Assessment is "the full range of information gathered and synthesized by teachers for the purpose of making decisions about their students." Teachers use assessments to determine what information the students have acquired and makes judgments as to how to proceed with the lesson. After teaching particular material, a teacher may check for understanding with a quiz or homework or by randomly asking students questions regarding the topic in order to decide if more information should be taught or the previous material should be reviewed again.
In assessing students' technology projects, teachers should find ways to judge the amount of understanding the students have about technology. Some students may find a technological project easy and lacking a challenge while other students, who have had less exposure to technology may struggle severely. Teachers can assess the skill level of the students and determine future instructional strategies to help each student feel challenged and successful.
Evaluation is "the process of making judgments, assigning value, or deciding worth." The grading portion of testing falls into the evaluation category. Teachers must put a value on how well students are able to do their work. Students may be placed in groups determined by their evaluations. Grades inform students and parents of how well the student acquired the information that was taught.
In evaluating student technology projects, the teacher may place certain students together according to their skill level so he/she may more accurately teach each group, or may place higher skilled students with lower skilled students in a group to teach one another. Technology projects for students may be difficult to grade and place value on the work that is accomplished. A basic grading rubric is helpful for students to follow and maintain focus on the project, while allowing the teacher ways to decide the quality or worth of the finished project.
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I agree. I think it is important to plan lessons around how you want to assess the students, rather than decide afterwards. That way you can have a better idea of how to teach the material in a way that the students will be able to reiterate it in the assessment. And also, make sure the students are aware of how they are going to be assessed, so they can prepare for it. It's my experience that students don't respond well to surprises on assignments and tests.
ReplyDeleteAssessment is a tricky thing. I'm taking an assessment course this semester and if there's one thing the professor has drilled into our heads, it's that every test has a margin of error, which makes perfect sense and is completely logical. A margin of error exists because there are too many factors to consider when assessing a student, and too often we use only two or three forms of data to assess a student rather than consider various angles and non-data information. This is not to say that the system is completely broken, just slightly flawed (not that there's anything perfect in this world anyways).
ReplyDeleteI also think the idea of using a grading rubric for certain lessons is beneficial to students. Expectations are made very clear this way!
ReplyDeletethe concept about planning lesson plans around how you want to assess the students is called backwards design. i think that is what allison was getting at. And yes i agree with allison that students shouldn't have to play games on trying to figure out how to study for a test but rather know what learning objectives they are going to be tested on and study from that.
ReplyDeleteBackwards Design can be extremely helpful when trying to determine how to plan lessons and how to assess students. It really forces you to think about where, specifically, you want your students to end up at the end of the lesson, unit, quarter, etc. Absolutely students should be given a very clear idea of what is expected and what to focus on when studying for an exam! We all remember what it was like to have a huge test and to have no idea what to study...it's frustrating!
ReplyDelete"In evaluating student technology projects, the teacher may place certain students together according to their skill level so he/she may more accurately teach each group, or may place higher skilled students with lower skilled students in a group to teach one another."
ReplyDeleteI think this is a really hard statment to make as far as student 'levels' are concerned. The term for "disabled learning" students is increasing to include various patterned thinkers, dyslexia, and various other issues and a student may be labeled, according to a teacher, due to a different perspective on how to approach the assignments provided, as a lower level student when really... a differen perspective is all that's really different. So I think that's one thing that basic grade and technology driven assessment can actually screw up (pardon the callousness but that's what it is really) within a classroom.
On another note though, maybe a little random, for some reason when I read this bit from your post, it made me think of the Yearly Plans referenced in the article on page 11 (out of the 15 in the article)simply because of the jeauxtaposition between yearly improvement assesment versus student level improvement assesment within a school. Yearly assessment I think maneuvers a lot within a district, and so for the article to just push yearly planning aside, or address it so vaguely... seems a little bit of an understatement.