The Content Area Assessment Plan

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.

I am a strong believer that one test defines a students. Therefore, variety is key when assessing students. When using formative assessment I use student reflections, journal entries, exit cards in addition to non verbal communication such as thumbs up or down. I also make anadotal notes on students to help assess the overall learning journey of the student. When using summative assessments, I use district assessments, state assessments, portfolios, short answer, multiple choice, and student based projects. In all forms of assessments, students are provided the appropriate accommodations. My learning goal for assessing students is to have a valid assessment that demonstrate the student’s understanding of the specific skill. It is crucial that I understand the purpose of the assessments and the content that is being taught, therefore, I often start instruction with the assessment piece in

The term ‘formative assessment’ is used to describe the activities and processes used by teachers and learners to gather information that informs future teaching and learning. Assessment becomes formative if the information gathered is used as feedback to adapt and modify teaching and learning (Black and Wiliam, 1998, p.2). There are a variety of different methods and techniques that can be used by teachers and learners that can contribute to enhancing learner progress. These include

A formative assessment provides informal feedback and information during the teaching process. This assessment measures student progress and performance thus allowing further improvement and development. It can also assess the teacher’s progress as an instructor, enabling the teacher to evaluate the effectiveness of their teaching methods.

RL.9-10.1.1-7 Reading closely informational texts and viewing multimedia to determine how meaning is conveyed and explicit and implicit through language.

Assessment and data driven instruction are a vital part of teaching. Assessments are used frequently to guide the proceeding lessons. I am interested in learning more about the different types of assessments and the appropriate uses of each. I think it is critical as a future teacher to have many resources to back up my techniques, especially with the growing interest in data and tracking students’ progress. Gathering information about assessments will allow me to broaden my own techniques and strategies that I use in the classroom, more specifically the ways in which I grade and provide feedback on assessments so that students can use that feedback in a positive way. In my past experiences I have noticed my cooperating teachers providing grades on all assessments with no feedback because they want the students to correct their own mistakes. This may work on summative assessments but I think that there needs to be comments on formative assessments so that students know how to correct their mistakes for the end of the unit tests.

The use of formative assessment practices with ELL students are observational checklists, peer assessment, and performance skills. By having students writing a lesson plan, the roles between the teacher and the students will be changed. This is a formative assessment that engages students in distinctive ways. Students are focused on goals and objectives. It gives them confidence. They are creating a lesson. For ELLs, this is a tremendous accomplishment when done correctly, as well as when done in a collaborative classroom environment. It promotes constructive feedback. Students play an active role in formative assessment. They not only perform the task given, providing evidence of their current learning, but they are also involved in self-assessment (and sometimes peer assessment); therefore, developing and enhancing autonomy.

Assessing the children understanding is considered to be a good indicator of their learning and development process (Reys et al., 2012). Stiggins (2002) discussed the difference between the children’s assessment for learning and assessment of learning. Teachers need to be familiar with both. Assessment for learning (or as we call it the formative assessment) helps the students to learn more about different concepts and increase the opportunity to develop various skills. On the other side, assessment of learning (summative assessment) is to give the teacher an evidence of students’ achievements for purposes of accountability and reporting. For example, assessment for learning can include the teacher’s observations, in-class assignments,

Coffey, J. E., Hammer, D., Levin, D. E & Grant, T. (2011). The Missing Disciplinary Substance of Formative Assessment. Journal of research in science teaching. 48 (10) PP. 1109–1136 (2011) College of Education, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 2 Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts 3 St. Paul School, Baltimore, Maryland Received 17 April 2011; Accepted 5 August 2011. Retrieved from file:///Users/EleanorNewbold/Downloads/Coffey_et_al-2011-Journal_of_Research_in_Science_Teaching.pdf

Efficient educators know and understand the importance of selecting, planning, and implementing effective assessment tools and strategies that measure student’s levels of understanding. Different types of assessments are used for a broad range of purposes that include formative, placement, diagnostic, and summative assessments. However, the main purpose is to “foster learning in all its forms” (Lefrancois, 2013, Ch. 6.1). Teachers use pre, formative, and summative assessments to determine what students know before, during, and after instruction. Each measurement is used to plan, modify, and adjust instruction to meet the needs of all learners. Although each form of assessment plays a critical role in ensuring all students succeed, educators

Formative assessment-Teachers that collect evidence about what a student still needs to comprehend and adaptions that are made to meet the student’s needs.

Formative assessment provides feedback to teachers and students of their current performance, achievements, strengths and weaknesses

Assessment for learning is any assessment for which the first priority in its design and practice is to serve the purpose of promoting further student learning and enabling improved student learning through purposeful interaction and providing meaningful feedback. Formative assessment is specifically intended to generate feedback and feed forward on performance to improve, accelerate and enable learning (Sadler, 1998). Formative assessment can and should occur throughout a daily class, through implementation of learning and teaching strategies that lead to both oral and written feedback. The Formative assessment approach is equitable and reliable, producing some significant indicator of student developed understanding that links directly to the syllabus outcomes. This then allows the teacher or other students to respond by trying to

Recently, whenever I hear current teachers discussing about assessing students, ‘Formative Assessment’ is sure to be highlighted. Nowadays this method (formative assessment) is becoming popular among schools and is being applied widely in schools including my own school. Loughland and Kilpatrick (2015) identified in the few past decades, formative assessment has turned out to be the main goal for teachers and educational systems. On the foundation of Loughland and Kilpatrick (2015) findings and from my experience in the field of teaching, I found out nowadays teachers and school stakeholders strongly feel that formative assessment is the best method to assess in order to enhance students’ learning. For these evident reasons, I am interested in finding

Content standards create the framework for each given subject area. They are what makes up the essential skills, knowledge, and understanding that students need in order to master a certain subject, such as mathematics, reading, language arts, etc.They are what teachers use to develop lessons that will ensure the child has proper knowledge in that area. Most states in the US have developed content standards around the areas of language arts, reading, math and science. Although other content standard areas could be art, health, technology, and career education. A benchmark is an assessment that is given within a certain content area to mark the knowledge that a particular student has. They are used to understand and identify the skills that