(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.
Assessment, assessment, assessment, assessment. In society today, teachers and students are assessed or evaluated for everything they do. Personally, I struggle with standardized tests so I would like to provide a classroom that assesses my students in a variety of ways to enable them to excel.
As an elementary school teacher, these forms of assessment can apply to any subject.
4 informal assessments:
- Documenting my observations: As a teacher, I will be observing tons of stimuli in my classroom every single day. It may be difficult to accurately observe a student and remember details about my observations. By taking quick notes during planning periods or at the end of the day about my observations, I will be more likely to understand patterns, what works, what doesn’t work, good ideas, bad teaching practices, ect. in my classroom.
- Asking PURPOSEFUL questions: By planning questions AHEAD OF TIME, before beginning a lesson, I can promote active student participation in a discussion rather than lecturing. Questioning your students allows the teacher to see what the class does and doesn’t understand. This may mean that your “plan” for a lesson needs to completely change after hearing the students’ responses to your questions.
- Journaling: I love the idea of having my students write daily in a journal. I would like to have this be a “free write” experience but on some days I can ask them to write what they want to learn or what they don’t understand or what they HAVE learned. This allows me to get to know my students on a more personal level and even if they aren’t writing about academics their journal entries can help me to assist them in a more individualized way.
- “Ticket-out-the-door”: A non-graded written expression of how a student feels about the content just addressed will be very informative to me. I love this idea even though I never personally used this form of informal assessment in my schooling experience.
4 formal assessments:
These formal assessment may apply more so to certain subjects. In general, I think it is so important for teachers to be CREATIVE when providing forms of assessment. By making assessment more interesting and fun than a traditional test or quiz, students are more likely to work harder and show their level of understanding accurately.
1. Projects: I think CREATING something is very evident of what you understand and don't understand about a topic. For example, having students make a "How-To Book" for a language arts lesson on punctuation. Another example is creating a graph, chart, or diagram to show the growth of a plant in science. (Other examples: Artifacts, banners, book reviews, brochures, books, cartoons, displays, crossword puzzles, ect.)
2. PERFORMING your understanding of a topic is a great form of assessment that accurately displays if you understand the material or not. This also allows students to get up out of their seats and move around to release some energy. In social studies for example, students can perform a dramatic demonstration in small groups of an important part of history. (Other examples: campaign speeches, charades, classroom maps, commercials, dances, debates, exercise routines, experiments, interviews, ect.)
3. I like the idea of formally assessing using learning logs that allow teachers and students to have a checklist where you can write where a student needs more assistance and where they are excelling.
4. Traditional assessment includes: multiple choice, true/false, matching, fill in the blank, short answer, and essay format. I don't really like multiple choice tests because they can be deceiving for especially younger students. I would prefer a student to match the correct answer or better yet, TELL ME what they understand about a problem using short answer or fill in the blank.
I really like your ideas for assessment in an elementary classroom. Journaling is great for kids to be able to express their creativity in the classroom, especially if they are given some license in their choice of topics. I have seen this used in the classroom a great deal, and many kids enjoy adding pictures to their journal, which makes it seem less like an assignment.
ReplyDeletePerformance on knowledge of certain topics is also a great tool for assessing young children, as it gets them excited about showing what they have learned.
Morgan, I really liked the way your organized your thoughts, as well as the CREATIVE ways in which you will assess your students! I also like the ideas of a "ticket-out-the-door" and journaling/ learning logs. My biggest struggle is differentiating informal assessment because it's difficult not to plan out your lesson, even down to the simple questions you may use to preassess your students knowledge and understanding.
ReplyDeleteMorgan, this post is awesome! I did not go into nearly as much detail as you did, likely because I was somewhat unsure of how to squeeze in four approaches for each form. You really broke it down step-by-step and provided a great illustration of how you would manage to thoroughly assessment your students under a time constraint of a unit or lesson. Not only did you make it very clear how you would approach it, but you were able to incorporate differentiated instruction while doing so. I found your post very helpful and will likely read through it again in the future.
ReplyDeleteMorgan,
ReplyDeleteGreat post! These are all excellent ideas - thanks for sharing! I really enjoy the "ticket-out-the-door" idea. We do this in my third grade classroom before the children line up to use the restroom. As the children finish using the restroom and are waiting in line, this gives the teachers a chance to look at the "ticket-out-the-door" responses and to respond to the children immediately. It also serves as a great transitional activity!