Assessment is used in educational decision making because assessment data provides information about individual students, quality of teaching, and effectiveness of educational programs. Assessment can be used to evaluate student strengths and weaknesses, match students to appropriate levels of instruction, and help students make appropriate educational and vocational choices that match their skills and interests. Assessment helps determine the value and effectiveness of instructional programs and provides direction for modifications that will better meet students' needs. It is important to develop an assessment plan as a part of being an effective teacher as well because an assessment plan describes the learning objectives, time frame, and types of assessment and evaluation for each lesson and set of lessons. It is also important to take into consideration different grading procedures with each assessment so that student's are more motivated to learn and improve. Performance assessment is any assessment that requires students to carry out an activity or develop a product in order to demonstrate skill/knowledge. Formative uses of performance assessment provide feedback in the moment to help students improve and summative uses of performance assessment help the teacher evaluate students' progress, as well as the effectiveness of instructional methods at the end of a unit or grading period. Advantages of performance assessments include their consistency with modern learning theory and the integration of knowledge, skills, and abilities. However, high-quality performance assessments can be difficult to design and time consuming to give and grade.
How do you know if a rubric is effective with grading a student's work? When is it appropriate to start actually giving back rubrics to young students? I feel as though younger students are less motivated if they get poor feedback, whereas will consistently do better with more praise on the things they did well on.
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FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT
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SUMMATIVE ASSESSMENT
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FORMALLY ASSESSED
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Worksheet that is on the material learned that day and graded that day as a class.
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A final given at the end of the semester on a particular subject.
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INFORMALLY ASSESSED
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Teacher that asks questions to facilitate discussion on what was taught in the previous lesson.
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Teacher gives an unexpected assignment in class where students have to make a concept map of the characters in the book they just finished.
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You cannot tell if an assessment is formative or summative just by looking at it because assessments are defined by how they influence and motivate the students learning after the actual assessment. Formative assessments are used to provide feedback in the moment of the assessment in order to help students improve. If the student improves from getting feedback immediately it is formative. However, summative assessments help teacher's evaluate student progress, as well as the effectiveness of the instructional methods. If the student has shown progression after the assessment and it is clear that the instructional methods were effective, then the assessment is summative.
I find Jessi's question interesting about rubrics and discussing their effectiveness. I think it is appropriate to begin giving students rubrics back when they can comprehend the concept of their grades, and how the teacher is grading them on. I think fourth or fifth grade is an appropriate time to begin with rubrics because students can understand their grades. I think it becomes effective when students can take the comments and use them as advice and help for future assignments.
ReplyDeleteAs far as rubrics go, I feel that if you are handing it back to younger students its in the way you phrase your feedback. The more negative it sounds, the more harshly they will react to it, but if you phrase it in a positive way and state the fact that they did great but could continue to work on certain areas for perfection, I feel as if that's a great way to keep them excited about what they're doing and still give them thoughts on ways to "top" their last performance.
ReplyDeleteI think rubrics can be appropriate for all ages. For all students it gives them an outline of what is expected of them and what they need to do to get a perfect grade. For younger students, you can still give them praise for the parts of the project that they did well on, but they should still be allowed to know what they need to improve on.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you mean by performance assessments being consistent with modern learning theory? Do you mean they're more authentic or facilitate transfer? These may be true but I want to see it in your own words.
ReplyDeleteWhether or not you give a paper rubric to students afterward, I think that your expectations for a particular assessment should be clear beforehand--and that's the thing you should focus on. You might imagine giving them the rubric beforehand (like I do), to communicate exactly what you are asking for and what parts are more important than others. However, even the way you phrase a question can communicate that information. The rubric someone gets afterward should never be a surprise if the expectations are completely clear before the assessment.
I just wanted to note that an 'informal' assessment doesnt necessarily mean that it is unplanned or unexpected. It may be true that it's almost often unexpected by students, but a teacher can (and should) plan these assessments into a lesson (thinking about why she's giving it and what kind of informal assessment she wants to give, what she expects to she, and how she might respond to the potential outcomes of the assessment).