Assessment Reflection
Assessment comes in different forms. I learned that assessment and evaluations are different because assessment is measuring what students know and evaluation is how the teacher uses the information from the assessments given. Assessments must be valid, meaning they are what they say they will be. Assessments can also be formal or informal. Formal assessments are planned and given to students intentionally to measure their understanding of a concept. Informal assessments are unplanned, spontaneous, and can be as simple as observing how students are discussing a concept or ask a question and assess their answer. Before this class, I knew we had to measure the quality of student work, but we must also consider the quantity of work given and what students put in. Assessments are either formative or summative. Formative assessments are given throughout a unit and assess what the students know up to a certain point. Summative assessments are given at the end of a time frame and they assess what the students know.
In class, we reflected on and assessed our own work. Throughout the time of creating a project in this class, I was constantly assessing myself, my work, and whether or not I was meeting or exceeding expectations. When we assessed our own group work in the group evaluations, I assessed our work based on the rubric. This taught me what to do in order to exceed the expectations from the professor while I do my work. Assessing my own work also helped me to see the project as a whole after it was completed. When I looked back at the rubric to assess my own work, I wold notice things I did well or that our group did well as well as the parts of our project we lacked in. In various assignments, we critiqued our own work as well as each other's to learn how to create problems that are in-depth and require students to understand a concept in order to complete a problem.
We can see what errors students make through assessment. Different assessments can gauge where the students fall as far as understanding the concept goes. We can assess the errors made and lean our teaching towards correcting that error as we learned in class. One thing I did not realize is that you do not have to completely re-teach a concept when students make errors. You can re-teach a specific part of a concept for students to understand where they went wrong in solving a problem or how to use manipulative tools in order to keep them on track while answering a question. Teaching students to use the materials available to them is a good way for them to learn how to solve problems so they can see a visual. We can also assess how they use the manipulatives and to what degree are they helping students complete their work.
Assessments we were given were valid because they covered topics they were said to cover. There was never an assessment that asked for something we had not discussed in class or should have previously known. They were also consistent, meaning they were consistently used. The most consistent part of this class, I believe, was the assessment and the way we were assessed. We knew the expectations and the rubrics clearly stated what to do to meet and exceed expectations. Each assignment was assessed using a rubric and was graded based on what we completed and points were taken in areas that lacked information, supporting details, or deep understanding from students.
Each type of assessment has its own strength or weakness. Rubrics are a great feature to include in assessment. A strength of rubrics is that they can be laid out in a way that students are able to know exactly what is expected of them and the steps they must take in order to get to the end product the teacher is looking for. Another strength of rubrics is that they come in two different forms- holistic and analytic. I never realized that there were two different kinds; I figured they were based on preference of how a teacher wanted to present the expectations. Holistic rubrics are not as beneficial as analytic because if a student misses one crucial point, it could take them down a lot of points even if they have everything else the highest point option requires. It is a summary of all student work. Analytic rubrics are more fair because they allow for different weights in each category. The one down side of any rubric is that students might do what they need to meet something on the rubric and not exceed.
A strength of informal assessment is that you can see what students know about a concept. Teachers can listen to student conversations and assess how much they know when they are discussing a problem or concept. You can ask students questions as they work in groups and assess their answer or method to getting an answer of a math problem. A weakness of informal assessment is that sometimes putting students on the spot with a question can make them nervous or they may not understand what the question is asking at first.
A strength of formal assessment is that teachers can have a set list of questions to ask and problems for the students to answer. Criteria can be laid out explicitly for the students to follow so they know what the expectations are. A weakness is that students may do the minimum of a formal assessment to meet expectations.
Formative assessment has strengths of being able evaluate formative assessment and modify plans after they are given. I learned that they can determine whether or not students are ready to move on to the next lesson. If they need extra help, you can back up and reteach a certain lesson. It can be formal or informal. It may also decrease student test anxiety at the end of a unit when summative assessment is given because they have already seen what the questions will look like. A disadvantage is that students may feel rushed to finish problems if they are low on time.
