Preparing for ISASP through involvement in AIW
The intent of Authentic Intellectual Work (AIW) and its infusion within schools is to transform the quality of student learning by using the AIW framework to foster deep reflective practices for teachers. AIW provides opportunities for educators across all content areas and across all grade spans to bring artifacts (tasks, student work, and instruction) to their team for feedback and improvement. The versatility of the scoring rubric provides common language, common goals, and common work for the benefit of all students. By focusing on the three AIW criteria — Construction of Knowledge, Discipline Inquiry, and Value Beyond School — there is increased student engagement, high expectations for all students, and the promotion of skills that benefit students faced with intellectual challenges. This, in turn, ideally translates to increased student learning and achievement in school.
It should also translate into increased achievement on the Iowa Statewide Assessment of Student Progress (ISASP) developed by Iowa Testing Programs. The questions on the new assessments are aligned with the Iowa Core standards and the standards’ depth of knowledge. This new format gives students, educators, parents, and community members a better picture of just how well students are achieving grade-level academic expectations in reading, language/writing, math, and science.
Thus, focusing on the AIW criteria create a solid foundation for performing well not only within the classroom, but also on the ISASP. This table shows how AIW builds the critical thinking practices required for the ISASP.
| AIW Criteria | ISASP Preparation |
|---|---|
| In Construction of Knowledge, students engage in organizing, interpreting, analyzing, and synthesizing content-area concepts, themes, theories, or issues. | Students will be better able to engage in the mental processes required to think through and answer questions at a higher level of cognitive complexity. |
| In the Elaborated Communication standard of Discipline Inquiry, students coherently link conclusions and claims they’ve created with support for their thinking (illustrations, details, or reasons). | Students will be able to better compose constructed responses (justification of responses) and extended constructed response (evidence-based writing assessment) through the skills and practice they gain through the elaborated communication required by their classroom assignments and assessments. |
| In the Conceptual Understanding standard of Discipline Inquiry, students demonstrate their understanding of content-area concepts to explain their thinking of the ideas, themes, principles, and perspectives that help to explain relationships between more specific forms of information. | Students will be better able to exhibit their grasp of the concepts tied to the specific standards assessed within the ISASP questions when their teachers ask them to show their thinking about these same concepts in the classwork students engage in, in class. |
Newman, F., King, M. B., & Carmichael, D. (2009). Teaching for Authentic Intellectual Work: Standards and scoring criteria for teachers’ tasks, student performance, and instruction. (1st Ed.) Minneapolis, MN: Itasca Books.
In closing, AIW supports the purposes of education and aligns well with the new state assessments. But, perhaps, more importantly, it has been transformational for many districts, teachers, and students, including the twenty-one districts currently engaging in this instructional framework in Central Rivers Area Education Agency. In fact, it’s one of the frameworks Director Wise of the Iowa Department of Education stated districts could continue to implement and/or start implementing within their buildings if they didn’t want to move to the newly-adopted framework coming to Iowa schools this next year. If you would like to know more about how AIW can support your district’s vision, mission and goals, visit the AEA’s website and/or contact Mandie Sanderman at asanderman@centralriversaea.org for more information.