Pondering Assessments
There is a lot that I could honestly say about assessment. As much as I disagree with having assessments in the classroom, I know that is it necessary to determine where the students are on different levels of achievement. I would strongly encourage teachers to use different words rather than quizzes, tests, or assessments while evaluating their students. When I was in Elementary school, I used to always grow nervous and develop a sense of anxiety whenever I heard that we were going to have a quiz or test soon. It was always nerve wrecking to me because I would receive something to study, but when I would sit down for the test, I tended to forget what ever it was that I studied for the test. There are different approaches to assessments that teachers could take and an example of an approach would be to not even mention that you are assessing the students.
While venturing through another blog, I found this nifty little activity that would be a perfect assessment for a kindergarten classroom. This type of assessment is an assessment that I would use in my own teaching experience because it is a way that will show the teacher what they need to know while creating an entertaining experience for the students. The students would not even know that this is an assessment. I genuinely like what this image says at the top, "Shhhh - Don't Call It An Assessment!" This is something that I will always express to all teachers forever. As long as the students don't know that it is an assessment, the anxiety will perhaps decrease and provide the students with a platform that they will engagingly enjoy while giving the teacher the data that they need. Student self-evaluation is also another part of an assessment that I like to turn to in most of my instructional strategies.
Above is an image of two strategies that I would use while giving the students a type of self-evaluation to work with. The traffic light is a way that the students can describe to the teacher by circling a color. To the right are thumbs that the students can show to the teacher to give the teacher a sense of understanding as to where the students are with the content being taught.
Click the links below to view the videos that I found interesting:
- Critique and Feedback: Management in the Active Classroom
- Kids Like Cold Call and No Opt Out
- Setting Up Your Classroom Environment: Management in the Active Classroom
My Experience with Create, Evaluate, and Relate for Chapter 15
Create: Rubrics
A lesson that I would anticipate teaching would be creating a blog post that would record a science project. The science project would be planting a seed and recording how big the plant will grow within a 2 month time period. The students would be keeping track of the water intake and the location of which they have their plant is sitting. The students can take pictures and videos to post in their blogs. The students would be assessed by how they implement the scientific method and how they organize their blog flow with creativity and supporting evidence. The students only homework assignment would be to keep track of their blog posts and make sure to continue to post throughout the 2 month time period. At the end of the project, the students will orally present their blogs to the class and demonstrate their knowledge of what is their hypothesis, some recording methods that they used, and their ultimate conclusion of the final product of the plant’s growth. I used Rubistar to create rubrics for this task. The following links are links to the rubrics.
Evaluate: Authentic Assessments
The goals and the objectives that I would hope that my students would meet by the assignment described above is the overall concepts of using the scientific method while experimenting with technology compared to just filling out an ordinary lab report on paper. Personally, I do not like traditional testing because traditional testing looks for only the grade, but authentic assessments allows the students to prove themselves in other ways. I have test anxiety and I know that when I was in Elementary School, I used to always get nervous and shaky before taking an exam or test. With authentic assessment, I feel like students will be more comfortable and relax before engaging into the test. I would probably use a combination of both assessment strategies because in some situations, it may seem complicated to use an authentic assessment strategy. If my students would prefer to use an authentic assessment than I would do my best to provide that type of testing in my classroom.
Relate: Assessment in your Classroom
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