Assessment
Assessment is an essential part of instruction which determines whether learning objectives of education are being met. Assessment has teachers asking themselves, “Are we teaching students what they are supposed to be learning?”, “Are we improving the quality of student learning?”, and “ Are we using the best assessments to cater to the needs of our individual learners?” These are difficult questions that teachers face every single day. Assessments should help teachers to provide effective instruction while evaluating student learning. Assessment should be embedded in the learning process. By focusing on student learning in my classroom, I felt that it allowed me to examine my assessments and reflect on what techniques and instructional methods have more quality and effectiveness than others.
Formative assessments in my classroom, I felt gave students an opportunity to understand both the learning objectives as well as the assessment criteria. By giving students an opportunity to also choose their own learning tasks and use them to assess their own learning outcomes really gave them a sense of ownership of their learning. Formative assessments are a part of regular classroom learning. Harry G. Tuttle (2009) defines formative assessment as an assessment that is specifically intended to create feedback to improve and accelerate students learning. He mentions that formative assessment can be referred to as “continuous assessment”, “early warning assessment”, “interactive formative assessment” or “dynamic assessment”. This shows that formative assessment is not a specific type of assessment but rather than manner in which the assessment is used. “When you use formative assessments you identify the present status of the students in terms of learning standard, diagnose what to do to assist them, provide feedback, allow students to make the changes, and celebrate their learning successes.” (Tuttle, 2009) Assessment is necessary to my teaching because I feel it is important for students to not only check their understanding of content and skills but also to develop learning skills that they will be able to utilize in real world situations. “When you use formative assessments you identify the present status of the students in terms of learning standard, diagnose what to do to assist them, provide feedback, allow students to make the changes, and celebrate their learning successes.” (Tuttle, 2009) One type of formative assessment that I incorporated into my teaching was using mini-white boards. Throughout my lessons which involved reading comprehension, I would pause every few pages and ask a question about one of the characters or an action that just occurred. Students would display their answer on the white board and raise their hand when they felt they had the correct answer. Students would get one minute to express their answer on the white board. This helped me as a teacher to see which students were grasping the information and content and which students might be having trouble expressing their understanding. Students enjoyed the white boards because they were constantly engaged and it would actually motivate students to pay attention since they would be expected to answer a question at anytime of the lesson. This formative assessment also gives me feedback as a teacher on which parts of the lesson that students do not fully understand or which parts must be taught again. What is great about the white boards is students are able to erase them immediately and students will also realize that they can learn through their mistakes. Students were also able to self-assess themselves and really think about what they learned and also how to express their answers on their white boards.
Tuttle (2009) explains that when you use formative assessment as a teacher, you are better able to: determine what standards students already know and to what degree and from there decide what changes in instruction must be made that all students understand the content. Another formative assessment that I used during student teaching was a 3-2-1 exit slip. I would make sure that 5 minutes before the end of the lesson I would have students complete a 3-2-1 exit slip. Students would have to write down 3 things that they learned today, 2 things they found interesting, and 1 thing that they still aren’t sure about. This slip allows students to reflect on what they have learned and express what they think about the new information and concepts they have learned. These slips also help students process new concepts, look back on what they have learned already and discuss what content they are not understanding as well. This helped me as a teacher because this feedback allowed me to adapt and differentiate my instruction to cater to the students needs and student learning process. This strategy helped to give me an informal measure of the students readiness to learn a new concept or lesson. There are multiple formative assessments that are very beneficial to student learning. I personally felt that through my student teaching experiences that the use of the white board throughout lesson was an excellent assessment tool. After reflecting on this formative assessment, some students had trouble focusing on the lesson which did not allow them to fully get what they needed out of the activity. I think in the future I would have those couple students work with a partner who would help to motivate them and keep them on track. Having the partner could even help students to feel more comfortable sharing their ideas as well as having a peer discuss a strategy they used to understand a concept. For the 3-2-1 exit slip, I used the same one after each lesson. In the future I think I would want to change up the format and reword the questions so that students don’t feel that it is a hassle to do but rather a fun easy activity before they move on.
