Assessment Post 2

My learning goal is to make sure my 4th grade students can tell me (or anyone else) the presidential candidates and their parties of this year's election in everyday conversation. I would assess this using the information processing theory because it would be based on using what they already know. Using the three step model, the information would come in as input to the sensory memory from the media and other sources. Depending on the student's perception and attention (the goal is that all students attention will be focused on candidates and parties) the information will make it's way into the working memory. From here, the students should be able to encode the information into the long term memory. They will pay attention to the stimulus of learning the candidates and parties because it may have an emotional and personal significance, especially if their parents talk about the campaigns. They can retain this new information by rehearsal, which is repeating the same information over and over. If the campaign is brought up in class, eventually the students will be able to retrieve this information because it will be encoded to their long-term memory. To assess this, a simple summative assessment will be necessary. Since the campaign is over now, they will be given a piece of paper asking to list the candidates and their respective parties. If they can answer these questions, they will be able to retrieve their names in conversation.

Blog Post 2

One goal I have for my future students is for them to learn addition and subtraction. In order for them to do this I would use the social cognitive theory with modeling. I would model for them on a number line how to move forward and backwards on a number line, simulating addition and subtraction. They would then have individual practice as well. I could assess this goal by giving them a test at the end of each unit. Once they learn their addition facts up to ten, we could move onto subtraction facts up to ten.  After this we could move on to addition facts up to 20 and so on. This would be a summative assessment. 

Blog Post 1

The main ideas discussed in the chapter were the different kinds of assessment, how assessment can be applied in the classroom, and different types of performance assessments. An assessment is described as the process of obtaining information information to be used in making decisions about curriculum, students, etc. A measurement is a way to quantitatively assign a number to tell if this person possesses a certain skill. An evaluation is making value judgements about the worth of a student's product or performance. Teachers use assessments to gather information about the student's progress. I would advise teachers to keep an open mind when giving assessments and look more at the personal growth of the students rather than an overview. 

One question I had about the chapters was how do you think of one assessment other than a test that can validly grade students on how well they understand the information? For instance if they make a poster or write a paper they have other resources to help them, so how do we know what students really know?

	FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT	SUMMATIVE ASSESSMENT
FORMALLY ASSESSED	Giving students a review before a test.	A test over something students have just recently done.
INFORMALLY ASSESSED	Putting students in groups and having them work on assignments together.	A final.

I think the only way to know whether a student understands the material or whether or not an assessment works is by comparing different types of assessments. You could look at a pop quiz vs. a midterm or a paper vs. a test. There will be the most information being tested in a summative assessment.

Forms of Assessment Post 2

The learning goal I would like my students to accomplish is learning their multiples of 9.  I would use the information processing learning theory.  I would use the brain research theory because it is something that needs to be rehearsed and remembered.  Brain research talks about using repetition as a way to insulate the pathways of the neurons in the brain.  When the path becomes insulated it means that it is something that the brain uses often, therefore, the 9's would be remembered.  I would use activities such as timed-tests and flashcards as a form of assessment.  Timed tests could be summative and formative because it can be used as a way for students to see their progress at the end of the unit, or it could be used throughout the unit as a way for the teacher to see individual progress.  Flashcards could be used as a form of formative assessment because it could be used throughout the day at random times, to check up on each of the students- unplanned.

Forms of Assessment Post 1

After reading this chapter, I believe the main idea focuses around the purposes for assessment as well as the different types of assessment.  The purposes of assessment are: 1) provide feedback on students' progress and level of achievement 2) guide and motivate students in their own learning 3) improve the general effectiveness of instruction, and 4) identify modifications that will better meet the needs of individual students.  In order to reach these goals through assessment, there are some different types of assessment.  Formal assessment is a preplanned form of assessment in order to figure out what the students have learned, so far.  Informal assessment is a more general day to day assessment of the students' progress, and can be more individually based.  Formative and summative assessment can include both formal and informal assessment.  Formative assessment is useful to allow the teacher to see progress in the moment, throughout a lesson/focus study.  Summative assessment is more final, and assesses learning advancements at the end of a unit/chapter/book, etc.  For example... Formal-Formative Assessment: small groups designed to answer one question in depth, per group.  Formal-Summative Assessment: Chapter test.  Informal-Formative Assessment: Leading a discussion about whatever is being learned.  Informal-Summative Assessment: Pop Quiz about a chapter.  

