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Why is art education important
Importance of assessment to teachers
Why is art education important
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This educator has being teaching elementary school for approximately forty two years. Her many years of teaching were devoted to three schools in the capital. The present institution of employment is E. P. Robert Primary School – from 1979 through to present – located Lincoln Boulevard and Balfour Avenue. This elementary institute caters to learners between the ages of five and eleven years old. According to this instructor, there is a great amount of love for the content area, but there is an even greater concern for the academic development of these young learners. This Art Specialist belief is that if students cannot read it is different for them to excel in other subject areas like Art, Mathematics and Physical Education. Therefore, proper assessment dictates if there is a problem in the learning process.
Assessment is very crucial in the learning system because it dictates if the students are absorbing what is being taught or not. The term absorbing is used to refer to the learning outcomes being attained. Learning and assessment go hand in hand because there must be a tool to rate what and how the students are learning. This teacher feels that so much information can be gathered from assessment. A scenario was giving to explain how assessment can be used in another form. “A student was being assessed on an Art project that was done for home work, and the child work was not even close to the standard of work done in school. When I was grading the projects I pulled the child aside and asked him if he was okay, to which he replied yes. I then asked him if mommy and daddy was okay, he halted and then replied yes. I continued probing the student and eventually he said that there was some issue with his uncle.” Th...
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...mplement strategies to strengthen our educators through learning can do just that.
Interview Questionnaire
1. How many years were you teaching?
2. What is you content area?
3. What all levels have you taught with your years of teaching?
4. What is your role at this institution?
5. Can you explain what assessment means to you?
6. What methods do you use to assess your students?
7. Does assessment of the academic subjects the same as assessment in your content area?
8. Does the administrator in your school feel like your method of assessment is appropriate for the content area?
9. When you look at assessment nationally, do you feel students are being assessed correctly? Why?
10. What do you think needs to do to correct the problem with assessment how we assessment and use results from assessments?
11. Is instruction important to you? Explain why and how.
Moreover, I learned the act of administering an assessment of this nature in a one-on-one setting. As a future teacher, I will need to assess my students informally, formally, and quite frequently. This particular assessment was great practice. Something to consider is completing running records in a
After taking the Personal Survey of Assessment Literacy, I learned a lot about myself and what I do know about assessments, and what I don’t. This survey allowed me to reflect on the process that I take to plan, develop, and administer tests in my class and what I need to do with the results. When I went through the criteria of all of the topics in the survey, I honestly did not know what the survey was talking about or what it meant. This was really concerning to me because I like to think that I do a pretty good job when it comes to instruction of my class and how I assess their knowledge of the material. I learned from this survey that there are a lot of things I do well during assessments and that there is still a lot that I need to learn to be an effective classroom leader. After scoring the survey, I noticed that I scored myself the highest in the section of During Test Administration with a perfect average score of 5 and scored an average of 4 in the section After Testing. The two lowest sections I scored in where in the General Considerations with an average score of 3.3 and in the section of Prior to Test Design with a score of 3.5.
The district is now making all teachers use an assessment tool called iReady. It is a website that assesses students in math and reading. They are first tested on a kindergarten through fifth grade range to find out what they know. Then the program takes that score and determines the right level for the child and they are tested again on the level. Once all students have been assessed the program orders the students from highest to lowest and by average grade level skill they are on: early second grade, middle second grade, late second grade or any other grade. The teacher uses those scores to create her reading groups, math groups and the students she will give extra assistance to. They haven’t officially established how many times and when they will do this iReady assessment but for now they are doing it once a week for forty five minutes. The test also flags if they spent too long or too little time on a question. The ones that spent less than 15 seconds per problem are to go back and do the assessment again.
Assessment has been the greatest challenge in my development as a professional. My coursework as supported my growth in this area, especially in understanding the broad range of assessments used to support students’ growth and development. My courses have also supported my understanding of how ongoing observational assessment and standards-based measures can be used to inform instruction and support the cycle of observation, reflection and planning. Coursework
Lyndsey Layton has been covering nation education since 2011, she has written on many different topics in education, and has been employed by the Washington Post since 1998. In her article about standardized testing she states, “...students should be judged by multiple measures, including student work, written teacher observations and grades. And they overwhelmingly think teacher quality is the best way to improve education, followed by high academic standards and effective principals.” (Layton pg.1). This quote shows that standardized tests only judge certain measures of a student's intelligence. Students should be graded in multiple areas not just how well they can answer multiple choice problems. Standardized tests only grade students on one way of thinking and discourage creative, out of the box thinking. Kira Zalan is an editor for the U.S. News Weekly, she first appeared in September of 2011, and has been writing since. Zalan states, “...there are multiple paths to the same outcome and that engagement is an extremely important aspect of the equation.”(Zalan pg.1). Standardized tests only allow for one path of thinking. There can be multiple different ways to find an answer, but if students do not answer the “correct” way they will be graded as wrong. Because these tests are graded by machines and not people, the participants answers
Standardized testing remains to be a major controversial issue for the American society today. Exams are given to students at different levels in their educational career and are supposed to measure their academic knowledge, but are these tests really the best way to evaluate students? There have been numerous alternatives suggested to replace or be used in conjunction with standardized testing.
