Culminating Views on Assessment

 Assessments are a tool that can measure many areas such as teacher effectiveness and student weaknesses or mastery. A teacher's ability to effectively create assessments to assess the standards, as well as the teacher's ability to use the information gleaned from the assessments, is crucial to the academic success of their students. 

Student Growth Portfolios

 Student Growth Portfolios

What are student growth portfolios/portfolios for student growth? What are the benefits and shortcomings of using them?

Student growth portfolios are used to keep artifacts to document performance throughout a school year. Students also use the portfolio to record goals for the school year. They are then able to use the portfolio as a way to track progress. Teachers can use the portfolio at parent-teacher conferences or for informal conferences with the student. The student can choose what artifacts they would like to go into the portfolio. This is a way to keep them actively involved in their learning and progress (McDonald, 2011). Portfolios are great in theory but do require a lot of work to stay up to date and relevant to student learning.

McDonald, E. (2011). Student portfolios as an assessment tool. https://www.educationworld.com/a_curr/columnists/mcdonald/mcdonald025.shtml.

The Use of Figures in Assessment

 

The Use of Figures

How do figures (tables, graphs, etc.) aid in the assessment process? Provide one figure in this blog section.

 

Tables, graphs, and figures allow the person analyzing the data to represent the data in a clear, visual way. The table above shows how the information from yearly standardized testing was formatted to show how the students at this school closed their learning gaps from the prior year. This pictorial representation allows the reader to quickly see the school's progress in each content area.

Georgia Department of Education. (2019). http://ccrpi.gadoe.org/Reports/Views/Shared/_Layout.html

Effort Grades

 

Effort Grades

What are effort grades? What is your stance on this topic?

Anxiety has an effect on how students perform on assessments (Steinmayr et al., 2016). When students are given a grade for their effort, they can see that they are being acknowledged for their work and how hard they are trying. Effort grades help students continue to be determined and work hard to learn their content. I believe that effort grades and content grades should be used in a classroom. These grades should be weighted differently; however, they are both important to student achievement.

Steinmayr, R., Crede, J., Mcelvany, N., & Wirthwein, l. (2016). Subjective well-being, test, anxiety, academic achievement: Testing for reciprocal effects.  Frontiers in Psychology, 6. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01994

Assessment

Assessment

What is your definition of assessment? How do you determine lesson objectives on which an assessment is based?

Saeed, et al. (2018) stated that assessments should guide instruction. Assessments are crucial when gauging student understanding of concepts. Assessments change throughout a student’s academic career. As a kindergarten teacher, most of my assessments were given one on one through conversation or by observations. Now, as a second-grade teacher, my assessment practices have changed. I still make notes on what I observe students doing, but now have a grade book to keep the student's scores.

When students take an assessment, the assessment is graded and analyzed by me. I then take notes on how each student performed and look for ways to group students for small group instruction based on their understanding of the material on the test. Differentiation and extension groups come from this analysis as well as the plan made to teach new content.

Learning objectives are created as statements that are specific and measurable and project the expected goal of a lesson, unit, or standard (Harvard, 2020). These learning objectives should drive instruction. In order for this to occur, the standard needs to be unpacked to understand what the learning expectation entails. Then, assessments can be created and lessons can be planned to ensure the learning objective is met.  

 

Harvard University. (2020). On learning goals and learning objectives. https://bokcenter.harvard.edu/learning-goals-and-learning-objectives

Saeed., M., Tahir, H., & Latif, I. (2018). Teachers' perceptions about the use of classroom assessment techniques in elementary and secondary schools. Bulletin of Education & Research, 40(1), 115-130.

Student Self-Assessment

 

Student Self-Assessment

What is student self-assessment? How should it be accomplished? What is your stance on student participation in developing assessments?

When students are asked to self-assess, they are give a chance to evaluate their work. This process is made easier with rubrics. Rubrics are a tool that lays out expectations and allows students to ensure they are meeting expectations. Rubrics are important in helpings students examine their work and see where their strengths and weaknesses lie (Brewer, 2019).

Brewer, E. (2019). The active role of students in a balanced assessment system. [Transcript of Audio File]. https://ace.instructure.com/courses/1751819/files/114911277?module_item_id=26533487&fd_cookie_set=1

Viewpoints and Information

 

Viewpoints and Information

What other viewpoints or information can you share on assessments (e.g., standardized testing, behavior assessment, parent-teacher conferences, assessment to improve instruction, etc.)?

Students should take part in their learning. This means they know what is expected of them. Students need to know the standards they are expected to learn and how they need to show they have learned the knowledge. Since moving from teaching kindergarten to second grade, I can see how each grade level gives students more responsibility. This year, I asked my students to do more than I ever would have asked of them when I taught them in kindergarten. This includes self-monitoring of behavior, testing, and extension. Parent-teacher conferences are an example of students have been given more control. In kindergarten, they had a little share time, and then I would take over to discuss expectations and answer any questions from the parent. This year, students were able to lead their own conferences through Zoom. The students know they would be leading the conferences, and we worked together to ensure the conference was planned out and structured (West, 2017).

West, K. L. (2017) Teacher Perceptions and Benefits of Student-Led Conferencing in Southern Central Illinois Elementary Schools [ProQuestLLC].

The Best Type of Assessment

The Best Type of Assessment

What type of assessment is best in your view: open-ended, selected-response, or performance?

It is imperative to use a variety of assessments while gauging student learning (Alvis, 2019). As an elementary teacher, I have found that formative assessments give me a way to check students learning while teaching a unit quickly. This allows time to change my instructional plan, if needed, to ensure all students are learning the information that is being taught. These formative assessments are usually selected-response or short answers. I like to use summative assessments with a mixture of selected-response, short answer, and open-ended questions or assign a performance task for the end of a unit. To best assess students, a variety of assessments must be used. This balance of assessments allows for an accurate picture of the whole student and their knowledge.

Alvis, A. V. Predictors of elementary-aged students’ writing fluency growth in response to feedback writing intervention. [Doctoral dissertation, Syracuse University]. Open Access.