Where I Am I Now?

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.

For this cornerstone, students will be measured by three rubrics. The first rubric is for the reading task (interpretive), the second for the situation cards (interpersonal), and the third for the advice column (presentational). The rubric does contain point values, however, it is often more beneficial for students to not see the associated points, but rather their proficiency level. At this level, students should be at the intermediate-mid

Hargreaves (2007) as well as Quinn and Hughes (2007, p270) propose that assessment tool should be both valid (assess what it claims to assess) and reliable (perform in a consistent and stable manner). It is of the opinion now following the assessment that our assessment tool cannot be considered valid and reliable for the following reasons. Learning outcome was not part of the criteria so it was impossible to make a judgement about the quality of the students' presentation and thus could not be penalized. Hinchliff (1999) suggests that learning outcomes should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timed (SMART). It should include an indication of the evidence required to demonstrate that learning has been achieved (Dix and Hughes, 2004), but Welsh and Swann (2002) caution that too many may create unreasonable expectations. Moreover, the ambiguity of the tool and individuals' subjectivity in terms of attitudes, beliefs and values (the ‘halo’ effect) resulted in perceived bias which affected the reliability. Bias however, remains an issue to overcome and as such I felt

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

I suggested this book because it was the book I studied when I was challenged to question my own practices. This book showed me that grading practices are directly linked to student performance, and play an essential role in building a culture of learning. I learned that grading practices go beyond scoring papers and calculating final averages. Grading practices include creating quality assessments, focusing on standards, and involving students in the learning process. My goal for the book study is to apply my learning described in PGE#3 to guide teachers to the same conclusions. I asked to facilitate the book study because I felt that I could use my own experiences to help move us forward. My long term goal is to engage teachers in meaningful, research-based discussions in order to build a shared vision, allowing us to create a school-wide grading policy that supports student

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.

Ch. 1 – What are my classroom assessment responsibilities as a teacher and how can I fulfill them in ways that maximize the success of my students? This chapter speaks to the nature of what sound assessment is, and the importance of really involving students in this process. Assessment is, of course, FOR the students. The idea that assessment is used by the students, and that teachers should “demystify” assessment and the meaning of success in their classroom is a very simple one, but one that is often forgotten in the context of high-stakes test-ridden classrooms, and schools that view letter grades as the only evidence of learning.

Assessment is the process of establishing the nature and quality of our students’ learning and measuring whether learning has actually taken place. Assessment is a key part of the teaching cycle because it enables us to measure achievement against set standards in order to ascertain if our trainees have acquired the skills and knowledge needed at a given stage of training, to diagnose learning needs and to select for further training. It is also the means by which we measure learning at the end of a course and certificate achievements.

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,

From my school days I have bitter memories of going through various tests to show my daily learning in every mid and end of term test. These tests were mainly recall-based testing which made me feel that my memory was tested rather than my understanding. Furthermore the scores were very important to each student. Every student’s scores were at the entrance of the classroom, which meant that all of the students could see everyone else’s score. On the contrary I never got feedback to support our learning further. Therefore, I was not fully on board with the idea of using assessment as the foundation of learning and teaching the curriculum. Seeing ‘Assessment is for Learning’ [AifL] used in practice has shifted my views on assessments, as it was

Assessment and evaluation aid in determining whether or not learning objectives are being met. For example, assessment improves students learning by providing them with valid information to promote students’ achievements (Watson, 2015). Also, teachers’ assessment of student learning and performance is essential in a clinical setting (Oermann, 2013). Furthermore, assessment gathers, summarizes, interprets, and utilizes data determine the degree to make a successful action (Bastable, 2014). Therefore, teachers may write test items and analyze their results. Educators may also develop rating scales and other clinical evaluation or observe

This is largely contributed to the fact that graders “don’t need experience in grading tests” (Svaldi). This means that anyone with a degree in anything can grade your high stakes test for a little extra money. Graders with no experience grading very high stakes tests creates an obvious loss of credibility in the scores attached to those tests.Another issue that arises is that many standardized test now use onestandard rubric to grade many differenttest; however, rubrics can be subjective especiallywhen “scores… [are] summed, averaged, and transformed into a grade“(Cooper and Gargan). This shows how unfair the use of rubrics isbecause they allow the interpreter of the rubric to be too opinionated or biases. It also argues that the use of rubrics should banned from writing test because they take away from

I’d like to begin with rubrics, and the rubrics I currently use compared to some of the examples gleaned from my peers in the discussion boards. All of my assignments have an attached grading sheet. This outlines where points are divided among specific items such as following direction, mastery of a skill or technique, creativity (photo project) or content (essay) and presentation. Students know what is expected, however, sometimes I think that certain categories such as content, can be subjective and ambiguos. Having said that, I read several of the peer rubrics provided and found wonderful examples for ways to make that grading more specific, and less open to argument from the student. For example, the Grading Rubric for PHI-111 Research Paper, provided by Carolyn Brown in Module 5/Discussion 1, has a good breakdown of the content section of a research paper into categories including Thought, Details and

The US Dept. of Education’s testing action plan provided a set of principles for fewer and smarted assessments. Assessments must be worth taking, high quality, time-limited, fair – and supportive of fairness - in equity in educational opportunity, fully transparent to students and parents, just one of multiple measures, and tied to improved learning. Observing and assessing student achievement can be beneficial and accomplished through other measures. A rubric, or scoring tool that explicitly represents the performance expectations for an assignment reveal how students’ work compares to a standard as opposed to test scores and grades tell students where they stand in terms of number of points and convey our judgement of their work. Among other advantages, rubrics inspire better student performance. Another method to use to measure progress is a portfolio, or detailed collection of work showing how the student’s thoughts and work ethic evolve over time. Other methods to measure school performance include rates of high school graduation and dropout rates.

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.