Alternative assessment: (innovative assessment) non-standardized measurement, evaluation, testing.

Anecdotal records: short accounts of observed incidents.

Assessment: the collection of material and information, and the measurement of products or behavior via assessment tools and other revealing means. These form the basis for judging, or evaluation.

Authentic assessment: refers to ways of evaluating activities that are essential, genuine and meaningful in themselves. It supports rather than fight good teaching practices; involves the student, encourages development of alternative solutions - there is no one right answer. Often involves active, collaborative participation. See performance assessment.

Benchmark: a performance sample that serves as a standard against which other samples may be judged. Often used by a district or a state at 3 or 4 grade levels. Maine's statewide assessments have used benchmarks for writing at grades 4, 8, 11.

Checklist: an observational assessment form which lists traits or behavior or other tracking requirements of student work or progress.

Collaboration: students working together on assigned projects, or teachers and librarians working together as an educational team.

Conferencing: the process of communication between instructors and their students or between students concerning research projects. See Conferencing Chapter

Cover letter: a document of self-assessment or justification of choices made in response to an assessment tool. Often used as one component of a portfolio.

Criteria - criterion: the elements by which a pre-set value, a standard, is to be gauged. A means of judging based on specific objectives.

Curriculum: an operational plan for instruction that includes what students need to know, how they are to achieve these goals, and the context in which learning and teaching is to occur.

Demonstration: indicates mastery of content as well as exploratory procedures. Often included in an exhibition or 'conference'.

Dyadic learning: paired partner approach to promoting problem solving. Based on research results of quicker and more thorough understanding of material.

Evaluation: analysis of the data accumulated by assessment tools, resulting in diagnoses toward improving learning outcomes. (What does the student know - not know, what can the student do - not do, and what do we need to do now?) Evaluation is preferably done on a continual basis, putting each student on a continuum. That sets up a spiral of identifying need, selecting and providing learning experiences, collecting information about that learning, setting up amended objectives, and so on. See assessment.

Exhibition: (fair, conference) performance-based outcomes. A number of students or groups prepare exhibits demonstrating the results of their research. They remain with their product during the exhibition, open to other students, parents, public, or all. They are answerable to all inquiries regarding their work. There may also be a formal presentation period: when formal presentations constitute the major purpose, it is usually called a 'conference'.

Exit outcomes: what students should know and be able to do after completing a unit, a program, a grade, or a school.

Extrinsic rewards: concrete rewards, often not related to self or area of effort - money, stickers, candy, extra recess. Behavior results from desire to obtain favors . Rewards set by others.

Fishbowl format: A circular audience observing a central group of role-players or discussants. Often assessed with a scored discussion tool. See Observation Chapter.

Framework: a practical guide to standards-based curriculum development, including generalizations and concepts derived from the standards. May include a sequence.

Growth: checking present against past performance in relation to personal expectations of an individual student - what change has occurred?

Information literacy: the internalization of the research process to the point of successful, flexible application. The ability to refine data to information and use it to solve needs. Such application, combining judgment, decision-making, and common sense can be used functionally, aesthetically, academically, or scientifically.

Interview/oral: verbal assessment often works better with younger students than written questions. Audio/video recording of such assessment helpful with feedback. Writing skills or plagiarism may mask or cloud levels of understanding. The spontaneous reference interview can be an informal assessment of inquiry sophistication.

Intrinsic rewards: abstract rewards such as self-satisfaction, honest praise, sense of achievement and growth. Behavior results from positive attitude toward learning, subject content, and self. Highest level of intrinsic reward is self-designed personal goal that is achieved.

Jig-saw: a form of collaboration. One example: four groups become expert in a particular area. They divide and regroup into teams to share their new expertise.

Journal: (also log, daily log, learning log, notebook, daybook, diary, progress sheet) From accurate records of daily accomplishments to reflective comments on the research process, including associative thinking and strategic decisions and plans. Affords monitoring without real-time requirement, an insight into student habits and thought-processes, and an opportunity for written dialogue between educator and student. Double-entry Journal: Text or facts or notes or observations on left side, reactions and conclusions and insights and predictions and plans on the right side. Double-entry often used in hypercard, with text of a poem or a quote on left side, and a developing multiple learners/educators dialogue in a scrolling text on right side. Triple-entry Journal: factual material on left, reflections, questions, brainstorming in middle, impact on decisions and plans on right. Journals are increasingly required as part of the final project 'package', to be assessed as part of the whole. This provides in-process information to the assessor. See notebook.

Learning Results: the document which presents what the people of Maine have collaborated upon concerning exit outcomes, skills, and attitudes.

Making information: when students gather or create unique data in a purposeful manner.

Modeling: providing the observer with a walk-through sample of a process or a level of expectation. Especially helpful in making concepts or strategies or standards less abstract.

Models: exemplary samples available during an inquiry to help students understand what is expected of them. Helpful as how-to's as well as ideals.

Monitor: a means of checking, supervising, observing. Important to information literacy due to significant steps along the research process. Conferencing and Journal analysis can serve a monitoring purpose. A monitor book has a section for each student containing annotated observations. An evaluation is next, followed by a plan. See Process Chapter, Observation Chapter.

