"Thinking like an assessor".

I dare to support the authors’ arguments when they expresses that teachers are not used to thinking like assessors; they are “far more used to thinking like an activity designer or teacher” (P. 150). In other words, we usually and maybe unconsciously jump to Stage 3, i.e. design of lessons, activities, and assignments without first asking what performances and products we need to teach toward. While reading I actually realized how creative I am at the moment of design activities and assignments, but I have to admit that they do not always really assess big ideas. Let’s face it; it is hard to create true understandings and transferability. Wiggins and McTighe make teachers to reflect on three questions in order to aid in thinking like assessors:

“What kinds of evidence do we need to find hallmarks of our goals, including that of understanding? What specific characteristics in student responses, products, or performances should we examine to determine the extent to which the desired results were achieved? Does the proposed evidence enable us to infer a student’s knowledge, skill, or understanding?” (P. 150)

I like the analogy the authors use regarding seeing effective assessment as a scrapbook as opposed to a snapshot (P.152) and the use of authentic, real-world assessments that will help students transfer their understanding of material. Skills need to be practiced in order that students can perform in the authentic assessments.I have been reflecting a great deal over my own education and I have identified a few memorable assignments that I really felt demonstrated my understanding of the subject matter: those in which the situations that I had to solve where real, useful and challenging. I also found really interesting the use GRASPS (P. 157-158) in order to frame the assessment. It could be very useful at the moment of reflecting on, designing and applying any sort of activity and maybe also assessments.

The notion that we need to understand a student’s thought processes, not just check to see if the answer is correct may lead us to the real objective of assessment but what worries me it’s the issue that students use to think just about the mark especially when our educational system and schools seem to be in the same way.

Gaining Clarity in Our Goals.

“Backward design is goal directed”.

Reflecting on this statement, it seems to me that we have to focus our attention mainly on two aspects in teaching: planning and performing, from the basis of what we want to achieve as a goal. By this I’m referring to the importance of identifying the aim students are expected to reach and the tools we provide them to know how to do it and how to perform.
Not an easy task, if we realize that most of the syllabuses and teachers’ performances point to cover contents instead of highlighting the issue of setting clear means to aim that.
As teachers, we are under the pressure of responding to certain syllabus in terms of contents, but “to what extent does that syllabus give our students practice, coaching and feedback in how to apply the ideas?” (P. 59). How well are we dealing with the concept of teaching? Maybe answering these questions can give us some guidance about the way we are planning and performing our lessons and therefore the results we are gaining in all sense.

“Goals specify what students should know and be able to do”.

As we know, the main issue of the teaching - learning process is Understanding. To do so, clear aims must be set and as well as contents to cover in a certain time. But as teachers, we know that there is never enough time to accomplish this goal and “as a result, teachers are overwhelmed with aims”. But the author analyses this problem and suggests that the contents standards must be “unpacked” to identify the big ideas and core tasks contained within it. Again planning seems to be the key to the effectiveness of the process, thus key ideas, performance indicators and asks are mentioned by the author as essential points when planning and therefore performing. According to this, we must identify the big ideas (what to teach and what to learn) that connect topics and skills.


“We are obliged to make choices and frame priorities”.

As I mentioned before, we must identify Big ideas in order to achieve Understanding , and as time is a problem to cover all the author’s suggestions, we should clearly identify and classify the knowledge our students are expected to “be familiar with” in order “to perform and transfer more complex tasks” (P. 72) But, are we paying attention to such big ideas and key knowledge or are we just trying to cover the syllabuses? Are we prioritizing in our planning? Are we really concentrating on transferability?. Hard task, isn’t it?

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” - Soren Kierkegaard, Journals, 1843.