A diagnostic, or pre-assessment, is taken at the beginning of a unit or topic study. This assessment can a pre-test, filling out a KWL chart, or completing a self evaluation. The pre-assessment is used to test students prior knowledge of the topic that will be studied.
A formative assessment is one that is on-going throughout a unit of study. The teacher is keeping track of what the students know and what they need to review. This assessment is usually seen as a conference with the teacher, a peer evaluation, a journal entry, etc.
Lastly, there is a summative assessment. This assessment usually takes place at the end of a unit of study. It is the teacher making sure that the students know the information. It is usually seen as a unit test, a portfolio review, or a demonstration.
A quick review on the difference between formative and summative assessment can be seen by watching Formative versus Summative Assessment . This quick video provides definitions and examples of both formative and summative assessments.
Modes of Assessment
Checklists - identify desired student behaviors for lessons throughout the day. They provide a running record of the teacher's perceptions of students' participation and accomplishment.
Interviews - enable teachers to talk with students in some depth about their ideas and plans. A key set of questions for each interview is pre-planned, while additional questions probe students' ideas. A record is kept of all answers and any agreed-upon goals.
Classroom websites - involves the teacher and students, as well as parents and guardians. Family members can be asked to fill out short questionnaires or reports for the teacher to help the teacher gain a better understanding of their child's interests, abilities, and needs.
Journals - diaries or logs that students use to reflect on their school experiences. They encourage the use of writing as a learning process and as an individual connection with their teacher.
Quality circles - class or small-group evaluation sessions that may be teacher led or guided with a questionnaire or rubric.
The letter to ___ - each student writes a letter to the teacher, a family member, imaginary friend, etc. The teacher reminds the students of each of the goals of the unit, project or lesson. The letter responds to each of the goals. Can be shared with the class or only with the teacher.
The self study - a form of self-evaluation report. Whole class, small group, or partners, analyzes the project/ presentation techniques used and gives written feedback. Can have many forms but requires students to have trust in their teacher.
We were asked to create a "house" in class today. This house had to have 2 walls, a roof, and a foundation. We were given 4 words: learning, assessment, instruction, and standards. My house can be seen below.
In my "house" I placed standards as the base or foundation. Standards are the basis of a lesson. Before creating and building upon a specific topic, the standards have to be picked. Once you choose the stanards that you choose to address, you can start to create your lesson. The walls of the house are assessment and instruction. These are what "holds up" the lesson. Based off of standards, the teacher then creates a lesson for his/her students. While creating the lesson, the teacher has to keep in mind how he/she will implement the lesson and how he/she will assess his/her students. Lastly, there is the roof of the house, which is learning. Learning is what occurs from the assessments and the instruction that has taken place. Without standards, assessment, and instruction, there would be no learning taking place.
While creating our unit plan, we will have to remember this "house." We will have to choose standards that address the topics that we have been assigned, and then begin planning our lesson.
Authentic vs Traditional Assessment
Chapter 7 reading:
Selected-Response Assessment: Multiple Choice, Binary-Choice, and Matching
Multiple Choice Items
-They are widely used in schools even though they may not be the best method for assessing.
-They have a stem, in the form of a question or incomplete statement
-3+ alternatives that contain one correct and 2 distractors (or wrong answers)
-A direct ? is best because...
*familiar format to students
*makes grammar easier
*less demand on reading
-This questioning is better for young students to show them a clear right or wrong
-Advantages
- broad sampling of info
- scoring is easy
- good practice for students
- more reliable then binary choice items.
- less guessing factor
- free from response set
-Disadvantages
- take longer to answer
- difficult to create MC questions
Tips for writing MC ?s
1.Write the Stem as a Clearly Described Question or Task
- The stem should be meaningful by itself
3. Write the Correct Response with No Irrelevant clues
4. Write the distractors to be Plausible yet wrong
- The distractors are useless if they are so obviously wrong so make them plausible
- The # of distractors depends on a number of factors
- age of students
- the question itself
6. Use each alternative as the correct answer about the same number of times
- about 25% of the items should have the same letter as the correct response
- this is to avoid a pattern that the students are likely to guess
- knowledge of facts builds an important foundation for other kinds of learning
- Comprehension is demonstrated when students understand the essential meaning of a concept, principle, or procedure.