A question I had about this chapter is how much assessment goes on, on a day-to-day basis?

Both forms of assessment would generally be indistinguishable from each other, however, one small detail puts them apart.  Formative assessments are for the teacher to figure out in what ways does he/she need to improve his/her teaching.  Summative assessment is for the students to see how well they have learned/progressed.

Forms of Assessment Blog Prompt 2

A learning goal could be learning spelling words for the week. This goal could be accomplished through information processing theory, where the children would connect the words to their prior knowledge of the subject. This could be done by having the students connect the words to mnemonics or pictures. The learning goal would be to have the child retrieve this information after it has been encoded. They could do this on the form of assessment of a spelling test. To aid the student to retrieve this information, the students could practice by being told the word verbally. Therefore, when the test is administered they have connected the information of how to spell the word to their long term memory, as well as the word sounded out, and therefore when you connect the two they have been internalized and are easily executed when the spelling test is given.

Post 2

My goal is for my students to grasp the addition concept in math. By doing this I will use the social cognitive theory by using modeling. I would show the problem that I want them figure out. Once I show the problem I will say the problem out loud to the students. This gives the students a visual and audio of the problem. After I do those two things I will finally write it on the board so the students know how to write it. If I keep repeating this the students will eventually be able to do all three of these things that will help them solve the problem. Once the test comes around the students will be able to recognize the shape of the numbers and how the numbers sound like when they repeat them to themselves. THis will help them on test and eventually on mental math.

Post 1

Out of the two chapters on for this weeks post the main thing that really stuck in my head actually came from the very first page of chapter 26. The thing that really stuck out was the purpose of Assessment in Education. The book gave four tools for data gathering that teachers could use and follow. Those for tools are 1. provide feedback on student’s progress and level achievements 2. Guide and motivate students in their own learnings. 3. Improve the general effectiveness of instruction 4. Identify modifications that will better meet the needs of individual students. 

	FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT	SUMMATIVE ASSESSMENT
FORMALLY ASSESSED	Give the students a pre test on their spelling words that they have been given.	Give the students a book report over a certain book that they just got done reading.
INFORMALLY ASSESSED	Put each student in a group of two and see how they work with their partner on assignments day by day	Give the students a final test over a group of items that they have learned throughout the year.

One question that I have on this section is on page 483 and the grading tips. On the grading tip # 6 says “Keep students informed of their standing in the class.” How often should you inform your students about their progress in the class? 

It’s really hard to tell which one is being used. The only way I could define them is that the book says a formative assessment helps both the teacher and the student while the summative assessment helps only the teacher evaluate the student. 

Out of the two chapters on for this weeks post the main thing that really stuck in my head actually came from the very first page of chapter 26. The thing that really stuck out was the purpose of Assessment in Education. The book gave four tools for data gathering that teachers could use and follow. Those for tools are 1. provide feedback on student’s progress and level achievements 2. Guide and motivate students in their own learnings. 3. Improve the general effectiveness of instruction 4. Identify modifications that will better meet the needs of individual students. 

	FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT	SUMMATIVE ASSESSMENT
FORMALLY ASSESSED	Give the students a pre test on their spelling words that they have been given.	Give the students a book report over a certain book that they just got done reading.
INFORMALLY ASSESSED	Put each student in a group of two and see how they work with their partner on assignments day by day	Give the students a final test over a group of items that they have learned throughout the year.

One question that I have on this section is on page 483 and the grading tips. On the grading tip # 6 says “Keep students informed of their standing in the class.” How often should you inform your students about their progress in the class? 

It’s really hard to tell which one is being used. The only way I could define them is that the book says a formative assessment helps both the teacher and the student while the summative assessment helps only the teacher evaluate the student. 