Notebook: used for spontaneous jottings - a quote or saying, a page of a book, questions, what-ifs and daydreams, sketches, inspirations, remembrances. Notebooks are often used retrospectively to underline key words, connect related entries, look for chains of thought, see gaps, predict extensions of some entries via margin notes. Good preparation for developing
I-search topics and/or to practise reflection and comprehension skills. Often used to develop student self-prompts.

Open-ended: a task or inquiry without a single answer. The student is not seeking what the teacher has decided is the 'right' answer, but a justifiable one within the assignmentÍs purview. Open-ended questions usually require higher order thinking, such as comparison, analysis, synthesis, evaluation.

Observation: practice of noting and recording fact and events. Valuable in monitoring and assessing process.

Outcome based education (OBE): school curriculum and instructional methods based on planning backwards - beginning by deriving "exit outcomes" that are assessed by "performance indicators". Premised on belief that all students can be successful learners. Most states have or are developing mandated "frameworks" based on this concept. Since the phrase has become the target of some groups, other nomencature is sometimes used.

Perform: "The word perform in common parlance means to execute a task or process and to bring it to completion. Our ability to perform with knowledge can therefore be assessed only as we produce some work of our own, using a repertoire of knowledge and skills and being responsive to particular tasks and contexts at hand." Grant Wiggins

Performance-based assessment: requires that students demonstrate achievement and skills in an active manner. It may be creating an answer or developing a product. The answer or product directly reflects intended outcomes. How the problem is answered or the product designed reveals a student's understanding of and ability to apply the underlying processes. Usually includes self-assessment. Measures non-traditional areas of integrating knowledge across disciplines, contribution to group work, and planning response to a novel situation. Used to motivate students to learn and teachers to emphasize current expectations through relevant skills and empowered decision-making. See authentic assessment.

Performance-based education: Defining what students should be able to do, planning ways for them to learn to do it, teaching them, and assessing their performance.

Performance indicators: a component of Learning Results which defines the stages of achievement towards meeting the content standard for each of the four grade spans.

Portfolio: formal folders/files/disks/videotapes containing specific samplings of student work. Assembled over time, it documents a student's efforts. Student selection of work requires self-assessment. Informal portfolios may include all student work over a time period. A working portfolio is a storage place for works-in-progress. The working portfolio is an excellent vehicle for process assessment.

Process: the method a student employs in her work, usually involving a number of steps or operations. A systematic series of actions directed toward some end. Students should be able to articulate how they utilized the research process.

Progress: a measure of how a student is faring over time toward a well-defined goal: at this rate, will the student reach the goal within an expected time-frame?

Project: a complex assignment requiring broad competencies, usually interdisciplinary, and significant student initiative. Can be comprised of performance, competition, collaboratve activities. Contrasted with activities that require less planning, decision-making. Often used as both part of curriculum and as a basis for formal or informal performance assessment in lieu of a test.

Prompt: (pump-primer) a scenario, a focus, a beginning sentence, a what-if, to stimulate or structure student effort. Prompts can serve as models as students begin developing their own topics. Some prompts are extensive, and include information on the purpose of and audiece for the student's response. Can be over-used, resulting in chronic student expectation of teacher directives instead of employment of intrinsic motivaton and inspiration.

Recursive: taking a step backward to reconnoiter and confirm or reset research direction. A formative approach to solving an information problem. When used consistently, creates a spiral effect.

Reflection: rethinking, often over time. Informally, may be referred to as passive, back-burner time. Formally, students think over a research passage or re-read it, or look over their notes or review a video, and write down [thinking on paper] their reactions. It could be an insight as to meaning, a new question that bubbles up, an idea for further research, or an 'aha' that signals a problem-solving hit. Journals are usually used as vehicles for reflection. Note: Reflection may be guided to introspection, or weighing material for personal significance, or conveying vision to others showing research paths to self and others.

Resource-based teaching: The use of a variety of resources in a variety of formats as content for a topic. May supplement a textbook or stand alone. Much of the content may be gathered and shared by students.

Rubrics: a set of gauges for evaluating a student's performance/work: descriptors of graduated levels of competency or excellence - designed to measure a criterion. (A rubric is a description of one of these levels. A rubric may also be holistic - a rule grading a whole piece with one score, or analytic - scoring specific aspects of the piece separately.)

Scaffolding: a method by which educators model and students mirror. As they gradually absorb the intended skill, the modeling fades or extends to a more complex level. See Standards Chapter. Scaffolding can take the form of structuring a task or test to focus student attention on what to include in their response. Intellectual scaffolding is the organization by students of structures that inter-relate their ideas of the world. Thrives on reflecting about questions, ordering information, and selection. Visualized via brainstorming and webbing.

Self-assessment: students learn to assess their own work. This includes understanding assessment tools and standards, and the ability to self-set goals and measure progress toward those goals.

Self-directed: a self-directed student is an intrinsically motivated learner who independently seeks methods to arrive at goals.

Standards: that against which worth is measured (by common agreement). Having the qualities of a model. Recognized as excellent and authoritative. A statement used to judge quality. Standards add meaning to evaluation by setting the level at which students pass, fail, graduate. omponents of 'Helpful' Measurement