Classroom Based Assessment Essay

Understanding Classroom-Based Assessments The teacher’s role in informal, classroom based assessments is to serve as a facilitator. This can be done by creating opportunities for their students to learn, and then assessing the students as they learn. The teacher is responsible for knowing their students and their needs, where learning is concerned.

Classroom-based assessments coincide with instruction. Instructional strategies such as journal writing, vocabulary games, literature circles, and group discussions are all means in which students can be assessed. Assessing students in these ways allow for student learning and growth to be measured without the student feeling the added pressure or stress of a “test.”

Informal assessments are

Student reflection or exit tickets where students can’t state their level of understanding of different concepts are means of informal assessment. Assessing in this way creates opportunity for students to monitor their own performance and understanding, and to have more ownership of their learning.

Classroom-based assessments recognize that knowledge cannot be transferred from a teacher to student or from text to student. Instead, knowledge is constructed through social and cognitive experiences as they interact with their environment. Therefore, knowledge is something that does not exist separately from the “knower,” and therefore is best assessed from the context of the “knower.”

Informal assessments can be inquiry based. The connections students’ make with reading can be measured by the questions students inquire about the text. Just as students can learn from themselves through self-reflection, they can also learn from others through discussion with peers and

Reading is multi-faceted and can be defined in many different ways. Reading is contextual, in that interpreting the material read is influenced by the reader’s personal experiences and background. Reading is multimodal, and can be expressed through newspapers, blogs, text messaging, social-media, advertisements and the various forms of literary genres. Much of how the reader comprehends their text depends on their purpose for reading. Are they reading for entertainment, to be informed or to be persuaded? Also how the text was chosen has great influence on reading. Was the text assigned or chosen by the reader themselves? Reading is a method of learning. Readers can extend their vocabulary; learn about historical figures, places around the world, and about human expressions and emotions. Multi-faceted nature of this definition of reading should be measured through multiple sources. Assessments should also give students multiple opportunities to express their connections to the