Overview:
Over the last twenty years the role of assessment in schools has changed dramatically from simply having an accounting function to becoming an essential part of the teaching / learning process. Assessment has changed from just assessment of learning to assessment for learning. The four experts presenting at this conference have been leaders in this change and will share their knowledge and their prescriptions for further development of assessment as a critical aspect of teacher’s every day work.
Day 1
Keynote by Dylan Wiliam
Principled Assessment Design
Assessment is a good servant but a bad master; a school’s assessment system should therefore be designed to assess the school’s curriculum rather than having to design the curriculum to fit the school’s assessment system. Since each school’s curriculum will be designed to meet local needs there cannot be a one-size fits all assessment system. There are however a number of principles that should govern the design of any assessment system. In this session, participants will learn how to use a principled approach to the design of a whole-school assessment system, ensuring that the assessment serves to improve learning as well as measure it.
Break
Panel Discussion with Dylan Wiliam, Rick Stiggins, Jan Chappuis and Ken Oconnor
Lunch
Breakout For 3 hours
Dylan Wiliam
Assessment Literacy
Assessment literacy — an understanding of both the meanings and the consequences of educational assessments — is an essential component of teacher expertise but there is little agreement about the term’s meaning. In this session, participants will learn about what makes some assessments better than others, why student progress measures are almost entirely useless, why most tests will never produce useful diagnostic information on students, and why most school assessment systems do not do the things they are intended to do.
Ken O'Connor
How to Grade for Learning using Fixes for Broken Grades
Grades can provide important information for students, parents, teachers, and others but to be useful grades must be meaningful, accurate, consistent, and supportive of learning. Sometimes grades are "broken" and do not meet these standards. The session will begin with introductory ideas and activities to activate thinking about grading. The main section of the workshop will be the presentation and discussion of fifteen fixes for grading, fixes that will make grades accurate, meaningful, consistent and supportive of learning. Each fix will be introduced and then there will be opportunity for questions and discussion about each fix.
Jan Chappuis
1. Seven Strategies of Assessment for Learning: An Overview
Research reviews over the last decade have heightened awareness of formative assessment’s power to increase student achievement, but not all that is labeled “formative assessment” is equally effective. In this session, we will review the Seven Strategies of Assessment for Learning, which organize research-based recommendations about formative classroom assessment practices into an instructional framework that can improve student achievement.
4.00 - 5.30 Wine and Cheese
Day 2
Key Note Rick Stiggins
Keys to Development of a Balanced Assessment System
Rick will identify and describe the five essential foundations of a balanced, instructionally-helpful local assessment system: articulating clear purposes, specifying clear and appropriate learning targets, development and implementing quality assessments, communicating assessment results effectively and linking the assessment process productively to student motivation. He will show how these parts fit together to result in a system that meets everyone's information / instructional decision making needs. In addition, he will prepare conferees to return home and conduct a step-by-step organizational self evaluation of the extent to which you have these conditions in place now. Rick will suggest for how to begin to put them in place if they are missing.
Dylan Willam
Rick Stiggins
Jan Chappuis
Ken O'connor
Lunch
Breakout
Rick Stiggins
How to turn high-quality classroom assessments into teaching and learning tools
Rick will show participants how to make sure each and every assessment yields dependable evidence of student learning. This will include how to select a proper assessment method, frame a proper sample of student work, create high-quality exercises and scoring schemes, and how to avoid common sources of bias that can distort results. In addition, he will discuss how to turn the process of test development and use into a teaching and learning experience that can be of immense value to learners.
Jan Chappuis
2. Offering Effective Feedback

Research on the impact of formative assessment practices shows that the provision of feedback is one of the keys to improved achievement, yet many studies also reveal negative effects of feedback on learning. In this session, we’ll examine the characteristics of feedback that maximize the chance that students (and adults) will act on it and gain from it. We’ll also look at ways to offer effective feedback so that it takes less teacher time.
Ken O’Connor
Effective Reporting of Student Achievement
"Nothing really changes until the grade book and the report card changes."
Curriculum, instruction, and assessment have increasingly become standards-based but parallel changes in grading and reporting have been slow, especially in middle and high schools. This session will focus on guidelines for non-traditional reporting. Issues that will be addressed include purpose, content standards, performance standards, learning skills / work habits, and student and parent involvement. Examples of non-traditional reporting will be shared and participants will have opportunities to discuss the principles and practicality of moving away from traditional reporting.
Pre Conference on the 8th September with Jan Chappuis
8th September 2017, Luxemburg
 

Click here for more details: https://chaptersinternational.com/mailer/8th_september_2017_luxemburg.html
Investments:
 

USD 790/- Closing Date 15th August, 2017.
 

