Assessment

ASSESSMENT!!!  GET THE RED PEN, RIGHT? WRONG!!!

SO MANY NEW WAYS TO ASSESS...YAY!!! link

As I begin this blog, I want you to really look at the color red.  When I was in elementary school the color red on your schoolwork was not a good sign.  I love the color red.  It is my favorite color but for students, it can be a trigger to negative things to come when they are receiving graded papers or feedback from their teachers.  I have recently learned this and become aware of the fact that we should just use other colors to decrease anxiety and stress.  That is so simple!!!  There are many other simple things we can do, as teachers, to minimize the stress of being formatively or summatively assessed for our students.  

Assessments are meant to accomplish two goals:  

1.  Inform us, as teachers, how students are progressing in their learning during the learning so we can adjust future instruction.  (FORMATIVE)

2.  Inform us, as teachers, how students are progressing after their learning to find out if the students did accomplish the goal(s) of the instruction. (SUMMATIVE)

It sounds simple when you break it down like that.  Right? 

Assessment is a hard task.  We, as teachers, always want to be assessing so that we can improve student learning.  Informal assessment takes place all day long every day in the classroom through observing and listening to students.  We may review a worksheet or assignment that the students completed to further informally assess their learning even when we are not grading these assignments.

Formal assessments are taken after learning has taken place and are usually structured and used for grading purposes.  Hopefully, by the time we are taking formal assessments, we are not overly surprised by the results because we have been following our students' progress through informal assessments throughout learning.  

Formative assessments can now take place in so many ways that teachers can engage students throughout lessons and know what their students know and understand and use that information to guide future lessons.  The video that I linked above highlights several of those techniques.  I love the idea of the chef tastes the soup throughout (formative assessment) before the guests tastes the soup (summative).  If you have formatively assessed students well, then the summative assessment will not be a total surprise.  If there are surprises on how students perform summatively then a teacher can easily decide how to adjust future instruction to increase student learning and knowledge.

To recap, when we perform informal or formative assessments the stakes are lower because we are still in the teaching and learning cycle.  We have an opportunity to review, adjust our approach, and reteach.  When we move towards formal or summative assessments the stakes become higher because the teaching is completed, the students are being graded on their knowledge, and hopefully we have done our jobs to the best of our ability to teach the content.  With that being said, we should always reflect and review on all our assessments to find new ways to do our jobs better.

There are some new and exciting ways to assess that will improve our results and reduce the stress associated with assessment.  I have listed some of these ideas below:

1.  Proficiency-based learning

2.  Project-based learning

3.  Standards-based learning

4.  Performance assessment

5.  Portfolios

6.  Presentations

All of these examples move us away from traditional pencil and paper testing and move us toward more in-depth learning that can be geared toward our individual student's needs to become successful and still learn. 

Thanks for reading,

Shannon