Types of Assessments

Diagnostic

Formative

Self-Assessment

Diagnostic assessments are assessments for learning because they involve using evidence gathered to guide instruction. Before teaching, we must determine where the students are at, so diagnostic assessments are a great way to start.

Example for 3rd grade: Students take a pretest for a repeated addition related to multiplication to see what skills they already have.

Advantages: Allows teachers to provide meaningful instruction. This allows the teacher to work with small groups to individualize instruction for remediation or enrichment. Disadvantages: Teachers could be incorrect when making inferences on a child's ability. Tests may not always be accurate to what the child really knows, especially multiple choice tests.

Definition and purpose: A pre-assessment to determine what the students' strengths, weaknesses, and background knowledge are. It is used to guide instruction and determine what students' difficulties are.

Formative assessments are assessments for learning as they are ongoing and help guide instruction throughout the learning process.

Example: Think-Pair-Share is a great way to involve collaboration among peers and ensure everyone participates. This helps determine what the students understand about a topic based on their verbal response.

Strengths and weaknesses: Formative assessments are great for teachers to see if students are understanding the content and determine if there are any areas that need to be retaught a different way. Unfortunately some teachers feel like there is no time to implement them, which hurts students when they take their summative assessments.

Example: Students self assess their explanatory report on a famous explorer they researched about using the scoring rubric.

Assessment for learning as it is ongoing and used to reflect on what needs to improve.

These help students identify own areas of strengths and weaknesses to create a plan to implement changes.

Strengths and limitations: They are great for personal and professional growth, and enhances self-awareness. It's limitations are that they are subjective.

They are quick assessments that help a teacher see what students have learned or still need more guidance on. They require feedback and are not to be graded.

High Stakes

These assessments have high-impact outcomes where passing tests allows students to enter into another grade or permission to graduate. Students futures and school funding rely on these standardized test scores.

Of learning as it is comparing learning to standards at end of grading period.

Example: AzMerit standardized test at the end of the school year to enter into 4th grade. For Reading, ELA, and Math.

Strengths and weaknesses: They raise standards of achievement and close the gap between students of different races and class distinctions. It helps detect areas that need improvement. The limitations are that students are expected to measure equally regardless of race, poverty, resources, and language differences. It increases the amount of dropouts, teachers end up teaching to the test, and it has low reliability.

Performance Based

Measures students ability to apply the skills and knowledge learned from a unit or units of study.

Assessment of FOR and OF as it is ongoing, and it is also a comprehensive alternative to a summative assessment.

Example: Students count the number of cars going through intersection near school, at various times of the day and send data collected to local Police Department.

Strengths and weaknesses: It has a high level of validity where students can demonstrate their learning and is unique to the learner. It is limited by subjective scoring and requires a lot of time to score items.

Portfolio

Portfolio assessments are collections of student activities, accomplishments and achievements to show growth over time.

Strengths and weaknesses: It is an ongoing learning experience and provides an overall picture of progress, requires student-teacher collaboration. It's limitations are that it may increase student anxiety to generate quality output, and it is time consuming with subjective scoring.

Can be both OF and FOR learning as it is ongoing and shows overall learning at end of instructional period.

Example: collection of writing assignments to see how students progressed from writing sentences, to paragraphs, to reports, as well as the content and handwriting improvement.

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Peer Assessment

Strengths and weaknesses: Knowing that peers assess student work may motivate students to work harder and perform better. Unfortunately, the value of feedback received may not be constructive or helpful.

Peer assessments are collaborative, team based assessments where students can score each other with the knowledge that they are all equal status learners.

Assessment for learning as the feedback helps students make any necessary revisions and view any positive feedback a peer made.

Example: Students give peer assessments on an informative report about ecosystems using the same rubric they were given during the assignment.

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Authentic

Student performance is on worthy intellectual tasks on relevant, real world problems.

Assessment of learning as it requires higher level thinking on Bloom's Taxonomy and assesses their learning of a unit.

Strengths and weaknesses: they provide real life learning, higher level thinking on Bloom's Taxonomy, kinesthetic, and student centered tasks. It's limitations are that it is low reliability and validity due to subjective scoring.

Example: Creative writing, role plays, oral presentations.

Summative

These evaluate student learning at end of instructional unit by comparing it against some standard.

Example: Benchmark test, chapter test, unit test.

Strengths and limitations: Provides motivation for students to study and pay attention. It's limitations are that teachers teach to the test and it is not an accurate reflection of learning. Causes a lot of anxiety and advanced students don't always do so well.

Assessment of learning as it is at the end of an instructional period to compare against a standard.