Popham's Open-Ended Discussion Questions

I believe assessment is important and is the basis of planning for instruction, whether it is diagnostic prior to learning, formative during units or lessons, or summative to evaluate student learning. Rowan’s quote in Every Teacher’s Guide to Assessment, "After all, in the end, the problem is less the idea of testing itself, but how we design them, apply, them, and make use of their data." definitely has an impact on my assessment practices. I feel it is necessary to make sure the student acquires all aspects of the learning. Assessment should be used to bring a value for students. Within my instruction, I implement daily formative assessments which may include turn and share, quick writes, graphic organizers, online discussion responses, KahootIt, and other forms. Designing the appropriate formative assessment to match the lesson is important to assess how the learning is taught and whether the students are showing progress. In addition, I have worked on building blocks of formative assessments in checklist style leading up to the point of reviewing for a summative test. Each of these are checked off as completed and instant feedback is given. Feedback from an assessment is essential to student learning and how a teacher will ensure the content is being acquired.

There is so much to consider when talking about assessments. There are all kinds of different types of assessments. There are assessments that happen on a daily basis in the classroom and then there are the tests that everyone knows about; the state mandated assessments, map test, and some know about DIBLES tests. These are the types of tests that parents, teachers, and administrators debate about. The debate is whether or not these test are doing students any good or harming them. It is good to have data on student and school’s progress, it keeps everyone accountable however, some believe that schools are testing too much. That all this time focused on testing is actually taking away from learning time. Each type of assessment has it’s own set of challenges.

Assessment, both formative and summative, plays a significant part in the learning experience as it determines progression and enables learners to demonstrate that they have achieved their desired learning outcomes.

I also believe that is important to use different types of assessments throughout the years. Students should be familiar with both selected and constructed response tests. These types of tests have different purposes in the classroom, and so both should be used. Selected response questions are useful in subjects that require the recollection of information, such as history and science. Constructed response tests are useful for subjects where the concepts could be a little more vague and in which there could be multiple answers, such as English. However, I believe that it is important for students to be familiar with both versions, as they will encounter both types throughout their entire academic career. It is important that teachers begin exposing their students to various assessment formats as early as possible, so that students become comfortable with different formats. This will ensure that students do not fail a test, simply because they did not understand the formatting of the test.

Assessment is carried out through formative (checks throughout the course), ipsative (to test against previous marks), and/ or summative (at end of course) activities to help the learner see their development whilst allowing the Assessor to give valuable feedback when appropriate. It’s purpose is to measure the learners understanding of the subject against the anticipated outcomes set by the criteria.

Assessment is defined as any practice or task that is used to produce information about student learning, and is categorized as either formative or summative (Wallace & White, 2014). There is a distinct difference between the various types of assessments, specifically formative and summative. Formative assessments are informal quizzes that are used to guide instruction

Assessments should contribute to a student’s education and learning by including students in the learning process educators are able to assist and extend students learning (SCSA, 2014).

Ch. 2 – Who are the various users of assessment and its results? What specific instructional decisions can be made based on assessment results? Why must we build balanced assessment systems to support the instructional programs we offer students? This chapter nails down the purpose of assessing, which is gathering information to inform teachers of students of their instruction and learning, respectively. In this way, assessment is individualized to each student and classroom, and because all students/classes are different, it should inform the teachers of what is working or not working in the classroom, which should then influence some sort of change to instruction. This chapter also talks about the different levels of assessment – from the individuals

Assessments are a really important part of learning and are an effective strategy in helping teachers focus on the methods they are using and how successful they are on the students and how well they are learning from them and gives them the chance to develop on certain areas that may not be working well, it also gives the teachers a chance to look at individual children and their development and to see which areas they are struggling or excelling so they can determine if using different techniques on them will help them make progress as not all children or young people will learn the same some children may struggle while others the technique really helps so they have to adjust the work and activities to certain children so they all have a chance to develop and grow.

What is it like? What are some examples? This will help the student to create a more personal connection with the words in the text and more than likely they will recall the vocabulary learn in future references. Another idea is by creating a word wall with all of the vocabulary learn. You will add a photograph to the word so they can visualize the word, the definition, and a translation of the word if pessary for the students who might need

Upon looking for the meaning of “Assessments” on the NAEYC website, I came across several different reasons to way it is important. Assessment is defined as the measurement of what students are learning. Student achievement is defined as how well they’ve mastered certain target skills. Assessments provide educators with both objective and subjective data in order to ascertain student progress and skill mastery. No matter what we are doing in the classroom with our students around we are doing some type of assessment. Now NAEYC says. “Assessments help teachers plan appropriately challenging curriculum and tailor instruction that responds to each child’s strengths and needs. Assessments can also help teachers identify children with disabilities and ensuring that they receive needed services.” And also, “Assessment methods are appropriate for each child’s age and level of development and encompass all areas of development, including math, science, and other cognitive skills; language; social-emotional; and physical. Teachers use assessment methods and

As an educator it is very important that a teacher uses different methods to teach the variety of different learning styles, and it is also important that the teacher uses a variety of assessment procedures. People don’t learn the same, and people don’t test the same either. I personally, am horrible when it comes to taking multiple choice and problem solving type assessments. I do better with essay and writing assessments, presentations, and teaching back what I have learned. With the understanding of how I can best be assessed myself, it will be important when I am the teacher that I use many methods to assess and grade my students work.

Some teachers prefer using traditional rather than alternative assessment techniques, vice versa. Reason being, they tend to choose their easy way out. In my opinion, both types of assessment techniques have their advantages and disadvantages. Classroom Assessment improves learning when teachers who create useful assessment be it, traditional or alternative assessments provides corrective instruction for students and support them with the opportunity to test their intellects and also demonstrate that success can improve their instruction and help students learn more efficient. Teachers should make assessments useful for students. In my opinion, whatever ways suit best for my students, I will use those techniques. Some techniques for example; a multiple choice, or short answer tests, many students has suffered the experience of spending countless hours studying for a major test, only upon doing the test he/she realize that what he/she had studied was different from what the teacher chose to emphasize on the assessment. Teachers mistakenly believe that they must keep their assessments a secret, resulting in students regarding assessments as guessing games. They view success as depending

Assessments are integral parts of instruction, they determine whether classroom goals have been achieved, and help teachers know what areas they should focus on and maybe reteach. They are great tools for developing lesson plans and answer questions such as; “do my students possess full understanding of the material?” There are many ways of assessing students’ learning, one of which I have personal experience with are on-the-spot assessments.

Informal assessment allows students to demonstrate their learning in a variety of ways which can benefit all students. It can include group or individual projects, presentations, essays, experiments, or demonstrations. Each of these can allow for “knowledge that transfers from one situation to another [which] is based on students’ abilities to understand central principles, see connections and make distinctions, and be strategic in attacking problems and analyzing information” (Darling-Hammond, p. 285). A variety of assessment methods allow for this to happen and for students to use their personal strengths to demonstrate understanding of the information. “Research into students’ preferences for alternative assessments shows that the assessments that have been positively evaluated by students were more authentic and thus made learning more realistic and powerful” (as cited in Brown, Irving, Peterson, and Hirschfeld, 2009, p. 99). Students should be able to think creatively and take hold of their own education and learning because they must ideally be prepared for a rapidly changing society where they must be able to adapt and formulate their own solutions. Teachers are able to provide feedback to the children so they know what was done effectively and what needs to be modified. Rather than teachers pressuring students to show understanding through a single examination, they will have opportunities to confidently demonstrate knowledge with less