Assessing with Tech Tools

Assessment Text and Resources Far too many teachers simply stumble into an assessment pattern without giving serious consideration to why they are assessing what they are assessing. Typically, teachers test students in order to dispense grades in a manner that somehow resembles the levels of academic performances students have displayed. Results of classroom assessments may be employed to identify certain students’ areas of deficiency so the teacher can more effectively target additional instruction at those content or skill areas where there’s the greatest need. Another important function of classroom assessment is to help teachers, prior to the design of an instructional sequence, understand more clearly what their end-of-instruction targets really are. Five Key Strategies of Formative Assessment Where is the learning going Where is the learner right now How to get there Teacher Terms: • Cognitive Assessments – target those that deal with a student’s intellectual operations • Affective Assessments – target those that deal with a student’s attitude, interests, and values • Psychomotor Assessments – target those dealing with a student’s muscle skills • Content Standard – describes the knowledge or skills that educators want students to learn • Performance Standard – describes the desired level of proficiency at which educators want a content standard mastered • Norm-Referenced – educators interpret a student’s performance in relation to the performances of students who have previously taken the same examination • Criterion-Referenced – an absolute interpretation on the extent to which the criterion represented by the test is actually mastered by the student • Formative Assessment 1 – a planned process in which assessment-elicited evidence of students’ status is used by teachers to adjust their ongoing instructional procedures or by students to adjust their current learning tactics. • Formative Assessment 2 – to the extent that evidence about student achievement is elicited, interpreted, and used by teachers, learners, or their peers, to make decisions about the next steps in instruction that are likely to better, or better founded, than the decisions they would have taken in the absence of the evidence that was elicited. • Summative Assessment – takes place when educators collect test -based evidence to inform decisions about already completed instructional activities Clarifying, sharing, and understanding learning intentions and success criteria Engineering effective discussions, tasks, and activities that elicit evidence of learning Providing feedback that moves learning forward Peer Activating students as learning resources for one another Activating students as owners of their own learning Learner