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Student Assessments (Portfolio (Definition: A collection of assignments…
Student Assessments
Formative
Definition: Assessments to determine if students are on track, ahead, or behind on lessons in real time.
Purpose: To give teachers a real-time synopsis of what students are struggling with so that they can adjust their plans and teaching strategies to meet individual and group needs.
Advantages and Disadvantages: Knowing where students are in real time allows teachers to adjust their instruction to better meet the needs of their students; it makes sure the teacher stays connected to the class and makes learning more effective. However, formative assessments do not give a broad picture of where students are at with a subject.
OF or FOR: FOR, because teachers use the assessments to improve instruction.
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Diagnostic
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Purpose: Determining what students already know about a subject, how they think about it, and what they don't know is useful in building lessons and activities that are engaging and effective.
Advantages and Disadvantages: Knowing where students are before embarking on a unit or lesson allows teachers to tailor their lessons to student needs; however, knowing too much about what students don't know, for example, could deter teachers from taking on complex topics/reaching for higher thinking goals.
OF or FOR learning: FOR, because the results shape the subsequent learning experiences.
Example: Giving a short Civil Rights quiz to students a week before beginning the unit (to give the teacher time to integrate the quiz results into his or her planning).
Summative
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Advantages and Disadvantages: Measuring the outcome of a learning unit or course can give valuable information about what students are ready for next and the overall effectiveness of instruction; however, summative assessments can be punitive and may not always give the whole story. When summative assessments are performance-based/authentic, they may be more valuable than when they are high stakes.
OF or FOR: OF, because they measure knowledge at the end of a unit, class, or year.
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Performance Based
Definition: Assessments to measure how students might use specific knowledge and skills "in the real world."
Purpose: Helping students to apply knowledge and measuring how useful/translatable lessons have been.
Advantages and Disadvantages: Applying learning and understanding how it is/will be relevant are important to student engagement and ability to transfer knowledge outside of the classroom; however, too much reliance on transferable skills could, especially for some social groups, place more value on less complex skills that translate to lower paying jobs than learning for the sake of knowledge.
OF or FOR: BOTH, because they are student-centered and real-world based, but also demonstrate competency/the culmination of learning.
Example: A group assignment where students have to take on different roles and work like a professional team to solve a real world problem.
High Stakes
Definition: Often state tests, but really any testing that can have a high impact on student ability to move forward in school, be placed in AP classes, etc., and on teacher compensation and/or employment.
Purpose: To make an overall evaluation of a student's skills; to determine if students are performing at, above, or below grade level, and/or to determine the effectiveness of a teacher and/or school.
Advantages and Disadvantages: Having an overall view of how students measure against their peers on district, state, and national levels can provide important information about how effective teachers and schools are, and give valuable information about student readiness to move up grade levels; however, high stakes tests can be poor indicators of a student or teacher's ability. The tests are often culturally biased and one-size-fits-all; they don't allow students to demonstrate creativity or critical thinking, but typically measure how much a student was able to memorize.
OF or FOR: OF, because they measure specific knowledge that may or may not have any relevance in the classroom, and neither students or teachers often get a full report of which questions students struggled with--there's no real way to use the information to improve.
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Authentic
Definition: Very similar to performance-based assessment, authentic assessment measures the application of skills. Students demonstrate HOW to do something, rather than take a test that reveals if they theoretically know how to do something.
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Advantages and Disadvantages: Demonstrating skills reinforces them and reveals strengths and challenges that typical testing cannot; however, just as with performance-based assessment, teachers might choose concepts or skills that don't match their students' needs, or impose low expectations.
OF or FOR: BOTH, because they can demonstrate the culmination of learning a skill or subject, but they are also student-centered and grounded in continued application.
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Self Assessment
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Purpose: Develop meta-cognition skills, have students look critically at their own work, and give students a voice in the fair assessment of their own work.
Advantages and Disadvantages: Can give students another dimension to engage in their work and can develop important skills for looking critically at oneself; however, students can have a tendency to be either hyper-critical or overly enthusiastic about their work (should be tempered by teacher assessment).
OF or FOR: FOR, because students inherently learn from engaging in self-assessment.
Example: Having students fill out a rubric on their own presentation and using that as partial weight in the final presentation grade.
Peer Assessment
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Purpose: Engage peers in each other's work, reduce grading time for teachers, and give students insight into their own work by looking critically at the work of their peers. Also teaches students to give and receive feedback from peers.
Advantages and Disadvantages: Learning to give and receive constructive feedback is a major life skill, and engaging in each other's work can create a strong learning community; however, there may be privacy issues with peer assessment.
OF or FOR: BOTH, because peer assessment can be used to simply grade something and move on, or as part of a more comprehensive formative assessment process.
Example: Having students cut their papers up paragraph by paragraph and having a peer try to put the paper back in order, then give feedback about why they chose the order they did, what was confusing, clear, etc.
Portfolio
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Purpose: To get a full and clear picture of the work students have created over the course of a unit, course, or school-year.
Advantages and Disadvantages: Seeing a collection of student work gives a vivid sense of how students think, how much effort they put into their studies, and shows rather than tells what they know; however, portfolios can be long and may be prone to subjective evaluation.
OF or FOR: OF, because portfolios tend to be summative.
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Example: A senior-year portfolio that demonstrates grade-level work in all core subjects, required for graduation.