Assessments: to inform instructional decisions and to motivate students to try to learn. (Stiggin...
Assessments: to inform instructional decisions and to motivate students to try to learn. (Stiggins, 2005)
by Amanda I
1. Assessment OF Learning: refers to strategies designed to confirm what students know, demonstrate whether or not they have met curriculum outcomes or the goals of their individualized programs, or to certify proficiency and make decisions about students’ future programs or placements. It is designed to provide evidence of achievement to parents, other educators, the students themselves, and sometimes to outside groups (e.g., employers, other educational institutions). (Lorna M, 2006).
2. Assessment FOR Learning: acknowledges the critical importance of the instructional decisions made by students and their teachers working as a team. In that context, students become consumers of assessment information too, using evidence of their own progress to understand what comes next for them. (Stiggins, 2005)
3. Summative: Given normally (though not always) at the end of the year or unit, summative assessments assess a student’s mastery of a topic after instruction. It demonstrates the extent of a learner's success in meeting the assessment criteria used to gauge the intended learning outcomes of a module or programme, and which contributes to the final mark. (University of Exter, 2006).
3.1. Advantages: • These tests hold students and their teachers accountable for meeting required standards. • They judge the sufficiency of learning at a particular point in time. • Allows to make informed decisions about student’s future based on concrete results Disadvantages: • The Evidence for Policy and Practice Information and Co-ordinating Centre at the University of London found a direct correlation between performance on national standardized tests and self-esteem. Students who did poorly experienced lowered self-esteem, which in turn reduced their willingness to put in the effort required for future academic success. • Teachers often feel enormous pressure to explicitly "teach the test" at the expense of other curriculum goals and objectives.
3.1.1. Application: Providing students with an end of unit Science test which has a variety of types of questions such as Multiple choice, short answer, critical thinking and mini essay; enabling students to demonstrate a variety of skills and concepts understood through out the unit. (Grade 6-9)
4. High Stakes: Many school districts are mandating tests to measure student performance and to hold individual schools and school systems accountable for that performance. Also known as standardized assessments, everything about the test is standardized, from the questions themselves, to the length of time students have to complete it (although some exceptions may be made for students with learning or physical disabilities), to the time of year in which the test is taken. Student performance on these tests has become the basis for such critical decisions as student promotion from one grade to the next, and compensation for teachers and administrators.
4.1. Advantages: • Test results give classroom teachers important information on how well individual students are learning and provide feedback to the teachers themselves on their teaching methods and curriculum materials. • Tests, along with student grades and teacher evaluations, can provide critical measures of students' skills, knowledge, and abilities. Disadvantages: • Large-scale standardized tests that use multiple choices for automated grading may unfairly disadvantage large classes of students, including non-native speakers with language or cultural barriers to understanding the questions asked, those with physical or learning disabilities, or those who do not do well under the pressure of the testing conditions. • A single test can only provide a "snapshot" of student achievement and may not accurately reflect an entire year's worth of student progress and achievement. (Spira) and (APA, 2015).
4.1.1. Application: Using school wide MAP tests at the beginning and the end of the academic year to determine student progress and flag possible 'at risk' students who may need further evaluations. (Grade 6 -9)
5. Formative: Given throughout the learning process, formative assessments seek to determine how students are progressing through a certain learning goal. (Ronan, 2015) “Instruction and formative assessment are indivisible,” say authors Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam (1998, p. 143). “Assessment… refer[s] to all those activities undertaken by teachers—and by their students in assessing themselves—that provide information to be used as feedback to modify teaching and learning activities…. [It is] formative assessment when the evidence is actually used to adapt the teaching to meet student needs” (p. 140). The researchers found that strengthening formative assessments can raise student achievement overall and be especially helpful to low-achieving students (Black & Wiliam, 1998).
5.1. Advantages: • Allows teachers to adjust their teaching to meet individual student needs, and to better help all students to reach high standards. Teachers also actively involve students in the process, helping them to develop skills that enable them to learn better. • Motivates by helping students watch themselves succeeding by helping them believe that success is within reach if they keep trying. • Improves equity of student outcomes. • Schools which use formative assessment show not only general gains in academic achievement, but also particularly high gains for previously underachieving students. • Students who are actively building their understanding of new concepts (rather than merely absorbing information). Disadvantages: • Perceived tensions between formative assessments and highly visible summative tests to hold schools accountable for student achievement (teachers often teach to these summative tests and examinations). • A lack of coherence between assessments and evaluations at the policy, school and classroom levels. • Fears that formative assessment is too resource-intensive and time-consuming to be practical. (OECD, 2005)
5.1.1. Application: Using graphic organizers for the writing process to gauge if students are grasping the modeled structure of an analytical essay and are able to use the prompts and scaffolding to outline the essay in Science or English. Feedback will be provided once the Introduction and a body paragraph is completed in order to help with the rest of the outline. The completed outline will be further formatively assessed before the information is transferred to a formal essay structure. (Grade 6 - 9)
6. Performance-based: Performance-based assessment requires students to use high-level thinking to perform, create, or produce something with transferable real-world application. Research has shown that such assessment provides useful information about student performance to students, parents, teachers, principals, and policymakers.
