“Assessment is today’s means of modifying tomorrow’s instruction.”
~Carol Ann Tomlinson
The standard for Assessment requires teachers to understand many effective ways teachers can implement assessments to understand a student’s progress of learning and the student’s growth that can better guide the teacher’s future instruction. Using different ways to assess students’ knowledge gives students’ many ways to show their understanding of the content. I show my understanding of using assessments by performing pre and post tests for a unit, utilizing a rubric for project-based learning, and using different ways to assess students’ understanding.
Artifact #1: Pretests and Posttests
Gathering information on what students already know on a subject is crucial for planning instruction for the upcoming unit, especially after the pandemic years of learning. Completing a pre-test for a unit helps me to understand where I need to drive my instruction and put more focus for comprehension during instruction. At the end of the unit, giving the same test as a post-test helps to provide documentation for growth and understanding where students may need additional review for material before a district formative or a state based test. I demonstrated my understanding by giving a pre and post test for a second grade Matter Unit.
Artifact #2: Rubric
Using a rubric on a project is helpful for both the student and myself the teacher. The students are able to check to make sure they have everything that they need to compete their project without needing to ask the teacher multiple times if they need to do a specific task or not as the rubric is in front of the student. This in turn creates self-reliance for a student. I implemented a rubric while creating an economics unit for first grade. During the economics unit, students earn money that they will be able to use towards the class store while upkeeping a journal of how much they earned while keeping track of any needs and wants for the day. On the last day of the unit, students are use their earned cash for items in the class store showing the teacher they understand to buy two items they need and one item they want along with counting the amount of money they have and spend.
Artifact #3: Different ways to assess
Not all assessments can exercise a student’s understanding of content learned during a unit. To the full range of understanding from students, using many different ways to assess their content knowledge can greatly aid a teacher. The traditional paper and pencil assessments of answering questions is one way to check a student’s knowledge with different word problems connected to the content. A fun and popular way to assess a student’s knowledge is to have a class do quiz online using the Quizizz, Quizlet, Kahoot, or Blooket platforms. The students see this as a fun day of instruction but for me it is a quick and engaging way to assess the students’ content knowledge and see where any gaps in their content knowledge might be. These platforms give teachers printouts of students’ performance reports so teachers can analyze and identify areas that need to be reviewed.