Standard 8: Assessment

Description

The teacher understands and uses formal and informal assessment strategies to evaluate and ensure the continuous intellectual, social, and physical development of the learner.

Reflection

One of the main goals of assessment is to answer the question, “do they get it?”. Traditionally this was always done with a paper and pencil test. However, we now know that these test can be very misleading and in many cases actually tell us very little of what our students know and understand and more of what they can memorize. There have been some major reform movements in assessment over the past few years. Teachers are realizing that assessment can take on many different forms and should be ongoing throughout the year. With this the teachers, students, parents, and schools will all know where each child stands in their academic process.

Another major change in assessment is the idea that not all assessment needs to be graded. A teacher does not always need tangible work with a grade on the top to communicate to the student weather or not they understand the key concepts. More and more teachers are using ungraded journal entries, drawings, speeches, music, and many other sources for assessment. Similar to standard three, diverse learners, we also have diversity in expression. Allowing students to have different options to express themselves will allow each student to better show his or her true potential.

When deciding on an assessment, whether it is formal or summative it should be reliable, valid, and fair. This is to say that the result should be consistent to what is stated. Also it should measure exactly what it is intended to measure, without any confusion among the teacher or students. Lastly assessment should be done fairly, without bias and accessible to every student.

Evidence:

• Insert lesson plans here:

• To see more on how my definition of assessment has transformed throughout graduate school click here for a short paper on assessment.
• Lab Rubric, This is a link to a lab rubric for a lesson plan that I developed during graduate school.