Blog Post 2- Assessment

My goal for my kindergarten class is for the students to be able to make the sound of each letter of the alphabet. I would use the social cognitive theory by using modeling. I would show a picture of the letter and make the sound of the letter and say the letter, then the students would model me and do the same. After practice they would become more familiar with the sounds. After I feel the students have had enough practice I will personally take them one by one and show them the letter and have them make the sound. I will be able to tell who has mastered the sounds.This would be an informally assessed summative assessment. I can use an informally assess formative approach them just by seeing which students are actually saying the sounds by themselves and who knows it.Once i actually test them on this it will be a formally assessed summative assessment.

Blog Post 1- Assessment

The chapters were mainly about assessments. Performance assessment is one that makes the students create something. There are two types, summative assessments and and formative assessments. A formative assessment would be like making the students write down four important points from their class lecture so the teacher could know if the students are understanding the main points. The teacher then would know what the students need to work on and know what areas to target. A summative assessment would be like a midterm evaluation. Teachers can give assessments other than tests, like different kinds of projects. A rubric would provide the student with the knowledge of what they need to do to meet the standards. A good assessment is: reliable, standardized, validity, and practical. 

Does the age of the students affect how often summative and/or formative assessments occur or which ones occur more?

	FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT	SUMMATIVE ASSESSMENT
FORMALLY ASSESSED	A Review Test	Midterm Informally/ Summative: Recording a students behavior throughout the year
INFORMALLY ASSESSED	Daily Log on students

Assessment Blog Post 2

I want my students to be able to know how to properly write a letter to someone. In order to achieve this learning goal, I will use the social cognitive theory to come up with lesson plans. I will use modeling as a tool to teach my students the correct way to write a letter to someone. I will begin by reading my students many different picture books that use letters as their form of storytelling. This will give the students an idea of what a good letter looks and sounds like. Then I will discuss the different parts of a letter with them and we can collectively collaborate and write a thank you letter to the janitor for cleaning our classroom every night. The books and the practice letter will give my students something to model. Then they will practice writing letters to each other. For a final assessment, I will have the students write me a letter about a specific topic and turn it in for a grade. I will grade them on content, correct letter writing procedures, and grammar/punctuation. This type of assessment is formative and formal. It is formative because I would not give them a test over the material and we would discuss our letters after the grading process. I think this type of assessment is effective because it would give me a good idea if the students not only know the steps to writing a letter, but can also sit down and actually use that information to write a letter of their own. In this way, this type of assessment can also sort of be considered a performance assessment. It is assessing whether the students can complete the task of writing a letter correctly.

Forms of Assessment - Post 2

The goal for this lesson is that I would like the students to be able to look at a letter and tell me what sound it makes. The learning theory that would most fit with this lesson would be Social Cognitive Theory. This is because for the students to know what sound each letter makes, they have to hear what it sounds like first. This would mean I would model pointing to the letter and saying what sound it makes so the students can observe and imitate my behavior. This type of lesson would take a while for the kids to learn and be able to remember all of them. So, I would conduct informal summative performance assessments through out the unit. This would help me to determine which students are at what point in their learning on this subject. At the end of the unit I would conduct a formal summative performance assessment to assess what the child has learned and if (s)he can look at a letter and tell me what sound it makes. I believe the informal summative performance assessments are such because they would just be conducted within the classroom at a random time almost every day. This would help the students learn what they need to work on because they would get immediate feedback. The assessment is performance because I do not think the students can show me they know what sound a letter makes with out actually verbalizing the sound. The other assessment is the formal summative performance assessment. This assessment would be the same as the informal summative performance assessments except for the fact that this would be the final assessment telling me what they have learned. This assessment would also have a score. If they can say all the sounds they get a 4, if they can say two thirds of the sounds they get a 3, if they can say half the sounds they get a 2, and if they can say one third of the sounds they get a 1. Even though this would be considered an "end of the unit" assessment, this subject would still be brought up through out the year.