Self-assessment is part of the learning process for everyone. Whenever we learn something new, we tend to question ourselves with questions like, “Am I doing this correctly?, “Is this right?”, “Am I doing enough?, “How can I tell?”, “What do I have to do to go on?” By asking these questions and judging ourselves we begin to reflect on our learning and make decisions about taking our learning a step forward. If students are able to ask themselves these questions, it allows students to be accountable for their learning and to engage in critical self-assessment which is a very important aspect of their academic and personal development. When I was student teaching I made sure to tell my students that the purpose of “Checking yourself” was to encourage students to view it as a part of their learning development. According to Sophie Ioannou-Georgiou and Pavlos Pavlou in Assessing Young Learners, self-assessment improves children's motivation, enjoyment, and understanding of important aspects of leaning procedures and it also offers students basic skills on how to reflect on their learning. During student teaching I introduced to the students the concept of self assessment and guided them through the process of self-assessment by modeling how self-assessment works. My students needed to learn the basics of what self-assessment was because at first they did not really understand what is was.
As a teacher, I felt that I was better able to support the changing needs of each student in my classroom through the self-assessment strategies I used. One strategy that I used very frequently was an “I can” exit ticket. After the completion of a lesson, students would have to fill out this exit ticket where they would fill in one of 3 boxes which was a self-evaluation of if “ I got it!”, “sort of got it”, or “I didn’t get it”. After filling in one of the boxes they would then write one of two “I can” statement and then at the bottom of the exit ticket, they would give and example or explain what they understood about the lesson. Students would then place their exit slips in there own self-assessment folder. This folder would hold all their self-assessments, include the 3-2-1 exit slips which I also used at the end of certain lessons. The “I can” strategy really allowed students to think critically about what they just learned and actually give an example of their learning. I felt that these exit slips really gave students opportunities to take their knowledge a step further and think more abstractly about the content. This is also a fast way for me to check for student understanding from the lesson. Students who were not able to complete or give an example and explain, would help me to see which students did not fully understand the topic and what parts I would have to go back and re-teach. For example, if many students were able to write what the topic was about and what they learned but most were not able to explain or give an example, I would make sure to start my lesson the next day going over how students can prove what they say they “Can” do. There were a few students in my class that I was positive did not understand what was going on, I would bring them back into a small group while others are working independently, and use this time to practice more problems as well as correct the mistakes they are making. Addressing these students in a smaller group setting gives students more one on one attention and the chance to ask questions that they may be too shy to ask in a large group setting. I found it was also beneficial to also include a few students in the groups who understood the concept completely. This also allowed students to work together and see the steps that other peers took to find their solution to different problems.
Another self-assessment strategy I used was a behavioral checklist. I used this checklist specifically with a few of my students in my 2nd grade inclusion class. Many of these students had ADHD and struggled with staying on task and paying attention. At first I was very frustrated and many of the strategies I tried did not work. I decided to break down the day into different sections. Each student would have a checklist laminated on their desk, the checklist would have the different parts and different activities that would occur. Students would get a sticker after each section of the day. The stickers seemed to keep the students motivated to stay on task and pay attention because they knew that if they did not complete their work and they were off task that they would not receive a sticker. The sticker served as motivation for the students to work hard and prevent unwanted behavior. This checklist really helped students to understand that they have to stay on task in order to give themselves a sticker. Students were able to assess themselves and their behaviors. This even helped students to monitor their behaviors because they knew that they were working for something. This checklist strategy was extremely beneficial for the student, the students other peers in the class and also for the two teachers in the room. It limited the interruptions as well as distractions and it promoted more focus on learning. Students were able to take responsibility for evaluating and judging and even improving upon their own performance.
After reflecting on the self-assessment strategies I used, I found that both were effective in my student teaching placements. Students responded well to the self-assessments and were able to stay on task more because they started to realize that they were responsible for their learning and progression. In the future, I would definitely also use the 3-2-1 exit slip and combine it with the “I can” exit ticket. I think this would save more time for me as a teacher while also providing more information to improve my teaching. I think that I would also try to change it up sometimes by have a class “I can” exit ticket discussion. This would allow all students to discuss with each other what they may have learned and it would also provide opportunities for students to learn from their peers and possibly be reminded of some key points they might have forgot from the lesson. As for the behavioral checklist, I believe it worked very well for these students in particular. My co-teacher and I thought of this strategy a few weeks into school and we were able to see huge changes in the focus level of these students. There were times that the specific students did not stay on task and needed some assistance, but other than the little push from a teacher or another peer, this strategy worked very well.
