Introduction:
Assessment is one of the crucial components of the education. Traditional exams and tests are mostly based on materials taught in the course to meet predetermined objectives. They cannot assess whether or not learners can apply it. To truly understand some new ideas, students need to apply it. My experience as an English teacher provides some ideas to frame my discussion of assessment. Although many teachers think that the scores of the exams and the tests are objective and cannot be wrong, I think that these scores are uncertain they need to be supplemented by some other assessments. Traditional assessments in their summative and formative forms such as tests, quizzes or exams are often graded and returned back to the students. Unfortunately, the grades become more important than the learning itself. Most of the students care about the number or the letter that is written on the top of the paper. Although some of the teachers provide comments and feedback associated with the score, but the students assume that what matters in the end is the number or letter grade because it is the only measure. Furthermore, assessment is a complex but fundamental process that must be based upon a well designed network of practices. A single assessment cannot completely describe and measure what a student has learned or understood. Consequently, associating the traditional assessment with certain alternative assessments could create better learning environment and enhance the learning-teaching process for both learners and teachers though engaging the learners directly in different stages of this process. In fact, some research addresses the benefits of providing the students with an active role in taking the responsibility of l...
... middle of paper ...
...thout grading it, and then gives it back to the students to evaluate their work according to a rubric (see appendix 2), and return it back to the teacher. This procedure is repeated before and after every formative test. At the end of the course, the learners fill in a survey questionnaire to understand the feasibility of the self assessment and tell about their experience. Interviews with some learners are done to clarify some obscure aspects. The teacher’s first evaluation is taken into consideration to drive the conclusion of the research. The results of their placement test are compared to their results of the summative test. The data collected from the questionnaire is analyzed quantitatively by using SPSS program. While the data collected from the interviews is analyzed qualitatively. All these data is completed by observing the students and their changes.
It encourage their collaboration and skills to engage on their assignments. (Hudd, 2003). The set of grading criteria is utilize to pursue the expected output of the tasks. It guide the teacher and pupils to meet the completion time wherein the tasks are needed to accomplish. The students prefer some guiding content of instruction when doing assignments and it gives successful outcome that lead students to easy response in accordance with their body and in the simple and detailed discipline of the syllabus.
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.
Once I decided on what kind of assessment I wanted to use, I then wrote out how I would administer each piece and created the necessary worksheets to go along with them. I tried to incorporate multiple forms of assessment – the structure of worksheets, the freedom of journals, and discussion to talk through thoughts and issues – to provide students with numerous methods of expressing themselves and multiple opportunities to create connections with the material. I also made an effort to give students the chance to work in small groups, as a whole class, and independently so they could support each other’s learning to help make meaning from the content then put it into practice on their own.
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
Because the focus of this study is related to formative assessment, the researcher will spend more time on this. The term formative assessment is not used consistently in the literature (Bennett, 2011).There are some terms used interchangeably with formative assessment such as Classroom Evaluation (Crooks, 1988), Learning- Oriented Assessment (Pryor & Crossouard, 2008), Alternative Assessment (Berry, 2008), Assessment for Learning (Asghar, 2010) or Classroom-Based Assessment (Turner, 2012). A variety of definitions of the term ‘formative assessment’ have been proposed over the years by many researchers such as Black, Tunstall and Gipps, Black and William or Brown and so
Formative assessment is a collection of practices that lead to some action that improves learning. It is the use of the information gathered, and how it is used to adjust teaching and learning that makes it formative. A study by Black and William (1998a, 1998b) revealed that the largest achievement gains used classroom discussions, classroom tasks, and homework to determine student learning and the action that would be taken to improve learning and/or correct misunderstandings, descriptive feedback with guidance, and students developing self- and peer-assessment skills. Formative assessments are a powerful tool for teachers and students alike. Some examples of formative assessment include summarizing activities, questioning, conferences, and response journals (Chappuis, 2009). Another type of assessment is summative assessment. Summative assessment provides evidence of student achievement for the purpose of making a judgment about student competence or program effectiveness. It is also used to determine how much students have learned at a particular time such as at the end of a nine
How do self-assessments promote autonomous learning? In recent years, the term self-assessment has become a buzzword in the educational field. As more educators champion the use of formative assessments, which take place during learning, in contrast to summative assessments that take place after, self-assessments have risen in popularity. Self-assessments give students the opportunity to objectively critique their learning and pinpoint their strengths and weaknesses.
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
In today’s world assessments are of unescapable importance in creating accountability for teachers and students. In a society with an increased changing demographic face proper assessments must be accessible for every student. Thus, the selection of proper assessments for English language learners is a fundamental part of effective instructions. Assessments are an essential part to help determine which goals have been met and which goals still need to be worked on. Amongst the many options for assessments there are sociocultural assessments that can aid to effectively assess English language learners. Since assessments can help guide teacher instruction and planning. Through the implementation English language learner teachers should employ
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).
The evaluation document is a representation of my present teaching ability, and the target areas that I will improve on. I taught the Hooke’s lab investigation, so I grouped students in pairs and had them work in their lab stations. Given the lab stations set up–in aisles–, I decided to have three groups of students work on each side of the aisles; however, the aisles were narrow and the students barely had space to move through them. I did not ask the students to move to other areas of the classroom to prevent losing their focus, but this is something I will be more cautious about in the future. I have to provide a safe classroom environment that allows students to have ample space to work in, so I will verify that I provide the needed space in future classes. I originally thought that proximity would enable adjacent groups to discuss their findings with each other, but even I had a hard time walking through the aisles to reach struggling groups.
This allows planning and ample preparation of the assessment write-ups by students. The continuous assessment tasks also encourage students to read and prepare themselves for the subsequent lecture sessions on an on-going basis, something that maximizes the benefits of learning during contact sessions. As pointed out earlier, such continuous assessment also counts towards the final grade and this motivates students to put their best into the papers. Thus, there is an apparent shift in the university from summative, judgmental assessment towards formative, diagnostic assessment which allows corrective measures to be implemented by both the course provider and the student before the latter completes a program of study. It is worth noting that, of the two institutions, University A is exceptional in terms of the high degree of congruence that prevails between its policy and the actual assessment practices on the ground, particularly with regard to linking assessment to teaching and learning. Continuous assessment is linked to specified course outcomes and feedback on course papers has to be timely enough for students to use the feedback for
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