Activity 1: Different Types of Assessments
Formative Assessments is a process that "involves the gathering and analysisi of assessment-elicited evidence for the purpose of determining when and how to adjust instrutional activities or learning tactics in order to achieve learning goals "
Assessments Of Learning
This is basically a summative assessment and involves comparing a student's learning outcomes to state or school standards and expectations.
Diagnostic Assessments
Diagnostic assessments are pretests. They usually serve as a barometer for how much pre-loaded information a student has about a topic.
Performance Assessment
A test in which the test taker actually demonstrates the skills the test is intended to measure by doing real-world tasks that require those skills, rather than by answering questions asking how to do them
Assessments For Learning
This is basically formative assesment. The goal of using assessments "for learning" is that assessments can provide both the student and the teacher with information about where weakpoints lie and can help direct instruction, practice and study as the class progresses through the topic.
Assessments As Learning
This is a much more student lead idea that encourages independent thinking and analysis from students who can interpret and even grade their own results in their projects or groupwork to look at where and how they need to make improvements.
Some of the key features of this are:
- It promotes a growth mindset amongst students as it encourages them to look at where they are now and where they need to improve.
- It reduces the stigma of assessment for some students as it shows that assessment is a way to track your knowledge, not to categorize you as a success or a failure. (The more we leave assessment to the end, the more pressure and stigma we place on tests for our learners).
- It encourages self assessment. Students can see where they went wrong and can focus on improving themselves.
- It allows us to focus on growth. If a student scores a 20% in the initial formative assessment, but grows to 65% that is a real cause for celebration. Much more so than if they only got 65% at the end of the unit.
This helps teachers in many ways.
- It helps to direct teaching approaches and strategies. As a school or as PLC groups, teachers can look at which classes or teachers had the most success in different standards and some of their methods or materials can be implemented schoolwide to increase success amongst other classes.
- It provides a clear and transparent guide for parents and schools about the achievement levels of individual students and the grade levels as a whole. This can be especially important in difficult times like covid so that we can see if there were areas where students fell behind and need more attention in later years.
This creates many benefits for both students and teachers alike.
- Students learn independence and that a lot of their learning comes down to them. They find holes in their knowledge and ask more questions of their teachers to find out how they can improve.
- It provides more chances for informal feedback outside of the test and also for formal feedback in the form of the test results. Students can ask more questions about their grades and which standards they are falling short in.
Summative Assessment occurs at the end of the learning process and is typically graded. Some example of summative assessments include test, projects, demonstrations, presentations, and performance tasks. The purpose of summative assessment is to provide evidence of the degree to which a student has mastered the knowlefge, understandings, and skills of the unit.
Performance Assessment: With this type, students will be required to do an activity or task that will showcase their abilities.
Standardized Assessment: Students will take an exam created for a given curriculum and will be measured against existing rubric, shared with the students throughout the course.
Written Assessment: Students will be tasked with writing an original piece, such as a narrative or analytical essay.
Oral Assessment: Students will craft and deliver an oral piece, such as a speech or presentation.
Pre-assessment is a type of formative assessment that occurs before a unit of study begins
Ongoing assessment is what most people think of when they think of formative aessment.
Ongoing assessments can be used to help determine the progress of students and allow teachers to place students into differentiated groups.
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Formal
What students alrady know, understanding. and are able to do regarding the upcoming learning.
What preprequisite learning, if any, maybe missing or misunderstood.
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Happen at the beginning of a unit, lesson, quarter, or period of time.
Goal of understanding student’s current position to inform effective instruction
Identify strengths and areas of improvement for the student
Low-stakes assessments (Usually do not count as a grade)
Portfolio Assessment
Classroom Test
Content Area reading Inventory
State Assessments
Standardized Test
Take Home Exams:
These are exams where students are given time to show what they are capable of. This means that if you provide a certain skillset, for example, how to use Coggle, students can go home and have adequate time to create their own Coggle concept or mind map. This better allows the teacher to determine whether the students have made progress towards a new skill than an in-class summative assessment might.
Dagilyte, E., & Coe, P. (2019). Take-home exams: Developing professionalism via assessment. In A. BONE & P. MAHARG (Eds.), Critical Perspectives on the Scholarship of Assessment and Learning in Law: Volume 1: England (Vol. 1, pp. 109–138). ANU Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvp7d4db.10
MAP Testing (NWEA):
This is used as a diagnostic to determine "where your students are, what they are ready to learn, and at what pace they need to meet learning goals." Basically, this allows you to diagnose and place your students into specific classes that are homogenous or heterogenous.
Learning-Oriented Assessment:
This is basically a shift away from traditional summative assessments, or certification and selection, to more of a focus skills by understanding the difference between an assessment for learning as opposed to an assessment of learning. So, how it works is the assessment is used based on the progress a student makes as a learner rather than the final product. Think process of learning vs. product of learning.
Saliyeva, S., & Levesley, J. (2018). Learning-oriented assessment. In V. C. H. Tong, A. Standen, & M. Sotiriou (Eds.), Shaping Higher Education with Students: Ways to Connect Research and Teaching (pp. 178–187). UCL Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt21c4tcm.29
Formative Assessment Check
Issues Discussion:
While they are completing a task, have a timer set for when a discussion will occur. Students will see the timer on the front of the board, and then a question will be asked: "Any issues with the assignment?" This will give the teacher a quick look into common issues arising, so during the next issue discussion, an adequate response can be given.
Five Finger Salute:
This is when students are asked to gauge their understanding of the given task multiple times throughout the classroom. One finger means they are completely lost and five fingers means they understand what their task is. Small reteaching groups might be warranted if there are a lot of 3, 2, and 1 finger salutes.
Survey Monkey:
Excellent tool to receive feedback from students on a range of topics. Post it as an assignment if your school has a website where students can see it and do it. Make it optional as surveys should not be a requirement.
In-class Formative Assessments
Exit Tickets - check student comprehension of key concepts before they leave the class.
Polls/Online Quizzes - students can see answers of other students and can learn from the correct answers in a non-threatening environment.
Informal
Conversations， Observations， Interviews，and Surveys
Look for Patterns in Knowledge,skill, and Performance