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Why engagement is important in the classroom
Why engagement is important in the classroom
Reflection on summative assessment
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“Teachers help students use assessment as a window into their own growth and identify as learners so, they develop the power and agency necessary to take charge of their learning (Tomlinson, 2010). Summative assessments are a mirror to student thinking. Summative assessments help teachers and students see a trajectory of their learning. Teachers can use them to identify which students are ready for other tasks; and which students need more time to develop specific concepts. The assessment that we administered asked students to answer a series of questions using information from a graph. It also prompted them to create a graph using the results of survey for our field trip. This assessment combined constructed response questions with a meaningful task. “The paper and pencil multiple choice test is not the only way to assess learning. It is a limited way to gain insight into what some students know and are able to do”(Berliner, 2010, p.113).
Assessments should be aligned to learning objectives. The assessment we administered was designed to measure students’ thinking about data. Common Core standard 3.MD.B3 asks students to draw a scaled graph to represent a data set with several categories. Solve one-and two-step “how many more” and “how many less” problems using information from the table (Council of Chief State School Officers, CCSS, 2010). The main purpose of this assessment was to evaluate student knowledge about graphs. We also wanted to know if students were able to compare and contrast information in the graph. We think that this is an important skill that students should be able to master. Students will encounter graphs while learning about other subjects. They must know how to collect data and use the information from gra...
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...ate, the assessment will be beneficial for all parties involved.
Works Cited
Berliner, D. (2010). The incompatibility of high-stakes testing and the development of skills for
the twenty-first century. In R.Marzano (Ed.), On excellence in teaching (pp. 113-144).
Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press
Council of Chief State School Officers and National Governors Association. (2010). Common Core States Standards. Retrieved from http://www.corestandards.org/
Tomlinson, C. A. (2010). Differentiating instruction in response to academically diverse student
populations. In R.Marzano (Ed.), On excellence in teaching (pp. 247-268). Bloomington,
IN: Solution Tree Press
Van de Walle, J. A., Karp, K. S., & Bay-Williams, J. M. (2013). Elementary and middle school
mathematics: Teaching developmentally (8th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson
Publications.
The assessment that I have chosen for my lesson is a “card sort”. I will have eight graphs copied on card stock ready for the students to cut out. They will analyze each graph, match it to a scenario, and tape it next to the scenario it matches. For each graph, the students will label the x- and y-axes with the appropriate quantity and unit of measure. Then, they will write the title of the problem situation on each graph.
The proposed Reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act identifies key factors for college and career-ready students. The act asks that states adopt rigorous college and career ready standards in English/language arts and mathematics along with assessments aligned to these standards. In June of 2010, the NGA Center for Best Practices (NGA Center) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) released the Common Core State Standards which 45 out of 50 states have currently adopted. Additionally, states are required to develop a system of accountability that rewards successful schools, requires interventions for the lowest-perfor...
Since 2010, there were 45 states that have adopted the same educational standards called Common Core State Standards (CCSS). The initiative is sponsored by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers and seeks to establish consistent education standards across the states. The Common Core Standards is initiative state-led effort that established a single set of clear educational standards for kindergarten through 12th grade in English and Mathematical standards. These standards help to educate all of the students equally, they help children who move from state to state, as well as they help to prepare students for college and workplace. The common core standard helps to provide a clear understanding for teachers and parents of what is expected of the students to learn. It is designed to help educate our children for the future; it gives them the knowledge and skill they need to be prepared for post secondary education and employment. "The standards are designed to be robust and relevant to the real world." (National Governors Association Center for Best Practices, Council of Chief State School Officers)
Strauss, Valerie. "Eight Problems with Common Core Standards." Washington Post. The Washington Post, 21 Aug. 2012. Web. 18 Oct. 2015.
Kathleen Shine Cain et al. at. The. Boston: Pearson Education Company, 2011. 52.
