Standard 5 of the Wheelock College Teaching Standards focuses on assessment. Assessment is crucial within the classroom in order to understand if all your students have grasped a particular concept and to gain information on any struggles students may have. When assessing students it is important to recognize that not all students think the same and many are coming from multi-racial, multi-cultural backgrounds. It is important, as a teacher, to adapt the assessment to the individuals receiving it and realize that all children will not be able to demonstrate their knowledge with only one type of assessment.
Assessment is an integral part of teaching and is essential to children’s development. Academically, students need to show that they have mastered a concept before a teacher can move on to a different idea or to further the complexity of the topic. Homework is a great informal assessment that can indicate to teachers if a child has mastered a concept. In a particular math packet I was grading (Artifact 5A: Collecting Stickers and Pennies), one student had gotten the majority of the problems wrong. He clearly did not understand place value and therefore did not add or subtract. I provided explicit feedback on his paper and then wrote in some examples of how to do the problem correctly. I then discussed it with my supervising teacher and she made a note of it to teach in the next day’s lesson. Taking the time to look over mistakes, instead of marking an answer wrong and moving on, reveals a teacher who is integrating assessments into his or her knowledge of the child’s development. The ideas and concepts that are covered on an assessment are useful information to incorporate when planning future lessons to address problem areas for students.
There are many different types of assessments, both informal and formal. Informal assessments can include an answer to be able to leave class, which is something I utilized in one of my lessons. In order for the students to leave the classroom, they had to turn in a complete worksheet about explorers and ask a question about them, since it was a brainstorming activity, I wanted to see if students were asking questions that were related to the topic we wee studying (Artifact 5B: Early Explorers). Although this is an example of an informal assessment, I have also completed formal assessments. In September, the District Reading Assessments (DRA) needed to be completed for each student. The DRAs test students to see which reading level they are on. They are recorded three times a year to track student progress. These are essential to monitor reading during the school year (Artifact 5C: Guided Reading Groups) and then over the summer (as the June scores from the previous grade are recorded and shared with the next grade level teachers). Formal and informal assessment each has its place within the classroom and should be used to gather information about a student’s progress and understanding of the material.
There are limitations and advantages of assessments. Each and every assessment type has their limitations. Multiple choice, for example, gives the child an opportunity to guess and if they get it right, then a teacher may never know that it is a topic that a child struggled with. However, short answer may be hard for students who do not have strengths in writing. It is important to vary the assessments used within your classroom in order to gain as much information as possible. A limitation that teachers must become aware of is the language used in assessments. Often, assessments will assume children have had certain experiences, such as camping or playing in snow, when many children have not had those opportunities. When creating assessments, teachers must think about their audience, the students, and the language he or she is using in the questions.
Formative and summative assessments are essential to each classroom. Formative assessments are given during the unit and are utilized as a “check in” point during different units. Understanding By Design author Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe discuss the importance of formative assessments, especially the idea of “uncovering the learners‘ understandings and misunderstandings all along the way” (p.247). They give many examples of formative assessments that provide teachers another resource to use in the classroom to quickly “check in” on how many students understood the material. Summative assessments are at the end of the unit and provide a teacher with knowledge on how much a student has taken away from the unit of study. Currently in my practicum, we are teaching a unit entitled “All About Me”. This unit gives children the opportunity to explore their own heritage and culture, along with learning about their classmates’ heritage and culture. An example of a formative assessment during this unit was an open response after reading about three children whose families were from different cultures. This formative assessment can tell the teacher if the children are understanding the concept of heritage and culture and how well they understood the story. However, the summative assessment will be a project-based one that is designed to encourage students to tell the story of their own heritage through a project (Artifact 5D: Culture and Heritage Project). Interestingly, the children have options on how they present this information for their summative assessment, so children will be able to present information in a way that is comfortable for them.
Assessments can bog down a classroom. Between MCAS and DRAs, and TERRA-Novas, it seems we are always testing our children. However, it is important for teachers to learn how to conduct informal assessments such as checking homework for mistakes that can turn into mini-lessons, and requiring a “ticket to leave” in order to understand if the students have grasped the concept of the lesson. Assessments should be considered a tool that teachers can utilize to learn more about each child’s progress.
References
Wiggins, G. & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by design (2nd ed). Upper Saddle
River, New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc.
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