Abstract
This article discusses the four methods I use for assessing students, which are questioning, observation, student-teacher dialogue, and selected-response. Included, are explanations about the author’s prior knowledge of assessment, what I have learned regarding assessments, how this knowledge transferred to the classroom, and its use in future classes.
Assessing Your Assessment System
I began the school year with my usual methods of assessing my students, which are observation and a lot of teacher-student dialogue. I use a lot of verbal questioning with spatters of short written quizzes that are simple and quick. Mostly, I use verbal questioning and teacher-student dialogue; because my students are levels 1-3 English as a Second Language adults who need practice in listening and speaking. I use observation because I can follow whether a student has listened to and understood the lesson, instructions, directions, and can use what they learned effectively. When students work in groups, and are speaking their native language, I can tell who is asking for translation, who is offering translation and for what purpose. Prior to this class, I knew nothing about “assessment as a system”. I had never given any previous thought to a system of assessing. I know what my students need to learn because I constantly assess. I never use assessment, formally, as a guide for planning instruction. I assess my students’ needs through informal dialogue and observation. I teach a lesson, during which I determine what the students need to learn next. My assessments and the information that I gain from assessing is not formal. I know my students’ degree of English fluency, where they began and where they are now.
My assessment...
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... Keep in mind that many of my students are pre-lit to very low level one and most only want to learn to speak English. These students never attended school in their native countries because they had to help the family survive; therefore, they never came to appreciate the value of reading and writing. However, in next year’s class, I plan to implement frequent formal assessments and tie those assessments to the state standards. At this point, I do not have empirical evidence that my students improve, other than the standardized state tests that do not provide a realistic evaluation of the students’ knowledge and skill level. I think that if I had physical evidence that indicate improvement, it would be useful to show students, administrators, and other instructors where my students are and where they started in their English acquisition skills and knowledge.
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.
Stiggins, R.J., Arter, J., Chappuis, J., & Chappuis, S. (2004). Classroom assessment for student learning: doing it right-using it well. Portland, OR: Assessment Training Institute.
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
Assignment 1 Select an assessment task used in your language teaching context you are familiar with. Outline the basic principles underlying the assessment. Discuss whether the task meets the qualities of effective assessment in terms of reliability and validity and whether it successfully measures your learners’ language ability. If not, what are some of the practical considerations to enhance its effectiveness? I. INTRODUCTION
2). As with informal assessment, I feel that this is more flexible and can depend on students’ response to activity, lesson, or content. This can be a faster way for the teacher to see results of the students work. Some students prefer a more planned out way of testing them where the questions are written, and they have an idea of how the assessment is planned out and taking place. Other students like anything but written, long exams and would prefer to be evaluated in other ways. I feel that in my future classroom I will vary my type of instruction and allow for all the different types of unique learners to be assessed in a variety of different ways.
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
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).
Houston’ class provides evidence of a finely planned lesson. This is the biggest strength that Mr. Houston exhibits. Questioning techniques and informal assessments are seamlessly embedded into all areas of the lesson and students are always actively engaged. This is probably due in part to the fact that students anticipate the many assessment opportunities placed within the lesson. Students are attentive and are eager to show that they understand the concept. Many welcome the opportunity to share out in class and raise their hands to answer questions. The type of environment that Mr. Houston creates makes learning meaningful and safe for all students. This is a goal for many educators, and one that Mr. Houston has
Assessment Assessment derived from the Latin assessare which means to impose a tax or set a rate (Athanasou, 1997). According to Athanasou, assessment is “the process of collecting and combining information from tests (e.g., on performance, learning, quality) with a view to making a judgement about a person or making a comparison against an established criterion. Further, Satterly defined assessment as “an omnibus term which includes all the processes and products which describe the nature and extent of children’s learning, its degree of correspondence with the aims and objectives of teaching and its relationship with the environments which are designed to facilitate learning” (1989 p.3, cited in Carrol, 2005). Moreover, Rowntree (1977) said “assessment in education can be thought of as occurring whenever one person, in some kind of interaction, direct or indirect with another, is conscious of obtaining and interpreting information about the knowledge and understanding of abilities and attitudes of that other person” (p. 4, cited in Carrol, 2005). The purposes of assessment can be divided into three levels, namely: classroom level (students and teachers), school level, and system level.
As a child being taught to work at one’s own, pace was not a form of speech, for me it meant going as slow as I needed even though I desired to be with the other children. When, young students turn into young adults, the “own pace” seems to become a little bit clearer. We discovered that in order to do what we want to, we have to read and sustain it in our minds. If it meant telling time on the clock or reading how to multiply by 5, we all had to find out how to be proficient. Our instructors and our parents tried to promote us and encourage us to perform our best, but no matter how hard we tried, sometimes accomplishing the test was a lot harder than the school work. Despite their teaching efforts, some students struggle with the performance test; it is not because they were not prepared but, inadqueately measured based on classroom evaluations and lack of remembering.
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
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.