Assessment #2

I want my students to be able to name all fifty US states in alphabetical order. I would use the information processing theory for my students to reach this goal. I would use both chunking and mnemonics and other strategies of encoding the material in to long term storage. I would teach the catchy song  “50 Nifty United States” and break it into sections (chunking) for students to master one part to another. Students have prior knowledge of the alphabet and familiar with what states are in the US. By allowing the students to place the new information that connects to old information, learning the states in alphabetically order will be encoded into long term memory. After we have finished the last state, the students will be given a formative test to be able to produce all fifty states in  alphabetical order. The students will have a rubric. Spelling does not count, but capitalization does. This assessment would also be summative because it is the final assessment to judge how well the students learned the material entirely and correctly. 

Forms of Assessment Prompt 2

I want my students to be able to present the meaning of the bill of rights.  There will be ten groups that are divided up to present their bill in front of the class.  I would use Vygotsky’s theory because he believed in the use of groups.  By using his theory I will have the students to work in groups.  And Vygotsky believed that students do not learn by themselves so I will have the students not just be working in groups and teaching and learning from each other, but by presenting their information groups will be teaching and learning from different groups about different bills.  This is a formal assessment because I will be giving the students a rubric that pertains to the information that I want them to discuss and the amount of time they have to present the information.  If I just was grading the students on how they presented the information that would be informal assessment.  This presentation will be assigned when we are learning about the Bill of Rights so it will be formative because they are making these presentations before we have reached the end of the chapter which would make it summative.

Forms of Assessment Prompt 1

These two modules were about assessment.  There is performance assessment which makes students do an activity or make something.  There are two different types of performance assessments, summative and formative.  Summative assessments are given at the end of a chapter, unit, etc.  A formative assessment is used to measure progression during the time of learning the material.  There is also authentic assessment which makes the students solve problems using their knowledge and skills.  The book gives examples of different types of assessments that students can do rather than just taking a test.  Some of these examples include presentations, projects, and portfolios.  These give students different chances to be assessed based purely on tests, but on how they can express their knowledge with minimal limitations.    There are also different ways to evaluate the students like with checklists, rubrics or based off scales.  These give the students a good idea of what the teacher is looking for so they know what to include on their assessment.  Teachers do not just purely have to assess students with physical objects but how they are doing in class.  This type of assessment is informal and the student usually does not know they are being assessed compared to formal which is the typical type of grading with tests, quizzes, projects, etc.  Finally there are four different types of characteristics that make a good assessment that all teachers should make sure the assessments meet: reliable, standardized, validity, and practical.

            One question that I have is, should teachers put more emphasis on formal or summative assessments or the same?

           

	FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT	SUMMATIVE ASSESSMENT
FORMALLY ASSESSED	A practice quiz over the weekly spelling words.	A quiz over the weekly spelling words on Friday.
INFORMALLY ASSESSED	Looking at how Jim acted for the first week of school.	Looking at how Jim acted every week throughout the quarter.

The only real way to know is if the assessment is given at the end of a section of learning like a chapter test compared to a pop quiz over the daily material.  Other than that the assessments should be the same it just limits the material that is going to be on each assessment.  More information will be covered overall in a summative compared to a formal assessment.

Assessment Blog Post 2

My goal is for my kindergarten students to be able to look at a picture of an animal and name that animal and what sound it might make. The learning theory I will use to structure my teaching of this goal is the social cognitive theory because of its emphasis on modeling. I think the best way to teach students the sounds the animals would make would be to model what I want to see the students imitating. While teaching the lesson I would make sure to keep the performance summative assessment I plan for the end of the lesson in mind so I can monitor whether the students are correctly identifying the animals in class. When I feel that the students have seen a sufficient amount of modeling to correctly identify the animals and their sounds I will call each student individually to a secluded part of the classroom with me and have show them pictures of animals and have them tell me the name of the animal and the sound it makes. This material requires a performance assessment because kindergarteners have not become proficient enough in spelling to demonstrate their knowledge in a better way. I would say this is an semi-informal assessment as well because the students will not have the pressure of being in front of a class to demonstrate their knowledge. This is a summative assessment because it will be used at the end of the lesson to assess whether or not the students actually achieved the learning goal.

