Educators often need to assess students' learning and achievement. There are multiple forms of assessments that educators use to not only gain knowledge about a student's level of understanding but also to guide the direction of future lessons and course curriculum. This lesson will differentiate between formal and informal assessments and performance-based assessments used in educational settings.
Formal assessments are basically the official ways of finding out the learning advancement of the students that have been improved or decreased during the selected instructional period. The major examples of the formal assessments are exams, diagnostic tests, achievement examinations, screening test, intelligence tests and lots of others. In every
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Like, the South Carolina Palmetto (SCPass) Assessment, South Carolina College-and Career-Ready (SC Ready) Assessments, Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) and Curriculum-Based Measurement (CBM) is administered to students and it measure student performance on the South Carolina Academic Standards by using multiple choice items and technology-enhanced or TE item types, such as drag, and drop, hot spot, drop down list, and constructed-response (type in a number) or computer-based format only. The use of the formal assessments is performed in order to evaluate the presentation of the students based on their grades. They are standardized in nature. In contrast, the nature of the informal assessments is qualitative and they don’t have any standardized tool for estimation. The nature of the formal assessments is standardized because they have a pre-decide criteria for evaluation. On the other hand, the nature of the informal assessments is not standardize as they are subjective in which no criteria to evaluate the performance is …show more content…
I think informal assessments is the best assessment because it can be made by means of stopping the lecture and check the students for the basic target of seeing their level of involvement in a glance. The quizzes, essays, lab reports and other regulated tools are related to formal assessment. I would use tests and quizzes, these way students are evaluated for their acquisition of knowledge, usually consisting of elements such as multiple-choice questions, true and false questions, short-answer questions, fill-in-the-blank questions, and so on. I would use grading assessment this is how teachers normally assign value to a student’s work. It consists of giving either numerical or alphabetical grades, or a combination of both, to student’s products. In other words, if he or she misses, say, 10 questions on a 100 question test, he or she would get a 90/100, or 90%. I would use portfolios assessment which is great for helping students, as well as their teachers and parents, to see their progress over time. Students collect completed assignments in a single folder or portfolio. By looking at all of their work over the course of time, they can see how they have improved or where they need more work. I would use written samples to entails any type of written work that students create to show their comprehension of material. It can take many forms, the essay being the most common. I
In the society of today, there are various educators who believe in assessment as proper method to measure the performance of a child in school as well as the overall achievement of a specific school system. The assessment may be presented in the form of verbal, written, or multiple choice, and it usually pertains to certain academic subjects in the school curriculum. Recently, many educators began to issue standardized tests to measure the intelligence of a common student body. (Rudner, 1989) These standardized tests were initially created to reveal the success in institutional school programs, and exhibit the abilities of students today. The standardized tests can reveal the strengths and weaknesses of a student as well as the admission into certain programs. The test results also assist various schools in determining the proper curriculum, evaluate a specific school system, or a particular school related program.
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
This assessment is an example of a performance assessment that could be given to children in kindergarten or first grade. This paper will discuss what characteristics of the student assessment makes it reliable as well as what motivational factors are included that will encourage students to want to succeed.
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.
Assessment is the process of observing, recording and documenting a child’s actions and behavior to measure a child’s development. Assessment is an essential part of teaching and educating, because it can provide a record of cognitive, physical/motor, and language development. Records of this documentation can help identify strengths and weaknesses of the child as well as a helpful tool for the families to see the development of their child. There are different types of methods to use for assessment. Observations, portfolios and standardized test are some of the methods I would incorporate in my teaching. An observation is simply observing what the child is doing and recording what you see. A portfolio is a folder filled with different recorded
In this assignment I will be analysing the purpose of assessment whilst demonstrating my understanding of the different assessment methods used. I will also be giving a brief explanation of my understanding of VACSR describing my understanding of what each element means and its importance when used in assessment. Furthermore I will be describing two assessment methods that I have used whilst teaching evaluating each method using VACSR identifying strengths and areas of improvement. Finally I will justify the reasons for using the two assessment methods chosen.
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
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.
This assessment would take up about 30-40 minute class period. I would put my student into groups of three, using a random group generator. The smaller group will allow them to work more closely with one another and there are not as many students giving feedback at once. My assessment would have six problems, a mix of mathematical problems and vocabulary or content based questions, the assessment can be found in the Appendix. How this would work is I would have the first person who was on the list start. I would give the groups five minutes to work on that problem. The first person would start the problem. For example, if it was a word problem, they would provide the first step to solving the problem, then hand it to their next partner, the next student would then add to the problem, this would keep going until the problem was solved. If at any point one of the students believes there was a mistake, they would then discuss as a group and fix the problem. If it were a content or vocabulary problem, they would add to the answer and modify it, much like if it was a word
Assessment, in the context of education, was defined by Lambert, D (2000, pag 4) as the processs of gathering, recording and using information about pupils' responses to educational tasks. Despite some can consider that assessment is separated from the learning process, assessment is, in fact, an essential part of the learning proccess. Maguire, M. and Dillon, J. (2007, pag 213) pointed out that assessment is intrincately bound-up in the teaching-learning cycle.
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).
Assessments are according to Edglossary.org (2014), “the wide variety of methods that educators use to evaluate, measure, and document the academic readiness, learning process, and skill acquisition of students”. Assessments can be used to identify several important aspects of learning and development. First, they can be used to distinguish a child’s strengths and weaknesses as well as measure specific knowledge and skills. Assessments can also be used to demonstrate what a child has learned and what they understand (“Assessment,” 2014). My opinion of assessment has not changed; however, now I understand how to use assessments that will help ensure that I am providing the most benefits for my 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
I use assessments to assist me to identify and to develop their learning process. Assessment is not about the final grade, but the learning experience. I would rather have my students know how to look up information and apply knowledge than to memorize it and forget it ten minutes after the test. Learning is a life-long adventure and I want my students to know how to adjust and cope during their adventure. I want my students to have the skills for researching and finding the answer. It is not always that answer which demonstrates learning; it is in the process in which you find the answer that demonstrates learning.