The journey to being a 21st century teacher. "Life is 10% what happens to us and 90% how we react to it." - Dennis P. Kimbro
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Authentic Assessment Toolkit
Assessment is twofold. First, and most obvious, is student assessment, which should always be continuous, dynamic, formative, and never-ending. Second is the assessment of instruction. Like student assessment, assessment of instruction should be continuous and never-ending. Instruction assessment should be reflective. Assessment of instruction can be broken down into teacher assessment, material assessment, and instructional method assessment. Please let me elaborate on my philosophy of assessment.
My personal philosophy dictates that student assessment is most valuable when it is done formatively. Continuously and routinely circling back to previously learned material in order to evaluate retention and establish connections. Connections will be made in my classroom; connections between various parts of the subject matter, connections between the subject matter and other subjects, and connections to real life. The instruction needs to be authentic. It needs to relate somehow to the student’s life or else the material has little meaning, is in jeopardy of not being retained, and is harder to teach. For this reason I believe in finding out the interests that students have outside of school. This may be accomplished through the use of alternative assessment tools such as portfolios and journals, both of which I plan to use throughout my teaching career. Student assessment in my classroom will be dynamic. It will be fast-paced, slow-paced, and be based on instruction that entails more than the topic at hand. Whenever possible, I will like to establish connections between the topic being taught and other topics within the same subject and different subjects as well. Establishing interconnectedness among different subjects [in my opinion] makes school more meaningful for the students. For instance, relating a recent Math lesson to a lesson on industrialization in Social Studies, or a Science lesson on plants to a Social Studies lesson on Native Americans and how they grew their food. The connections to be made are endless and will aid in helping the student answer “why do I need to learn this”.
Assessment of instruction is an intricate part of my philosophy. During instruction, I will not only be assessing the students, but myself as well. Are the students reacting as expected to my instruction? If not then take a step back and adjust. Did I assess the students’ prior knowledge of the topic accurately? If not then ask more meaningful diagnostic questions. In addition to assessing myself during instruction, I will assess the day’s lessons after instruction as well. Personal reflection will allow me the opportunity to give meaningful instruction which ultimately will lead to more accurate student assessment.
In summary, my personal philosophy of assessment is based on more alternative assessment practices rather than traditional methods, and is well-aligned with the Essential Learnings Framework. Tests do have their place, are a fact of life, and are a chance for the students to test their knowledge. If tests do need to be administered then I would rather give a series of short quizzes as opposed to one large exam at the end of a unit. I would not assign grades to these quizzes, but rather use them to gauge the effectiveness of my instruction. I feel that journal writing, exhibitions, demonstrations, and activities related to instruction are much more valuable ways for students to demonstrate knowledge. I would assign grades to these alternative means of assessment. Assessing ones higher level thinking skills is a valuable indicator of knowledge. Thus, assessment of these alternative practices is focused on higher level thinking skills. After all, the goal of all assessments should be the students’ preparedness for the highly dynamic workplace of today. It won’t be enough to know facts, but rather to have the confidence and the ability to think a process through to a solution will be more valuable for the students of today.
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Doug, you make many good points when it comes to assessment. It seems that it would be easy to focus on traditional summative assessments within a classroom, as those are the ones that generally come with the texts and because of the pressure of the New York State Assessments. However, as you say, formative assessments, formal and informal, have much more power to inform our teaching. They give us daily glimpses into our students' learning and the effectiveness of our lessons.
ReplyDeleteIn addition, I think your focus on keeping assessments as real to life and connected to cross curriculum content will go a long way to making the content engaging and memorable.
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