Summary:
Standard six, Assessment, details how teachers should appropriately use many different methods of assessments to promote growth among their students. These assessments are great to also monitor progress throughout the year and allow the teacher to effectively plan instruction based on the data the assessments provide.
Importance:
This standard is important because accurate and beneficial assessments give teachers an immense amount of feedback that will allow for proper instruction to be given to students’. This insight is crucial when trying to understand the strengths and weaknesses of students and ways to promote learning growth.
Artifact #1: Formative Assessment
This artifact, formative assessments, which are types of assessments that utilizes basic classwork to evaluate student progression without the stress or pressure of a more standardized assessment, or summative assessment. For this type of assessment, a graphic organizer/chart was given to students to determine progress throughout new content presentation. Formative assessments are a way for teachers to get necessary feedback to modify teaching and learning activities.
Click on the image to see the formative assessment in better detail.
Artifact #2: Summative Assessment
For this artifact, summative assessments, which are used to define a students skill, knowledge development, and overall academic achievement at the end of a unit or a milestone during the school year. Examples of summative assessments include final projects or papers, midterm test, SOL, etc. An example of a summative assessment is a test given to students at the end of a unit lesson plan about weather and seasons. This lesson was designed for kindergarteners. With this assessment, I was able to see if the students were understanding the concepts of weather, while acquiring the necessary skills in writing and reading.
Click on the image to see a summative assessment in better detail.
Artifact #3: Spelling Screening Inventory
This artifact is another example of an assessment in the form of a spelling screening inventory. This assessment was performed while working at Grandin Court Elementary, and given to a 4th grade student. This inventory shows a third type of assessment that can be used in the classroom to gather data about the students current level and where they should be heading.
Click on the image to see another type of assessment, an example I used in the classroom, DSA screening.