Week Thirteen Assignment Two

How can you build assessment into your instruction? 

         Teachers are actively assessing their students throughout all of their lessons. When teachers ask students questions to ensure comprehension, they are gaining feedback from the students to determine if they understand the material or if need for further instruction or explanation is necessary. We can take anecdotal notes throughout the school day, maybe by observing 3-5 students per day, to see progress in these students.

How can you document ongoing classroom assessment? 

         By taking anecdotal notes we are constantly checking our students for understanding. It is important to observe our students on a daily or weekly basis to ensure that they do not fall behind and is able to keep up with the material. If a child shows signs that they are falling behind a teacher can be sure to notice this at an early stage and begin to intervene. There are a variety of different documents used to take anecdotal notes. In all of these types of documentation there should be content standards present in each note taken. Teachers will be looking for signs that content-related material is understood and the students are able to meet these standards.

What is the difference between standards and benchmarks, and how do they impact your teaching? 

         Standards are classified as global statements. These statements are what our students should be able to perform or comprehend. Benchmarks, on the other hand, are what teachers expect their students to be able to perform or comprehend by their specific grade level. The benchmarks are brought down from standards that say what a specific grade-level student should be able to do by the end of that school year.

How do end-of-the-year benchmarks influence daily assessment? 

We need to ensure that our students are making progress daily for a larger goal that teachers have in mind. Teachers should be working together with the other grades to help student reach the expectations that we have of our students by the end of the year. The idea is describes as a staircase effect. Our kindergarten teacher has the students take the first step. The first grade teacher helps the students reach the second step and so on. We need to be seeking this evidence of comprehension as we are teaching. That is, we are constantly using different types of assessments such as having our students answer questions or writing a short piece to demonstrate progress.

How can you make anecdotal records useful and manageable? 

Our anecdotal records need to be neat and organized. We also want to ensure that there is no unnecessary language in the anecdotal records. That is, our notes should be quick and to the point. It is also important that teachers are observing approximately 3-5 students per school day. This will ensure that the teacher is able to write down significant events rather than losing their notes because they are simply trying to remember too much information. It is also important that the teacher observes a few students at a time to ensure that the information will not be lost due to short term memory confusion.

Discuss your experience using rubrics. What changes might you make after watching the video? 

                  I enjoy using rubrics because it provides students with information that tells them my expectations. If students have no idea what is expected of them than we really cannot grade them accurately or fairly. Every child should have an equal opportunity to do well. By using a rubric I am telling my students, “This is the assignment and what I expect of you. In order to receive a good grade follow the key points I outlined and you will do well.” After watching the video, I will provide my students with a rubric of every assignment that is given to them. If I am asking my students to perform at a certain level than they should be equipped with all the necessary material to ensure that they have an equal opportunity to do so.

How can students use rubrics to guide learning? 

                  Students can guide their assessment by following the rubric exactly. If the rubric says, “Provide three examples from the text” and the student only provides one they can assume they will not receive a good grade. Rubrics also motivate and inspire students to perform well. If a child knows what is expected than they are more likely to complete everything they can to the best of their ability to do well.

Describe how portfolios are developed and how they can be used as an assessment tool. 

Portfolios are a collection of material that the student has produced throughout the school year. The selection of material that goes into the portfolio should show progress and not just “good graded assignments”. Students can reflect back on what they learned and how they understand it better later. For example, teachers can show students their writing at the beginning of the year in comparison to the end of the year. Students will be able to see the improvements they have made and learn more about themselves. Teacher can see if the students are making progress throughout the year. It is a guided tool that tells the teacher if the students need to relearn something or if they are on the correct path towards achieving their long-term goal. 

Why are high-stakes tests not always accurate measures of student learning? 

                  High-stakes tests are assessments taken one time. This does not show progression of student learning and is not designed to address higher-level skills. A student taking a high-stakes test could be having a bad day on the day of the test or could not feel well prior to taking the test. Students are not generally motivated to taking high-stakes tests and often do not care about the scores they receive on these tests.

What are the best ways to prepare students for high-stakes assessments? 

                  The best way to prepare students for high-stakes assessments is to ensure that they have a rich curriculum prior to taking the test. We can also teach our students how to bubble in an answer and write about a specific topic in a certain time period. Our students need to have a solid foundation of learning prior to taking the high-stakes test. We need to have our students take away from this learning experience. In order for our students to perform well on thee high-stakes test we need to offer the assessment as just another challenge for our students.

How does assessment help differentiate instruction? 

                  Assessments show the teacher a point at which all of the students are. If teachers need to reteach material to a small group of students, they can have the other students work on a different assignment while they give small-group instruction. Sometimes teacher receive assessment scores that state a handful of students are having trouble transitioning paragraphs. If the entire class does not need to relearn this material than the teacher can take a few students aside to work on this material. There are, however, some moments that the teacher needs to use whole-group instruction to learn a new idea. This is beneficial when introducing a new topic or of it is something that all of the students are required to know.

How can you use assessment results to create small, flexible groupings in your classroom? 

                  The results of an assessment tell the teacher how the students are performing. We can group students by ability due to their performance on an assessment or we can group students based on high/low performance on an assessment. The ideas of grouping students based on assessment results are endless. As I have already stated, teachers can take a small group of students that did not perform well on an assessment and reteach the lesson that the rest of the class was able to comprehend. The other student can then work on another assignment that might ask of higher level thinking skills.

Based on what you learned in the video, what changes might you make in your assessment practices? 

                   I would definitely want to use anecdotal records to measure student progress. This is also an extremely useful tool when having a parent-teacher conference. We can bring up specific dates that the student demonstrates a specific behavior and measure progress with the material. For example, the standards of a third grader might be to read for comprehension. One ESL student might not even be able to recognize the English language on paper. If by the end of the year that same student is able to read a few paragraphs of English material but not able to understand it, we as the teacher have made progress with the student. It does not matter that he or she is not meeting third grade standards but that he or she learned something and made tremendous strides throughout the school year.