The Percentage Of Students Showed Growth On Academic Areas

After a long year of teaching the core curriculum standards, every year in the spring, students are to take a progress test to determine if they have learned the minimum required, to determine if their teacher had taught effectively. When I think about assessments, I think about State assessments, standardized test, Maps, and AYP. However not all assessments are test. There are many different types of assessments, for example, there are comprehensive, formative, summative, and performance assessments. Different types of assessments help guide students to do the very best work they are capable of doing.

Assessments are the way to find out if learning has actually taken place. Enabling us, as tutors, to see if objectives have been met.

Assessment is a valuable tool to measure students learning and achievement. It is an essential element for teacher to reflect on what and how they teach. To assess students is to collect evidence of their learning. Teachers use the information to modify their lesson plans and adjust their instructional methods; students need feedback on their performance to concentrate on their vulnerable areas. Assessment is necessary for parents to reinforce their children strength and assist them where extra attention is required. The data collected will inform school

Assessments are used to track not only learner but tutor progress. Below I have documented some utilised in my everyday teaching life:

The last theme I found presented in these sources is measurement of student success. Source number one, “Are Exams Bad for Children?”, explains that we can find better ways to measure a student’s learning abilities. Stephanie Schneider says, “More reliable methods of assessment can provide meaningful information that assist student learning, rather than a test that often serves as a punitive device” (30). The

assessments for monitoring student learning during the lesson (e.g., pair share, use of individual whiteboards, quick quiz)

National Center for Education Statistics which is part of the United States’ DOE Institute of Education Sciences that collects, analyzes, and publishes statistics in education. (NCES, n. d.)

Although this is primarily for younger children this idea can be used straight through life-long learning. Assessment enables the teacher to see what objectives have been met and what still needs to be addressed. This is often called formative assessment or assessment for learning. ‘Assessment for Learning is the process of seeking and interpreting evidence for use by learners ad their teachers to decide where the learners are in their learning, where they need to go and how best to go there’ (Assessment Reform Group, 2002).

Each student is monitor as they are learning through research-based information to become effective in their academic. If the student is struggling in their academics, their formative and summative assessment would provide the data to move the student to Tier

1.1 Assessment measures the learner’s progress towards or the completion of, the learning aim and criteria, and can be used at any point during the learning cycle. It can provide information to adapt the delivery to suit the learner’s needs and abilities; a learner may need more help or time on some aspects, or has progressed quicker than planned and requires additional goals. By standardising the assessment process this creates uniformity for all learners.

Without assessment, there is no opportunity to keep track of benchmarks of improvement and no sense of progress. Assessment provides a time for reflection for the teacher as well as the child. The teacher may need to revisit his or her approach to teaching, based upon student's comprehension and input. Also, on a very crude level, assessment can encourage students to perform to a higher level: "Whether we like it or not, most students tend to focus their energies on the best or most expeditious way to pass their 'tests'" (Scanlan, n.d.). Q2. - What are some tools and approaches that are most appropriate in assessing children's learning and development?

Assessments are used to track a student’s progress while examining how much they have learned. In the English Teacher’s Companion, it discusses that all the work a student does throughout the year becomes a means of assessing what they have learned (285). In my classroom, it is crucial to examine the process of my students learning throughout the year without basing their entire grade on one final exam. As mentioned in the text, a few of the strategies that I imagine using are to give students as much information as possible. The author states “Students should understand the requirements, the standards, and the criteria” (286). With that being said,

The goal of educational assessment is to record, evaluate and enable improved student learning. The monitoring of student work, through developing understanding of key subject concepts and their achievement of syllabus objectives requires comparison against outcomes and standards. These outcomes and standards help define the criteria which is considered essential and relevant for assessment. Through correct implementation, integration, and reliability and validity, all forms of assessment should enable improved student learning when teaching is targeted towards syllabus outcomes, objectives and through highlighting gaps in student knowledge.

One assessment I can use is Curriculum-Based Measurement (CBM). CBM was first developed to document a student’s progress through the class curriculum and to assist teachers in creating a more effective instructional environment for their student’s source. CBM has two distinguishing features; first, CBM has a standardized set of procedures, and second, is its focus on a long-term curricular (Mastropieri and Scruggs 2014). CBM differs from other continuous measurements because students’ progress is assessed directly through changing objectives and standards throughout the length of the school year. The test domain remain constant from the beginning until the end (Mastropieri et al., 2014).

Assessment provides feedback that learners can use to determine their progress, in relation to learning outcomes (Spiller, 2009:6).