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Assessment and Evaluation
Assessment guides instruction. The primary purpose of assessment should be to improve student learning. It should be engaging, motivating and inspire learners to aspire to academic excellence. Assessment should be an ongoing process in the classrooms and a means to monitor students' progress. The students must be aware of how and why are they assessed so that they can understand his areas which need improvement and can work on those areas. They should understand what they are expected to know and how there work is going to be assessed. The educator has to be careful and aware that every student is different and has different learning styles. The assessment practice should be fair and equitable for all students. Teachers must use assessment strategies that are designed to provide students with opportunities to demonstrate the full extent of their learning. The assessment materials should consider gender, developmental stages, culture, background, special needs etc.
Teachers can use a variety of assessment methods.
1) Selected Response
2)Contructed rsponse
3) Performance assessment
4) personal communication
Some of the assessment strategies I use in my class are:
a) Response journals: this is a way where students reflect after reading a bok or after doing a task. This gives the students the opportunity to reflect on the learning and understanding of the materials read.
b) Conference: This is a good way to assess the students and guide them.
c) Performance tasks/cooperative learning: Students work in a group and learn to work towards the same goal together. Students are assessed on their undderstanding of the subject matter and collaborative working skills
d) KWL charts: This is an assessment technique used by teachers to assess what students know, want to know, and have learned about a particular topic. This is a technique which helps the students to self assess after the topic is read.
e) Oral Presentaions: This is way to assess the students knowledge and communication skills. the criteria is set before and well communicated to the students. The presentations could be a book talk, a role play, retelling of a story, presenting information or project work etc.
f) Peer Assessment: In this type of assessment peers assess the achievement and performance of each other. It is generally based on criteria developed by the teacher or jointly with the students and their teacher.
g) Self Assessment/ Evaluations: It is important for a student to recognize his own strength and areas of need. Self-reflection is an important part of self assessment. Student portfolios are good example of self assessment tools.
h) Quizzes/paper pencil tests: Though traditional but they help the teachers to see where their students stand and what knowledge is acquired by the students.
i) Graphic organizers: Graphic organizers are good assessment tools for visual learners.
k) Anecdotal records: Anecdotal Records are observations of student actions and interactions set in a specific day, time, setting and learning context. This helps in guiding the instruction.
l) Rubrics: Rubrics provide a ranking of task ability based on criteria --"a scoring guide that differentiates on an articulated scale, among a group of sample behaviors or evidences of thought that are responding to the same prompt." --may be quantitative or qualitative. --may be formative or summative. (Beauchamp, McConaghy, Parsons & Sanford) --show strengths and areas of growth. (Beauchamp, McConaghy, Parsons & Sanford.
Ref: Guidelines for Assessment and Evaluation (Bill Hogarth)
http://www.2learn.ca/projects/together/evaluate.html
http://www.rmcdenver.com/useguide/assessme/definiti.htm
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