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. My greatest area of strength in assessment literacy is during the test administration, because I believe I do a wonderful job providing directions for the students, I monitor students and watch them to make sure they are not cheating with each other, and I make sure the testing environment is conducive to high achievement. When my tests are distributed to my students, I make sure to read the directions of each section of the students and ask my students if they need any more clarification on the section directions. If students forget the directions while the test is taking place, I make it a point to clarify for them in private and then announce to the class a reminder for each section. This usually happens when I monitor my students during the testing session. I make sure that I am visible and mobile inside my classroom. I want my students to do well on tests and gain confidence that they understand the concepts being tested, but I want my students to be self-motivated and self-reliant and to not look to their partners for the answers.
Current educational policy and practice asserts that increased standardized student testing is the key to improving student learning and is the most appropriate means for holding individual schools and teachers accountable for student learning. Instead, it has become a tool solely for summarizing what students have learned and for ranking students and schools. The problem is standardized tests cannot provide the information about student achievement that teachers and students need day-to-day. Classroom assessment can provide this kind of information.
When a student fails to demonstrate proficiency, I will first analyze the aspects of the assessment or task that the student or students struggled with. Also, I will look at students' learning styles and interests. From there, I will devise a plan of action with strategies and supports and I will group students together who have similar areas of need. Then, I will reteach adjusting the delivery of content by using a different instructional approach from the one I used in initial content. I will assess again with the same task, but with different
According to the article “Important of Testing is Psychology and Education,” published by a2zPsychology in 2002, “A test is defined as a measure of a person’s knowledge, intelligence, or other characteristics in a systematic way.” Teachers are required to give their students exams for many reasons that includes: identifying what students have learned, discovering their learning abilities, determining their strengths and weaknesses and deciding where to place a student. As stated in Charles Daves’s article “Value of Standardized Tests in Indicating How Well Students are Learning” published by Jossey-Bass in 1984, “Critics have charged that such tests measure only a narrow spectrum of abilities, that the tests by their very nature discourage creative and imaginative thinking, that the results of the tests have far too significant an effect on the life chances of young people, that the emphasis in a multiple-choice test is wrongly on ‘the right answer’ and on simplicity instead of thoughtful judgments, that the tests favor the advantaged and that the tests are inherently biased against those who are unfamiliar with language and concepts of the majority culture.” Any test scores cannot accurately determine a future performance. They do not assess the skills and dispositions that matter most.... ...
William, D., & Thompson, M. (2007). Integrating assessment with instruction: What will it take to
Assessments are an important part of teaching. Assessments are a good way for teachers to monitor students’ learning and understanding. Knowing students’ level of understanding can help teachers improve students’ learning and guide their instructions. In the future, I plan to continue assessing students in multiple ways such as, asking questions, illustrations and writing to adjust my instruction. I also plan to encourage students to assess their own work so they are involved in their own learning as well as look for ways to “employ technology to support assessment
I always help students identifying their learning and progress and give them feedback. Students need to be aware of their achievement and progress. I adapt practice and plan further learning, this will make the assessment meaningful and effective as it will answer to the learner needs. 6.3 Use types and methods of assessment, including peer and self-assessment, to: - Involve learners in assessment - Meet the individual needs of learners - Enable learner's to produce assessment evidence that valid. Reliable.
Airasian, P. W., & Russell, M. K. (2008). Classroom assessment: Concepts and applications (6th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.
One of the main concerns with assessments is that some type of screening occurs at the time of kindergarten entrance to evaluate learning readiness. Unfortunately, children are often classified on the basis of how well they perform on these early screenings .Another critical issues concerning assessments is the idea that the presser of accountability is creating an educational culture that puts test scores ahead of intellectual growth. You can even see it here in Philadelphia with the implication of the keystone test, soon after you saw parents and teachers advocating against them. Many fear that with a pressers of test like these teachers are focused to only teach how to take test, causing students to miss out on valuable lessons such as
This might be contradicting what was discussed earlier. These tests do not take into account how the student learns, what method is best for them to comprehend the material or topic. If the student has taken the test to the best of their ability and capability, the results will be an evaluation assessment which then gives instructors a better idea of what their students have comprehended and what they need to work on to be successful to pass the exam. The instructors would be able to format a plan of action which gives every student a chance to improve their skills in the topics they scored poorly on and work only on these areas using the student’s teaching method as well as teaching test taking strategies into account.
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
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
In spite of the importance of assessment in education, few teachers receive proper training on how to design or analyze assessments. Due to this, when teachers are not provided with suitable assessments from their textbooks or instructional resources, teachers construct their own in an unsystematic manner. They create questions and essay prompts comparable to the ones that their teachers used, and they treat them as evaluations to administer when instructional activities are completed predominantly for allocating students' grades. In order to use assessments to improve instruction and student learning, teachers need to change their approach to assessments by making sure that they create sound assessments. To ensure that their assessments are sound they need include five basic indicators that can be used as steps to follow when creating assessments. The first of these indicators and the first step a teacher must take when creating a sound assessme...
Through assessment students and teachers are able to determine the level of mastery a student has achieved with standards taught. Both formative and summative assessment should be purposeful and targeted to gain the most accurate data to drive further instruction (Ainsworth, 2010). While this syllabus does a good job of identifying the need for both formal and informal assessments, the way in which this is communicated does not provide enough detail for understanding. Simply listing assessment types does not give any insight into how these assessments fit in the learning process of this course. While some of the assessments mentioned could be common assessments chosen by the school or district to gain insight into the effectiveness of instruction, the inclusion of authentic assessments is most beneficial to students and demonstrates learning in a context closer to that of a work environment (Rovai, 2004). Unfortunately, this particular course, according to this syllabus, relies heavily on quizzes and traditional tests and essays to form the bulk of assessment opportunities. While other activities, such as formative assessments, journaling and discussions are mentioned as possible avenues for scoring, they are given a very low percentage of the overall grade. This shows that they are not valued for their ability to show progression and mastery. If this is indeed the case, this puts the students as a
Assessing student understanding is important but as a teacher you need to provide feedbacks to the students. During my lesson, I allowed the student to ask questions and tried to answer each individual’s answer right away. Since my students are not able to read or write I had to provide feedbacks by verbally.
As I reflect on my past assessment process, I realized how much my assessments have changed over the years. In my early years, I used tests for informational recall as my assessments. I felt these were appropriate guidelines in which I needed to follow in order to substantiate a student’s grade. Every assignment or tests was given a point value and then based on the amount of points, a grade was given. Every student’s assessment was exactly the same, and the assessments did not contain any subjectivity. I felt confident in giving the grade based on a valid point system. However reflecting back, I see that I did not include any performance-based assessments or individual learning styles in my early assessment. I also did not take into consideration the individual needs of my students. My assessment approach was awful. I am embarrassed that I use to assess students in this manner.