Assessment Learning Network Series

Note: to register for a Season Pass (and save money!), click the button at right. To register for individual sessions, click the session title in the content below.

The Michigan Assessment Consortium (MAC) is committed to helping educators leverage assessment to achieve equitable access and outcomes for all students. MAC and GELN will team up in 2025-26 to explore how the Components of an Equitable Assessment System support the development of disciplinary literacy, expressed in Essential Practices for Disciplinary Literacy Instruction in the Secondary Classroom.

2025-26 ALN Series Theme: Creating Coherence: Instruction and assessment in secondary classrooms that engages and motivates today’s learners.

When we say we want to help students think like mathematicians, scientists, artists, and social scientists, we draw from research to implement practices that equip students to understand and use the specialized vocabulary, communication practices, and tools embedded in the disciplines. And when we want to know what students understand, know, and can do those disciplinary literacies develop, we use strategies and practices embedded in a student-centered approach to assessment.

2025-2026 ALN Outcomes:

1. Deepen participant understanding of assessment as a discipline in pursuit of a student-centered approach to teaching and learning
2. Understand the applied research that supports development of disciplinary literacies for secondary students to prepare them for the demands of 21st Century learning and life.
3. Explore the interdependence between GELN’s Essential Instructional Practices for Disciplinary Literacy in the Secondary Classroom and MAC’s Components of an Equitable Assessment System to realize the potential in each framework.

Schedule at a glance:
Note: The September and May events will be held in person and will include a networking luncheon. December and March are webinar format.

• September 25, 2025 – Moving through life and learning: Disciplinary literacy in the arts, with Heather Vaughan-Southard
• December 10, 2025 – Apprenticeship into secondary science: Science and engineering practices and crosscutting concepts as literacy and assessment tools, with Mary Starr
• March 10, 2026 – Disciplinary literacy and student-centered assessment in the secondary social studies classroom, with Darin Stockdill
• May 6, 2025 – Illuminating Implementation of Disciplinary Practices and Student-Centered Assessment in the Secondary Classroom, with GELN’s Disciplinary Literacy Leaders, MAC Consultants, and Classroom Practitioners.

Registration for the full series is $275

The ALN 2025–2026 season is co-sponsored and presented by the Disciplinary Literacy Task Force of the GELN and the Michigan Assessment Consortium.