Assessment

  Assessment: What it Means to Me   

Post #1
            There was no other more stressful day for me during my time in elementary and secondary school than that of report card day. My hands were always sweaty when it was final handed to me at the end of the day, followed by whispers between peers about how well or not well we all did. Assessment is crucial to teaching, but there is a big difference between good assessment and bad assessment to me. I never really appreciated receiving letter grades I was younger, I much preferred receiving percentages. One thing I remember is never really reading the feedback my teachers gave me, I think it is because they are structured to be read and interpreted by the parent or guardian, not the student.

                I feel that at the same time that I know a lot about assessment, there is as much that I am not aware of. This makes me feel excited but nervous, due to the fact that I know that having a handle of assessment, and what good or bad assessment is a key sign whether or not you are a good teacher or not. I believe that assessment is crucial for becoming a good teacher. I also believe that assessment itself is always changing, and show should how we as educators assess. I think assessment should be done by the teacher every day, that at the end of the day the educator should be able to look back or refer to any notes they made about an individual student. With more criteria to draw from, I think this would help educators better assess how students are doing. I also believe that students should be kept more up to date on how they are doing, not by supplying them with grades or progress reports, but by short face to face interactions with the educator. I believe this would better serve the student so they can improve.

                Assessment obviously goes hand in hand, and the structure at which we are supposed to assess is laid out but I believe that every teacher should be able to alter how they assess, based on the students they have in their class. 










Post #2

After my short time in my Assessment class, I have come to the realization that some educators may dread midterm reporting or report cards just as much as their students do, especially if they are not prepared. The importance of having a good structured plan on how I will assess my students in the future is the biggest impact Growing Success has had on my belief in regards to assessment in general. I still think that assessment needs to be done every day by a teacher, but I now know what kind of resources are needed in order to do so.

At the beginning of the course, we were introduced to the concept of assessment AS learning, and how it is connected to assessment OF learning. The OF learning variety is the type of learning I was mostly associated with, most people are. However, the notion of using assessment AS learning affected me greatly. I can relate to how Growing Success views assessment AS learning as a crucial part of a student’s time in school. Self-assessment is not a new concept to me, but the idea that educators deliberately include aspects of assessment AS learning into their lessons and tasks has made me realize that the way we assess needs to mirror the amount of effort I will put forth in regards to how intricate my lesson plans are. Assessment is much more than scoring tests and checking spelling, there are so many ways teachers can structure their assessment so the grade that ends up on the report card accurately reflects the level that the students are located.

I think it can be easily said that many people do not enjoy being assessed, even naturally positive feedback can be twisted in one’s mind and taken as a negative. I think the level of enjoyment a student has had when completing a task or finished creating something is crucial to effective assessment. When a student is passionate about what they are being assessed on, they receive the feedback much better.

Growing Success is sort of an end-all-be-all document if one wants to learn how to become a better assessor. I have discovered how much of a connection there is between the importance of planning lessons and units to the importance of planning how I will be assessing my students. Thinking ahead and having an array of assessment tools that do not only focus on creation of quantitative data, but also focus on assessment AS learning and assessing in a diagnostic and formative way is key to my success as an educator in the future. Being prepared to assess your students can only result in a happier educator when it comes to “report card time”. I can imagine how it would be a stressful time of year as an educator who has not been keeping anecdotal records of their students or has only accumulated quiz and test grades in order to assess their students.

I think it is crucial for educators to think that there is a direct correlation between how well they plan their lessons and units to how effective they are as a teacher. I also think the same can be said about assessment, that there is a correlation between how well educators think out how they will assess their students to how well their students learn and progress throughout the year.  During my time as a football coach, there is no better feeling than seeing your players succeed at a part of a game they did not do well in before. I think that I will receive a similar feeling when I observe students positively progressin
g in my classes in the future. The best way to determine whether or not I will feel that way would be by focusing on being the best and most effective assessor I can be, so I have a plethora of assessment tools to solidify my thinking of whether or not the students is getting the most out my class and succeeding at their highest level.



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