This week I read many articles about assessment. Since I am in my third year of graduate school, I have heard the term assessment used many times. I thought I had an understanding of what it was and how to implement it in a classroom, but I did not realize there are many different aspects and types of assessment. Depending on the dynamic of your classroom and the content you are teaching, one type of assessment might make more sense than another type.
There are three types of assessment. Diagnostic is the pre-assessment. This involves the teacher using different tools to find out if a student has any prior knowledge on a particular content. Self-evaluation and KWL charts are appropriate for this assessment. Formative is the idea of providing feedback that helps people improve or guide them further into learning. The teacher plays a huge role in this type of assessment. The student relies on the information provided from the teacher in order to make corrections. Summative is the type of assessment everyone is familiar with. This assessment occurs in the form of a test that attempts to summarize what has been learned at the end of a lesson or unit. This type of assessment is so familiar because an example is standardized tests. Here is a cartoon that I felt encompassed the feelings behind summative assessments and the importance in giving feedback.
As educators it is our duty to be aware of our students strengths and weaknesses and develop lessons to guide them into further learning. I feel if I am able to use all three types of assessment properly my students will not only have gained more knowledge but will not feel stressed or panicked about assessments.
I would agree with you after reading the articles that we had been assigned I quickly realized assessments are very diverse. It was refreshing to read your blog and relate to how you found this topic to be useful for us as teacher. The first question we have to determine is what are we trying to assess. It is like you mentioned is it their prior knowledge, information to check for their understanding, or their summative learning that has taken place during a unit of study. As teacher it is essential that we follow the rules outlined in how to design an assessment. Some of the most valuable lessons that we create will be from the assessments that we do for our students so this is certainly a topic that we need to know and understand well.
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