Assessment

**What is assessment? Why and how is assessment done?**

Assessments give us information about the level of student learning. It is a way of //measuring// student progress and student learning. By giving students assessments teachers are able to make sure that the students are learning and meeting standards. Meeting standards are not the most important part of teaching, but school administrators enforce that certain standards are met. Assessments are mainly to make sure students are grasping the information that is being taught. Assessments also help teachers make sure their teaching strategies are working. The means to measure student learning include paper and pencil tests, portfolios, work samples, projects, reports, journals, models, presentations, demonstrations, and various other types of product and performance assessments. There are several different ways of going about assessment.

Diagnostic assessments are one type of assessment which occurs before the actual learning takes place so the teacher is aware of how much prior knowledge the student has and will be able to help students who do not have as much prior knowledge as others. One example of a diagnostic assessment is a probe. A probe is a mini test given before instruction to see what prior knowledge the student has already. This is a great starting point for instructors.

Formative assessments take place during the lesson. These are to make sure the student is understanding the information that is being taught. It allows the teacher to go over information the student’s are not grasping and to present the lesson in a different way if the students are not grasping the concepts. This may take place in the form of classwork or guided practice. The students may be given worksheets or workbook work to do during the class time. The teacher would then walk around the class looking at each student’s paper and stopping at individual desks to provide extra help to the students that seem to be struggling. Another way teachers can check for understanding during formative assessment is by using a checklist. The teacher can carry the checklist with them when walking around the room to monitor students and assure they are on target with their learning.

Finally, summative assessments are assessments done at the end of the lesson. As mentioned above, these assessments may take the form of a test, project, etc. Summative assessments are important because they demonstrate to the teacher the extent to which the student grasped the concept that was being taught. By implementing these different types of assessments in the classroom teachers are able to see what their students are understanding and what they need more guidance/review in. Technology can be used in the classroom to accomplish assessment by implementing different tools such as portfolios, and E-portfolios. When teachers use portfolios as a form of assessment they are able to view students work over a period of time. Providing feedback to the students and having them reflect on their own work allows them to expand their thinking process and the content they are learning. Building upon knowledge is extremely important in the learning process.

“In order to evaluate authentic learning, we must use authentic assessment.” Although standardized tests measure content knowledge, performance assessments measure task performance which will relate more to the students’ future. Performance assessments refer to a way in which we assess the student’s skills by asking them to perform tasks that require those skills. Two types of performance assessments are alternative and authentic assessment.

Alternative assessment is any type of assessment in which students create a response to a question or task. For example this might consist of a project in which they can be assessed by using a rubric. If there is a rubric made, it should evaluate content knowledge but also performance. For example, if they were to create a PowerPoint, did they use content slides, animations, etc. The assessment will be valid and reliable if it is directly matched to the goal and objective of the lesson.

Authentic assessment is where students perform a task that is meaningful to the content that they learned and would be a task they might have to complete in the future. This could consist of a voting task while learning about democracy. This is the most important type of assessment for students.

The purpose of assessment is to seek support and improve students learning. It is the result of a movement toward accountability and involves a shift from traditional view of what a teachers inputs to what students actually learn, do and achieve. Assessment is an ongoing process of setting high expectation for students learning and measuring progress toward the learning outcomes and providing a basis for reflection, discussion and feedback. Assessment is the process of observing and measuring learning. After assessment administrators review the data results they provide faculty with a better understanding of what students are learning and engage students more deeply in the process of learning content. This enables better performance and greater efficiency across the entire system. By using strategies that draw students into the process of assessment will more likely benefit because the students will learn the content while adding learning skills that will be useful to them in the future.