Extended Early Bird Offer
Register 6 participants and get one free. Valid til 1st June 2017.

Presenters Profile.
Dylan Wiliam
Dylan Wiliam is one of the world's leading authorities on the ways that assessment can be used to improve student learning and has authored or co-authored over 300 articles, books, and book chapters on education. After 7 years teaching English, mathematics and science in urban secondary schools in London, he joined Chelsea College, University of London, which later merged with King's College London. During his time at King's College London, he ran the mathematics teacher education programme, co-ordinated a large scale testing programme, served for five years as Dean of the School of Education and from 2001 to 2003, was Assistant Principal of the College. In 2003 he moved to the United States, to take up the post of Senior Research Director at the Educational Testing Service in Princeton, New Jersey, and in 2006 returned to the UK as Deputy Director of the Institute of Education, University of London. Since 2010 he has worked as an independent consultant, advising schools, districts, and regional and national governments on how education can be improved, but he retains his link with the University of London as Emeritus Professor of Educational Assessment.
Rick Stiggins
RickStiggins founded the Assessment Training Institute (ATI) in 1992 to provide much-needed professional development in assessment for teachers and school leaders. ATI can help assessment users at all levels learn how to (a) create high-quality assessments, and (b) use them in the service of student success. The most unique feature of the ATI philosophy remains our advocacy of and professional development in “assessment for learning”; that is, the use of student-involved classroom assessment, record keeping and communication to promote success for all students.

The ATI programs, materials and services in classroom assessment for student learning are specifically designed to draw teachers and administrators into local learning teams to master principles of balanced assessment and assessment for learning. Rick is the author of numerous books, articles and papers on assessment practices in the classroom and its impact on students and student success.
Ken O’Connor
Ken O’Connor is an independent consultant on grading and reporting. A graduate of the University of Melbourne (B.A. Hon) and the University of Toronto (M. Ed), he has been a staff development presenter in 47 states in the USA, 9 provinces and one territory in Canada, and in 22 countries outside North America.

His 23 year teaching career included experience as a geography teacher and department head at 6 schools in Toronto and Melbourne (Grades 7-12) starting in 1967. Ken was a Curriculum Coordinator responsible for Student Assessment and Evaluation and Geography for the Scarborough Board of Education (and then the Toronto District School Board) from March 1990 to June 1999.

He is the author of The School Leaders Guide to Grading, Solution Tree, 2013, A Repair Kit for Grading: 15 Fixes for Broken Grades. Second Edition, Pearson, 2011, How to Grade for Learning: K-12. Third Edition. Corwin, 2009, and Fifteen Fixes for Broken Grades: A Repair Kit, Pearson, Toronto, 2012.
Jan Chappuis
Educator and author Jan Chappuis has been an elementary and secondary teacher as well as a curriculum developer in English / language arts, mathematics, social studies, and world languages. For the past twenty-five years, she has written books and developed workshops focused on classroom assessment literacy. A respected expert and thought leader in the area of formative assessment, Jan has presented both nationally and internationally and is best known for her work in translating research into practical classroom applications.

Jan is author of Seven Strategies of Assessment for Learning (2015) and co-author of An Introduction to Student-Involved Assessment FOR Learning, 7th ed. (2017); Classroom Assessment for Student Learning: Doing It Right—Using It Well (2012); Creating and Recognizing Quality Rubrics (2006); and Understanding School Assessment—A Parent and Community Guide to Helping Students Learn (2002). Having worked with Rick Stiggins at the Assessment Training Institute in Portland, Oregon for more than a decade, Jan is currently a writer and independent consultant specializing in classroom assessment practices that support learning.
Timings:
  8:30 am - 4:00 pm
Registration at 8.30 am on the 9th September 2017.
Contact:
  Shonal Agarwal
CEO
Email: shonal@chaptersinternational.com
chaptersinternational@gmail.com

Website: www.chaptersinternational.com