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Current Understanding (December 2007): A teacher must continually be assessing his or her students for the learning outcomes of a particular lesson or unit. These assessments can be informal, such as walking around the classroom as students are working on homework to ensure students are understanding the topic, giving mini-experiments at the start of class to determine student understanding of the previous day's material, or giving informal surveys about the lesson. The assessments can also be formal, which in the math classroom is often through homework, worksheets, projects, and tests. It is important that these assessments be tools not only used by the teacher, but also by the students for their own learning. The feedback a teacher gives regarding an assessment is important for each individual student, and should be given in a timely manner. One of the biggest issues I see in assessment is that it is incredibly hard to be objective, especially in a math classroom. It is an issue that I continue to struggle with as I develop my own beliefs. I know that giving tests where there is only one right answer helps alleviate this problem, but I am a firm believer that math is not always about a correct answer. Often times in math, students need to be assessed on the process they went through to come to an answer, because little mistakes can easily happen when doing long computations. I have learned a lot about the use of scoring rubrics to ensure that students are being graded fairly. Using a technique like this will allow me the opportunity to give students points for their work, even if they have not come to the correct answer. In addition to the informal and formal assessments given in our classrooms, monitoring student growth through standardized tests is also important. Over the course of the last semester, I was able to monitor a classroom that was taking the NWEA test, and then review and analyze the student scores as they finished. We had the students graph their scores on a chart with their scores from previous years. This was beneficial for both the teacher and student as they were able to see their growth or decline from fall to spring and between academic years. For the most part, the students took the test-taking very seriously, and most were very proud of their results. In a society that relies heavily on standardized tests in education, it is important that educators are aware of the various tests, how they work, and how to interpret and use their results. I have attached several artifacts to this standard, but I believe that two of them really highlight my understanding of informal and formal assessment. The first is my Equivalent Fractions lesson plan. This lesson was taught at LCWM in a 7th grade math classroom. The lesson plan walks through the standards being addressed, the teaching strategies I used, and then also the means of assessment I used for the lesson. Directly related to this is my reflection on teaching this lesson, which highlights things that went well and assesses the lesson from my point of view, and in watching the video tape of me teaching the lesson. The second piece that I believe highlights the needs of assessment is my informal assessment paper. This paper, also directly related to the lesson plan on Equivalent Fractions, reflects on the student responses to an informal survey I gave them after the lesson. I think it highlights issues in a classroom and makes us more aware of the teaching strategies we used that were most beneficial to the students. I can definitely see myself using this assessment strategy in the future, especially as I try different teaching styles and techniques in the classroom. August 2007 Understanding: Assessment and evaluation are key pieces of the educational model. These tools are used to show progress and growth. Assessments can also be formal or informal, based on the situation. It is important for teachers to be constantly evaluating and monitoring student success and responsiveness to the topic being discussed. Changes can then be made throughout a lesson to ensure that students are understanding the new material and being challenged. I have had very little experience in working with assessments and evaluations, and look forward to my upcoming classes which cover this topic. Baseline Understanding: Assessments are a tool that all teachers need to understand in order to evaluate student achievement and growth. Assessments come in many forms, can be both formal or informal, and should be done on a regular basis to ensure student growth. Return to Standard 8 |
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(507) 625-8256 l karipratt@charter.net |
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