Originally this category was titled technology and assessments, but I needed to make the category larger in scope to fit in some of the more “specialized” articles. This article was published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2009 by Edy S. Quellmalz and James W. Pellegrino was simply titled, “Technology and Testing”. Although the focus of this work centered on large-scale testing, there was some helpful dialogue surrounding classroom-based assessments that proved useful. The main idea of this article was that besides the obvious advantage of quick, accurate scoring and feedback, technological applications can be used to provide “rich, authentic tasks that challenge the sorts of integrated knowledge, critical thinking, and problem solving seldom well addressed in paper-based tests” (Quellmalz & Pellegrino, 75). In other words, these two authors strongly feel technological based assessments are superior to paper-based assessments, and thus will yield greater results. They go on to say that this shift in assessment is a crucial part of 21st-century learning and will continue to improve and develop. Already this can be seen within districts as they struggle to implement the PARCC throughout their schools. In their discussion of classroom instructional uses of technology-based assessments, the authors reaffirm the benefits of formative assessments if they
The Common Core State Standards are simply learning goals that are outlined for the students. This outline is a way to show the students what they should be able to do at the end of each grade. These learning goals are supposed to “provide a consistent, clear understanding of what students are expected to learn so teachers and parents know what they need to do to help them” (Top Ten Things to Know, 2015). These certain standards are also supposed to be designed to be “robust and relevant to the real world, reflecting the knowledge and skills that our young people need for success in the near future” (Top Ten Things to Know, 2015). Common Core State Standards were actually being introduced while I was attending
Regular use of formative assessment improves student learning as instruction can be adjusted based on students’ progress and teachers are able to modify instructions to cater to students’ individual needs (Black & Wiliam, 2010; Taylor-Cox, & Oberdorf, 2013). Various forms of informal and formal formative assessment methods are conducted as learning takes place, continuously through teacher observations, questioning through individual interactions, group discussions and open-ended tasks (McMillan, 2011). tests can tell us a lot about students and be used to inform and guide teaching, rather than simply to determine grades. Teachers can learn a lot from test results if they analyse the data generated to inform their teaching and learning programs (Perso, 2009). However, high stakes tests may result in students becoming stressed, leading to misreading questions, careless working and incomplete answers (Booker et al., 2010).
Van de Walle, J.A., Karp, K. S., & Bay-Williams, J. M. (2013). Elementary and middle school
... Children's Academic and Social Development in Elementary School. US National Library of Medicine and National Institutes of Health, 988-1005.
There are different methods and uses of assessment that are used in the Education system, the reason for this, is that not all assessments serve the same purpose for its methodologies, the feedback that learners receive needs to correspond with the purpose of the assessment. (Sieborger, 1998)Thus educators tend to make use of multiple assessments to establish a fair and just measurement of the learner’s capability. This essay will extensively describe and analyse the tensions between the two methods of assessment: Summative assessment and Formative assessment and further reflect on their ability to integrate.
During elementary school, children are not only developing their physical bodies, but there minds as well. They a...
A well created test can measure learning and diagnose a student’s weakness (Merrow, 4). In testing, the idea is for the student to get the correct answer on information they know and incorrect answers on the information they do not. However, a testing error may occur. A testing error is when a student gets an answer correct of information they did not actually know or an answer incorrect, they may have actually known (Gellman, 30)The people who create these tests want straightforward measures. However, test designers do not design these tests to measure what a student can do academically (Fusaro, 1). Large testing companies produce tests and sell them all over the country. This causes the test to be not specialized for the school or county and students do not do as well as they could have if the test was specialized (Popham, 4).three possible ways of testing a student’s knowledge exists: multiple choices, answer in essay form, or they are asked to perform a task and then graded on the performance (Merrow, 5). Some tests are designed to assess an individual’s performance, like an
Through assessment students and teachers are able to determine the level of mastery a student has achieved with standards taught. Both formative and summative assessment should be purposeful and targeted to gain the most accurate data to drive further instruction (Ainsworth, 2010). While this syllabus does a good job of identifying the need for both formal and informal assessments, the way in which this is communicated does not provide enough detail for understanding. Simply listing assessment types does not give any insight into how these assessments fit in the learning process of this course. While some of the assessments mentioned could be common assessments chosen by the school or district to gain insight into the effectiveness of instruction, the inclusion of authentic assessments is most beneficial to students and demonstrates learning in a context closer to that of a work environment (Rovai, 2004). Unfortunately, this particular course, according to this syllabus, relies heavily on quizzes and traditional tests and essays to form the bulk of assessment opportunities. While other activities, such as formative assessments, journaling and discussions are mentioned as possible avenues for scoring, they are given a very low percentage of the overall grade. This shows that they are not valued for their ability to show progression and mastery. If this is indeed the case, this puts the students as a
In spite of the importance of assessment in education, few teachers receive proper training on how to design or analyze assessments. Due to this, when teachers are not provided with suitable assessments from their textbooks or instructional resources, teachers construct their own in an unsystematic manner. They create questions and essay prompts comparable to the ones that their teachers used, and they treat them as evaluations to administer when instructional activities are completed predominantly for allocating students' grades. In order to use assessments to improve instruction and student learning, teachers need to change their approach to assessments by making sure that they create sound assessments. To ensure that their assessments are sound they need include five basic indicators that can be used as steps to follow when creating assessments. The first of these indicators and the first step a teacher must take when creating a sound assessme...