Erin Petersen 14.1 and 14.2

(14.1) Think of a lesson plan from your licensure area. Knowing that assessment is an integral part of teaching, explain at least four informal and formal assessments that you will use in your lesson plan to provide you with feedback and involve the students in assessing their own learning

In the classroom that I observe for another of my elementary education classes, the students are learning to add and subtract mixed numbers. There are several skills that students need to know before they can learn to add and subtract mixed numbers. Students need to know how to: identify the parts of a fraction, understand the difference between a mixed number and an improper fraction, add and subtract integers, and change improper fractions into mixed numbers and mixed numbers into improper fractions. Without any one of these skills, students will struggle to learn adding and subtracting fractions – and many did! The first assessment I would give would be a written formal assessment of the prerequisite skills needed to understand how to add and subtract mixed numbers. If one or more students failed a particular part of this pretest, I would need to spend extra time with these students in order that they might be able to grasp the new concept.

During the lesson, I would demonstrate the first problem on the board and explain the steps to completing the problem. Then, I would have students do another problem on their white boards and lift their white-boards up in the air when finished. I would look over the white-boards and get immediate feedback on which students need more help, and what mistakes students are making. This informal assessment process can be repeated multiple times.

I would ask students to explain their thinking to the class, especially if they got a different answer than the rest of the students. Asking students to explain their thinking is a fast but effective informal assessment that can involve students in the process of assessing their own learning. It can show the thought process behind correct and incorrect answers.

At the end of the lesson, but before students are given time to work alone on assignments, I would ask students to show me how well they understand the material on a scale of one to five using their hands (fist of five). I would ask any students that rated their understanding of the material at a 3 or below to meet me at the table in the back for small group instruction. This informal assessment allows students to be involved in assessing their own learning.  

At the end of the lesson and after students have had a chance to practice the problems in class and ask questions, I would hand out a formal assessment that will tell me where students are at. This short quiz is called a Quick Check and assesses a student’s ability to do each of the steps necessary to solve the problem.

Feedback on the Quiz – I will grade the quiz and provide student with feedback on what they need to work on. I will allow students to correct quiz work, providing the correct answer alongside an explanation of why they got the problem wrong and what they understand now that they didn’t before. This will involve students in assessing their own learning.

 

(14.2) Consider norm referenced assessment and criterion referenced assessment. Are there advantages to both? Are there disadvantages?

 

Norm-Referenced Assessments: Norm-referenced assessments are extremely important in comparing how students in one classroom, district, or school are performing in comparison to students in other classrooms, districts, or schools. It would be important to know that one classroom is making significantly less progress in a subject area that all of the other classrooms in the school. However, norm-referenced assessments can fail at comparing schools in different areas that teach different things – is one school a worse school because they do not teach exactly what is on the test? Sometimes, norm-referenced assessments are used in classrooms (including some college classes that I have been in). Students are graded not on how many questions they get right, but on where they fall on the bell curve in comparison to other students. One disadvantage of this is that students will be less likely to want to work together and help each other because norm-referenced assessments create a competitive atmosphere where one student’s success might depend on another student’s failure. However, norm-referenced assessments are important when placing students into different groups or classes, or when deciding eligibility for gifted services or special education programs.

Criterion-referenced assessments are the best was to quickly asses what concepts students have learned from instruction. They are mastery oriented, and all students are expected to succeed. One student’s grade does not affect the grades of other students, which is important in eliminating competition and improving cooperation between students. I see criterion-referenced assessments as more useful for everyday use in the classroom, as they give me valuable information on what my students did or did not learn in a given unit. However, criterion-referenced assessments are only as good as the standards that they are based on.