- This is when students are able to USE what they know to solve problems in a NEW situation
- A good ex. is mathematics b/c it is more then just memorization
-Binary Choice Items
- when students select an answer from only two response categories, they are completing a binary choice item.
- it is also called alternative response, alternate response, or alternate choice
- PROPOSITION is a declarative sentence that makes a claim about content or relationships among content.
- ex: Lansing is the capital of Michigan
- Peru is in the southern hemisphere
- The area of a sq. is found by squaring the length of one side
- good binary-choice begins with propositions about major knowledge targets.
- keep them short, simple, and direct
- Make sure directions are clear to students
- Include homogeneous premises and responses
- Use four to eight premises
- Keep responses short and logically ordered
- Avoid grammatical clues to correct answers
- Put premises and responses on the same page
- Use more responses than premises
- Advantages
- there are several ?s about the same topic
- info is provided which makes it possible to separate assessment from reasoning skills from content knowledge of the subject
- easy to use every day materials
- time consuming and difficult to write
- difficult finding the right difficult level
- unable to see how students organize their thoughts
Chapter 8
Constructed Response Assessment: Completion, Short-Answer, and Essay Items
Completion Items
-This is the most common and effective way to assess knowledge
-Good for measuring how well students can recall facts
- easy to construct
- good sampling of different facts
- guessing contributes little to error
- scorer reliability is high
- scoring can be done quickly
- provide more valid results than a test with an equal number of selected-response items
- scoring takes a long time
- if the sentence is not well written, more than one answer may be possible
- Paraphrase sentences from textbooks and other instructional materials
- word the sentence so that only one brief answer is correct
- place one or two blanks at the end of the sentence
- if answered in numerical units, specify the unit required
- do not include clues to the correct answer
-The student supplies an answer consisting of one word, a few words, or a sentence or two are generally preferred to completion items for assessing knowledge targets.
-Steps
- State the Item so that only one answer is correct
- state the item so that the required answer is brief
- do not use questions verbatim from textbooks or other instructional materials
- designate units required for the answer
- state the item succinctly with words students understand
-can tap complex thinking by requiring students to organize and integrate info., interpret info., give arguments, give explanations, evaluate of merit of ideas, and conduct other types of reasoning.
-Steps
- Construct the Item to elicit skills identified in the learning target
- write the it sem so that students clearly understand the specific task
- Indicate how much time students should spend on each essay item
- avoid giving students options as to which essay ?s they will answer
- Outline what constitutes a good or acceptable answer as a scoring key
- select an appropriate scoring method
- holistic- the teacher makes an overall judgement about the answer, giving it a single score or grade
- analytic- achieved by giving each of the identified criteria separate points
4. Use a systematic process in scoring many essays at the same time during period
5. if possible keep the identity of the student anonymous
Chapter 13
Grading and Reporting Student Performance
Teachers' Judgments in Grading
-it is a practice that is objective measure of student performance
-An A should then mean that a student has mastered the course content, while an F is failure to master content
-Should Terry get a low grade even though he scores so high on tests?
-Should Burt get an A b/c he showed improvement?
Functions of Marking and Grading
-Why do we grade?
-The "Curve" or adjustment of % correct b/c some students had really high scores
At the end of the week, we created tests based on these methods that we read about. The tests are to be taken by our peers, and they are supposed to comment about them in our class forum.
This week will also created our own artifact bags. In these bags, we had to come up with 2-3 items from our designated topic (my group had New York and the new nation), a book that correlates with the items, and a website that can be used to further research on the topic. My group created a google presentation of our artifact bags to share with the class.
We have been using gdocs a lot this semester so far. I think it's a get way to colloborate with eachother and get things done in a proactive manner.
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