Assessment 2

My goal is for students to learn and locate all 50 states on a map of the United States.  I decided to use the information processing theory to target the goal. This theory involves students using previous knowledge and then adding new information to enhance their existing schemata.  It also involves the long-term memory and how to store different information into the long-term memory through chunking and other strategies.  I first am going to introduce the map of the United States in different chunks so that students aren’t required to learn all of the states locations at once.  I will start with the mid west area because since we live in Indiana, many students will already have an existing schema of states surrounding Indiana to create.  By learning the states around Indiana they’ll be able to add to their existing schema and correlate state names with places on the map. I will teach each chunk of the States by having students color and write the names of states on their own map, so that they’re rehearsing the material and have better chances of converting the information into their long-term memory.  After each chunk is learned the next day we will have a quick assessment to see if students can locate each state on the map.  By chunking the different sections of the United States students can slowly learn the different sections without being overwhelmed by all the information at once.  The students at the end will have a large map to color and label to review the information of all the sections they learned.  Then there will be a test to see if the goal of learning the placement of the 50 states was achieved.  This form of assessment is best because it gives students a way to break down the material, and learn it through prior knowledge, and practice.  By having an assessment after each chunk, is a way of checking that each chunk is being learned before the final assessment.  This way I will know if students are struggling with a certain area, and I can provide further instruction to help students with that particular area of the map. 

Module 26 and 28 Blog Prompt 1

The main ideas from these modules were the different types of assessments to measure students understanding and knowledge of learning, and how as a teacher you can effectively evaluate the assessments and enhance student learning.  Some of the main purposes of an assessment include providing feedback on student progress, guiding and motivating students in their own learning, and understanding ways to better modify and enhance instruction to enrich student learning.  It’s important to decide when it’s appropriate to use a formal assessment such as a test or quiz and when to use an informal assessment, which includes the process of day-to-day observation of how students perform.  Next a teacher must decide how to assess a students learning, either by formative assessment or summative assessment.  In formative assessment a teacher checks for understanding and makes adjustments to improve students learning while in summative assessment a teacher documents achievements.  Effective assessment is important and helps students establish their own academic expectations to improve performance.  Assessment can facilitate learning when a teacher monitors changing perceptions and understanding to better their instruction.  It’s also very important to always provide feedback so students know how they can improve! It’s important for teachers to consider grading procedures when evaluating assessment.  Grades should be distributed fairly, and assessment should support student’s motivation to learn and improve.  Allowing students to make mistakes and fail sometimes is part of the learning process.  Another type of assessment is performance assessment, which is a form of assessment that requires students to carry out an activity or develop a product to show their knowledge or skill.  This type of assessment requires students to demonstrate their proficiency at a particular task by using high level problem solving skills, and not just answer questions on a test.  Different performance assessments include presentations, projects, and portfolios.  It’s crucial for teachers to have an efficient way to score performance.  Different grading procedures include checklists, rating scales, and rubrics.  There are many advantages in learning for performance assessments, but teachers must make sure they show validity to content being learned in class, and have a reliable way to grade and report feedback. 

What are some appropriate ways to assess performance assessments?

	Formative Assessment	Summative Assessment
Formally assessed	Provide a worksheet for students to complete after an assignment is taught to ensure understanding	Provide a test to see if students are understanding the learning material,
Informally assessed	Observe student’s progress of understanding concepts by answering questions and providing feedback after a lesson has been taught	Observe students and answer questions after the completion of a unit to determine if the goals of learning were completed

By just looking at formative versus summative assessment it’s difficult to determine which one is which.  The assessments are used in different ways.  When a teacher decides to use formative assessment for a learning activity, they’re checking to determine progress and understanding so they can provide feedback and improve a student’s learning while they’re still in progress.  A summative assessment is a teacher’s way to evaluate a student’s progress and assign a grade.