In the past, assessments were popularly conducted for the purpose of accreditation, but with the growing change in the quality of education, it has become evident that assessments aren’t just products to qualification but as Sieborger (1998) identifies, is that assessment is the process of gathering and interpreting knowledge to make valid and justifiable judgements about the learners performance and the assessors ability to transfer and establish knowledge to the learners. What is pivotal in assessment is that it enhances teaching and learning; it is also the crucial link between learning outcomes, the content that is taught and learning activities. Furthermore, Sieborger (1998) states that assessment is a reciprocal process; as it is used by both learners and teachers to decide where the learners are at in their learning and where they need to go and how best to get there. The characteristics that Sieborger identifies to be contained in assessment are made up of: tasks, exercises, tests and exams, which are set and assessed by educators. There are different methods and uses of assessment that are used in the Education system, the reason for this, is that not all assessments serve the same purpose for its methodologies, the feedback that learners receive needs to correspond with the purpose of the assessment.
Assessments have always been a tool for teachers to assess mastery and for a long time it was just to provide a grade and enter it into the grade book or report card. Through resources in and out of the course, there has been a breath of new life into the research on how to use assessments. They take many forms and fall within the summative or formative assessment category. Sloan (2016) addresses how formative assessments has traditionally been used by teachers to modify instruction, but when we focus on a classroom that is learner-centered “it becomes assessment for learning as opposed to assessment of learning” (slide 4). The fact is, the students are the ones that should be and are the ones using the data we collect through assessments, since it is our way of providing feedback in order
Regular use of formative assessment improves student learning as instruction can be adjusted based on students’ progress and teachers are able to modify instructions to cater to students’ individual needs (Black & Wiliam, 2010; Taylor-Cox, & Oberdorf, 2013). Various forms of informal and formal formative assessment methods are conducted as learning takes place, continuously through teacher observations, questioning through individual interactions, group discussions and open-ended tasks (McMillan, 2011). tests can tell us a lot about students and be used to inform and guide teaching, rather than simply to determine grades. Teachers can learn a lot from test results if they analyse the data generated to inform their teaching and learning programs (Perso, 2009). However, high stakes tests may result in students becoming stressed, leading to misreading questions, careless working and incomplete answers (Booker et al., 2010).
There are many components of teaching and one of those is assessments. I feel as if assessments have become the sole focus of learning. Standardized test has become solely empowering in the classroom, and can be considered high-stakes testing (WOOLFOLK). Many things rely on the scores of standardized test such as incentives, and money for the school. I believe that this is creating a problem that educators are spending a majority of time preparing students for the test and nothing else. One teacher stated that, “I believe that our students are over tested and many schools feel pressure to teach the test, which is actually a very low bar” (WOOLFOLK 600). I completely believe that this statement is true and that we are only hurting our students
Assessments allow for teachers to monitor the progress and growth of his/her students, help engage students and help guide teachers as well as students in their decision making. Teachers should know that tests are not the only way to assess students in the classroom. It is important for educators constantly assess their students on comprehension and progression.Teachers can take use of both formal and informal assessments so that they can engage students in their own learning, as well as monitor their comprehension and progress.
Assessments were not aligned and incongruent with what was happening in the classroom. It was difficult to accurately measure student success (Polikoff, Porter, & Smithson, 2011). One of the greatest contributors to the difficulty of aligning assessments to standards is that the standards are so complex (LaMarca, 2001.) How can a single assessment demonstrate mastery of so much content? Also, some assessments items measure multiple standards. This can be difficult to analyze. Furthermore, some assessment contain content that is neither developmentally appropriate for the intended audience or it may content that is not mentioned in the standards (Polikoff, Porter, & Smithson, 2011). This can be discouraging and frustrating for both students and
It is important that teachers give children a fair chance to show their knowledge when assessing. “The purpose of assessment is to provide feedback that can be used to improve student performance” (Orange 2000). Teachers assess children to ensure that they are understanding the material, and to make sure they are learning. For young children, tests should never be the only criteria for assessment. Instructors should always make sure that their assessment is fair.
As teachers, we have to monitor the progress our students make each day, week, quarter and year. Classroom assessments are one of the most crucial educational tools for teachers. When assessments are properly developed and interpreted, they can help teachers better understand their students learning progress and needs, by providing the resources to collect evidence that indicates what information their students know and what skills they can perform. Assessments help teachers to not only identify and monitor learners’ strengths, weaknesses, learning and progress but also help them to better plan and conduct instruction. For these reasons, ongoing classroom assessment is the glue that binds teaching and learning together and allows educators to monitor their efficacy and student learning.
Assessment is a tool used in the classroom every day. It is used to measure a student’s mastery of a skill or knowledge of a given subject. It is also what demonstrates to the teacher what the students have learned. Educators use that information to determine if they need to re-teach to a specific student, group, or the entire class. They can also use that information to determine the rate of their teaching. Assessments are important because, as teachers, we need to know what difficulties our students have and what needs to be refined for them. While I do believe in assessment and feel that it is one of the key components of teaching, I am more concerned with a child’s process of learning rather than the overall product that comes from it. This is where grades come in for me. Grades determine the students’ level of mastery on a subject, nothing more. Grades should not be the exclusive indicators that a student has learned the information that is presented to them. It is the things a student learns along the way that truly matter and sometimes cannot be measured.