Summative assessment's biggest strength is that it allows the teacher know what the student learned in a unit. I realized that summative assessment must be fair, equitable, and truly assess the content learned in order to get accurate results. If the summative assessment does not do these things, it will be a weak assessment and unfair to students.
In class, we reflected on and assessed our own work. Throughout the time of creating a project in this class, I was constantly assessing myself, my work, and whether or not I was meeting or exceeding expectations. When we assessed our own group work in the group evaluations, I assessed our work based on the rubric. This taught me what to do in order to exceed the expectations from the professor while I do my work. Assessing my own work also helped me to see the project as a whole after it was completed. When I looked back at the rubric to assess my own work, I wold notice things I did well or that our group did well as well as the parts of our project we lacked in. In various assignments, we critiqued our own work as well as each other's to learn how to create problems that are in-depth and require students to understand a concept in order to complete a problem.
We can see what errors students make through assessment. Different assessments can gauge where the students fall as far as understanding the concept goes. We can assess the errors made and lean our teaching towards correcting that error as we learned in class. One thing I did not realize is that you do not have to completely re-teach a concept when students make errors. You can re-teach a specific part of a concept for students to understand where they went wrong in solving a problem or how to use manipulative tools in order to keep them on track while answering a question. Teaching students to use the materials available to them is a good way for them to learn how to solve problems so they can see a visual. We can also assess how they use the manipulatives and to what degree are they helping students complete their work.
Assessments we were given were valid because they covered topics they were said to cover. There was never an assessment that asked for something we had not discussed in class or should have previously known. They were also consistent, meaning they were consistently used. The most consistent part of this class, I believe, was the assessment and the way we were assessed. We knew the expectations and the rubrics clearly stated what to do to meet and exceed expectations. Each assignment was assessed using a rubric and was graded based on what we completed and points were taken in areas that lacked information, supporting details, or deep understanding from students.
Each type of assessment has its own strength or weakness. Rubrics are a great feature to include in assessment. A strength of rubrics is that they can be laid out in a way that students are able to know exactly what is expected of them and the steps they must take in order to get to the end product the teacher is looking for. Another strength of rubrics is that they come in two different forms- holistic and analytic. I never realized that there were two different kinds; I figured they were based on preference of how a teacher wanted to present the expectations. Holistic rubrics are not as beneficial as analytic because if a student misses one crucial point, it could take them down a lot of points even if they have everything else the highest point option requires. It is a summary of all student work. Analytic rubrics are more fair because they allow for different weights in each category. The one down side of any rubric is that students might do what they need to meet something on the rubric and not exceed.
A strength of informal assessment is that you can see what students know about a concept. Teachers can listen to student conversations and assess how much they know when they are discussing a problem or concept. You can ask students questions as they work in groups and assess their answer or method to getting an answer of a math problem. A weakness of informal assessment is that sometimes putting students on the spot with a question can make them nervous or they may not understand what the question is asking at first.
A strength of formal assessment is that teachers can have a set list of questions to ask and problems for the students to answer. Criteria can be laid out explicitly for the students to follow so they know what the expectations are. A weakness is that students may do the minimum of a formal assessment to meet expectations.
Formative assessment has strengths of being able evaluate formative assessment and modify plans after they are given. I learned that they can determine whether or not students are ready to move on to the next lesson. If they need extra help, you can back up and reteach a certain lesson. It can be formal or informal. It may also decrease student test anxiety at the end of a unit when summative assessment is given because they have already seen what the questions will look like. A disadvantage is that students may feel rushed to finish problems if they are low on time.
Summative assessment's biggest strength is that it allows the teacher know what the student learned in a unit. I realized that summative assessment must be fair, equitable, and truly assess the content learned in order to get accurate results. If the summative assessment does not do these things, it will be a weak assessment and unfair to students.
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