Quizizz:
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Quizizz is a free platform that allows you to assign self-paced and self-scored quizzes to students. You can easily add gifs to the questions, and students can complete a quizizz when they feel ready to prove mastery, even if the rest of the class is not.
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Quizizz supports this strategy by providing teachers an easy way to give students self-paced assessments, that they can elect to take when ready. It is also a bonus that the platform makes the idea of taking an assessment quite fun by its gamified aspect.
Pear Deck
- Pear Deck is an interactive presentation and lesson delivery tool. Students use their devices to follow along with the teacher's slideshow on a classroom screen. Throughout, teachers can pause at points where they've added interactive questions and collect real-time data about student understanding.
- Pear Deck supports this strategy by allowing teachers to check student understanding throughout class at key moments and respond to student-specific and whole-class mastery data in the moment.