6.1. Advantages: • Performance assessment uses tasks that require students to demonstrate their knowledge, skills, and strategies by creating a response or a product. • Taps into students’ higher-order thinking skills, such as evaluating the reliability of sources of information, synthesizing information to draw conclusions, or using deductive/inductive reasoning to solve a problem. • Used for both formative and summative purposes. Disadvantages: • Building a credible and defensible performance based assessment systems takes much time, research and teacher and students involvement. (Stanford SRN, 2008)
6.1.1. Applications: Require a student to conduct research on the impacts of fertilizer on local groundwater and then report the results to the public through a public service announcement or informational brochure. (Grade 8)
7. Portfolio: According to the Glossary of Education Reform (2013), a portfolio is a compilation of student work assembled for the purpose of (1) evaluating coursework quality and academic achievement, (2) creating a lasting archive of academic work products, and (3) determining whether students have met learning standards or academic requirements for courses, grade-level promotion, and graduation.
7.1. Advantages: • Compiling, reviewing, and evaluating student work over time can provide a richer and more accurate picture of what students have learned and are able to do than more traditional measures. • In some cases, blogs or online journals may be maintained by students in an e-portfolio and include ongoing reflections related to learning activities and progress. • Portfolios may also be presented—publicly or privately—to parents, teachers, and community members as part of a demonstration of learning or capstone project. Disadvantages: • Portfolios can be viewed as burdensome, add-on requirements rather than as central organizing tools for a student’s academic career. • Portfolios may also be viewed negatively if they are poorly executed, if they tend to be filed away and forgotten, if they are not actively maintained by students, if they are not meaningfully integrated into the school’s academic program, or if educators do not use them to inform the instruction of students. (Abbott, 2014)
7.1.1. Application: Students will maintain an e-portfolio of work that demonstrates improvement and progress in each of their MYP subjects and include self reflection at the end of the year for each subject and SMART goals for the upcoming year. The e-portfolio will be accessible to parents in order to be active participants in their children's learning. (Grade 6-9)
8. Authentic: is an assessment where the tasks and conditions are more closely aligned to what you would experience in real situations or within employment. This form of assessment is designed to develop students skills and competencies alongside academic development. For example, authentic assessments ask students to read real texts, to write for authentic purposes about meaningful topics, and to participate in authentic literacy tasks such as discussing books, keeping journals, writing letters, and revising a piece of writing until it works for the reader. Both the material and the assessment tasks look as natural as possible. Furthermore, authentic assessment values the thinking behind work, the process, as much as the finished product (Pearson & Valencia, 1987; Wiggins, 1989; Wolf, 1989).
8.1. Advantages: • An "episode of learning" for the student (Wolf, 1989). • Students are learning and practicing how to apply important knowledge and skills for authentic purposes. • Emphasizes cooperative work; focus more on writing, problem solving, and real-world, hands-on activities; and deemphasize rote learning and teaching. Disadvantages: • Assessments are longer and more complex than more traditional assessments. (Houghton Mifflin, 1997)
8.1.1. Application: After learning about energy consumption and its environmental effects, students will conduct an energy audit of their house and write a letter to their parents providing applicable and appropriate suggestions for the reduction of energy consumption while providing the positive environmental impact of their suggestions. ( Grade 7)
9. Self assessment: is a process of "student engagement in (which) they can watch themselves successfully negotiating the road to competence. Ultimately, then, students learn to generate their own descriptive feedback and to set goals for what comes next in their learning. Each of these specific practices draws the learner more deeply into taking responsibility for her or his own success." (Stiggins, 2006)
9.1. Advantages: • Encourages student involvement and responsibility. • Encourages students to reflect on their role and contribution to the process of the group work. • Allows students to see and reflect on their peers’ assessment of their contribution. • Focuses on the development of student’s judgment skills. Disadvantages: • Potentially increases lecturer workload by needing to brief students on the process as well as on-going guidance on performing self evaluation. • Self evaluation has a risk of being perceived as a process of presenting inflated grades and being unreliable. • Students feel ill equipped to undertake the assessment.
9.1.1. Application: Providing students with the assessment criteria and rubric to self assess their work before they hand in their first draft. This will give them the opportunity to strive for a more advanced and deeper understanding of the subject matter, skills and processes before the final submission. (Grade 6 - 9)
10. Diagnostic: According to Ronan (2015), given at the beginning of the school year, or the beginning of a new unit of study, a diagnostic test attempts to quantify what students already know about a topic. In addition, it assesses what the learner already knows and/or the nature of difficulties that the learner might have, which, if undiagnosed, might limit their engagement in new learning.
10.1. Advantage: Understanding how much a student already knows about a topic is vital for effective differentiation in the classroom. Some students may already be experts in a given topic, while others may be missing foundational skills that are key to mastery. Diagnostic assessment lets teachers pinpoint a student’s preconceptions of a topic, helping teacher’s anchor further instruction on what students have already mastered and helps teachers provide instruction to skills that need more work such as implementing interventions designed to bolster the missing skills. Disadvantage: the title uses the term diagnosis which is often associated with a malady or disease and thus has a negative connotation which can be misinterpreted by individuals specially in reference to recognizing students with special education needs. (Archuleta)
10.1.1. Application: Using a reading diagnostic test to pinpoint at what grade level children are reading based on their mastery of phonics, blending, word recognition and text comprehension. Results from these tests will be used for the remedial instruction in the Study Skills class and in helping students select 'just right' reading books. (Grade 6 - 9)