The article “Assessing Transition Skills in the 21st Century”, which was published in the journal TEACHING Exceptional Children, gave me plenty of insight regarding the transition assessment practice. This article began with a scenario of a new teacher who was unsure about transition assessments. She did not know what to assess, where she could find assessments, and how to analyze and evaluate the data from assessments. Throughout the article, an older teacher helps her learn these important components of transition assessments between text describing these components more in-depth. Towards the beginning, it was stated that “[i]n the 21st century, conducting transition assessments with all students is beneficial” (301). This was interesting …show more content…
I thought that was important so the student can be assessed from multiple viewpoints in multiple areas. I want to be able to get the best understanding of my future students, and I believe having multiple people conduct observations and administer assessments would give me a more broad perspective of my students’ needs and abilities than I would have otherwise. The main, broad topics that should be included in transition assessment are “academic achievement, self-determination, vocational interest and exploration, and adaptive behavior and independent living” (301). The first step in doing this is determining what to assess. In doing this, educators need to focus on the individual student and his/her specific interests, needs, strengths, and preferences. The next step is selecting the appropriate assessment. This needs to be done carefully. Assessments must be thoroughly reviewed before it is decided which ones are necessary for the student at hand. There are many assessments available both online and in print. To help narrow down which ones to use, the article presented the “Transition Assessment Review Tool” (305), which I have attached on the following …show more content…
Some assessments are norm- or criterion-referenced, so they are not too difficult to analyze; but some assessment results are ambiguous. It is up to educators to decide what the results mean and what to do with them. Using the data is a crucial part of this whole process. The data collected from these assessments should, “…guide instruction (i.e., determine which skills to teach, help refine and identify which practices are best to teach those skills)” (307). Using information collected from assessment regarding talents, interests, and career ambitions can help to motivate students in academics. Knowing what they’re interested in can help tailor lessons to capture their attention and make the learning more meaningful. I think individualization and making learning meaningful to each student is a very important part of education— something I will strive to do in my teaching
WFA, developed by Dr. Michael Wehmeyer, is a transition planning process consisting of 6 sections that introduces students to the concept of transition and transition planning and enables them to self-direct learning in areas such as disability awareness, decision making, setting goals, communicating effectively in small groups, and participating and leading teams. The program is designed to span the course of an entire year. Lee, Wehmeyer, Palmer, Williams-Deihm, Davies, & Stock(2011) studied the effectiveness of WFA on middle and high school students between the ages of 12-16. The study also measured the effectivness of the program when used in conjuction with a reading support. The authors concluded that the WFA program enhanced self-determination, transition planning knowledge, self-efficacy, and outcome expectations for educational planning (Lee et al.,2011). Students receiving the added reading support benefited even more. While this particular study focused primarily on the increased effectivness of WFA when used in conjunction with a reading program, the results also showed another important implication. WFA increased the self-determination, self-efficacy, and transition planning knowledge of students in middle school (Lee et al.,2011). These results indicate WFA could be used as a preperation tool for future transition planning
It has been seen that factors like one’s economic and racial background can heavily influence one’s performance on a tests, as they are not given the same opportunities as those given to more affluent students. A student’s emotional well-being is also at stake as many students come out of tests doubting their overall intelligence, even though they were quite confident in the material and so much is hinged on test scores that it places a great deal of pressure on students to do well. Standardized tests also restrict teacher’s ability to learn due to the restrictions that standardized test place on the material being taught, which makes it very hard for teachers to go beyond the required and teach more interesting things. Due to the issues that have arisen from standardized tests many alternative solutions have been used and have been proven to be successful. Some good alternative solutions have been limiting the amount of standardized tests given by sampling a few students, shortening the length of exams, and allotting more time to complete these tests. Other alternatives look to more qualitative approaches in learning by implementing things like projects and portfolios that give an excellent insight to a student’s performance and
Cole, H., Hulley, K., & Quarles, P. (2009). Does assessment have to drive the curriculum?
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 Assessment Literacy Survey, 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.
A copy of the Ages & Stages is given to the parent with their child’s result ASQ. If there is an area or areas that need to be strengthened, we created an Individual Learning Plan to help the child reach his potential. When a weakness is observed in an area, we work with the child on those specific goals. We will observe and document the child’s progress. Parents are asked to provide a 1” binder and clear sheet protectors in order to build a portfolio of the child’s progressive work and parents are welcome to review their child’s portfolio at any time. Usually, when the children are fourteen months, they are sent to the next classroom. If they are not ready in some area or areas, there might be some delays in advancing them to the next classroom. In the meantime, we work with the child to overcome the weakness is having. We work with the child in each age intervals by reinforcing an activity related to the weakness he is having in a particular area of development that will put him/her where he/she supposed to be for his/her
Stiggins, R. J. (2006, November/December). Assessment for learning: A key to motivation and achievement. Edge, 2, 3-19.
Retrieved April 27, 2003, from http://www.schoolhealth.org/ready.htm. Codding, Karen. A. n.d. - n.d. - n.d. Test of Kindergarten and First Grade Readiness Skills. The electronic version of the.
Cole, H., Hulley, K., & Quarles, P. (2009). Does assessment have to drive the curriculum?
Cohen et al. (2010) wrote that assessment can be a major contributor to raising standards in schools in terms of teaching, learning and student achievement. In addition, if assessment is properly handled with consistency, reliability, validity and rigour, it can have a possitive effect on learning and can improve students' own understanding of how can they learn more effectively and improve.
Pierangelo, R. A., & Giuliani, G. A. (2013). Assessment in special education: A practical approach. (10th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.
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
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
The teacher will also make norm-referenced and criterion referenced interpretations of assessment through this website. They have graph and color-coded bands that show widely held expectations for children’s development and learning. The teacher will use this website and graph to communicate twice a year with the parents about the child’s strength, weakness or any area of