As a teacher it is extremely important to be able to adapt to your students and the change the occurs in your classroom everyday. Teachers must make it a priority to take a step back and explore their own personal classroom practice. Reflective teaching involves looking at what you are doing in the classroom, asking yourself why you do what you do and examining if it works to help promote student learning. This process of self-evaluation as a teacher is very reflective on how effective you are as a teacher and if you are assessing your students correctly. On of the most important things a teacher must do to reflect on their teacher is to collect information, analyze and evaluate what goes on in the classroom. This in turn helps teachers to identify and explore our own practices and make changes where they are needed. Char Booth discusses in Reflective Teaching, Effective Learning that being an educator is about laying yourself on the line and being open to criticism and accepting vulnerability so that others may gain knowledge. She says that “every learning interaction becomes an opportunity to either stretch or flinch”. As teachers we must take on this challenge and accept that reflective practice is a process. It is a process of understanding and shaping your skills and abilities as you teach. One method that I used to reflect on my teaching and assessments was my student’s feedback. As I discussed earlier in this reflection, students completed formative and self-assessments which also provided me with feedback on what concepts they understood and what concepts they might need to revisit. I would also have small discussions with my students after different assessments and ask their opinion on the difficulty level on different parts of the assessment. I would then document this information in a small diary. When creating my next assessment, I would make sure to change different parts so that students would feel more comfortable communicating their learning. For my student teaching, every few weeks a colleague would come in and observe me teach a lesson and assess students. I was able to receive feedback from her about different observations and evaluations she made about my teaching techniques and strategies. By collaborating with her, I was able to learn some new assessment techniques and different steps that I could use to improve my teaching and be a more effective teacher for my students. This professional development helped me to generate more student learning.
When student teaching, I felt that teachers need to take an active responsibility in making decisions about the purposes for assessment and the content that we want to be assessed. Assessing students helps teachers to draw information about students and make decisions based on the students needs. The information that I received from the formative assessments, student self-assessments, and my professional development allowed me to improve my instruction to make my teaching more effective and enhance student learning.
Standards
In this reflection Standard ten is addressed which states that teachers understand and uses formal and informal assessment strategies to evaluate and ensure the continuous intellectual, social, and physical development of the learner. I was able to meet standard ten through assessing students through observation. Students completed formative assessments throughout the school day which allowed me as the teacher to gain feedback on their learning. I also was able to meet standard ten by having students complete a 3-2-1 exit slip which helped students to reflect on what they learned and also helped me to reflect on how well students understood and recalled the material. The 3-2-1 exit slips and the “I can” exit tickets allowed me to collect data while also allowing students to express and demonstrate their understanding of the topic. Finally I was able to meet standard ten by have students complete self-assessments which allowed students to acknowledge their strengths and the areas they understood and also acknowledge areas where they made need more work or more development. The “I Can” exit tickets helped students feel comfortable about reflecting on their knowledge as well as expressing that they are continuously developing new knowledge.
In this reflection Standard eleven is addressed which states that teachers are very reflective and are continuous learners and seek opportunities to grow as a professional and be a more effective teacher to generate more development. I was able to meet standard eleven through creating assessments which help me to reflect on my instruction and see what worked and what didn’t. I kept a small diary each day to reflect on my teaching and remind myself to adjust my teaching behaviors. I also met standard eleven by collaborating my colleagues to improve upon my instructional methods. By receiving this feedback from my colleagues, it allowed me to change my instructional methods which would therefore maximize my students learning even more. Finally I was also able to meet standard eleven by using the most recent educational techniques. I was able to use classroom management strategies to help increase my students attention. The behavioral checklist I used really helped to have students self-assess themselves and stay on task. This self-assessment technique really helped my class run smoothly with less distractions.
References:
Ioannou-Georgiou, Sophie, & Pavlos, Pavlou (2003). Assessing Young Learners.
Oxford University Press.
Tuttle, Harry G. (2008). Formative Assessment: Responding to Your Students.
Eye on Education, Inc.
Booth, Char (2011). Reflective Teaching, Effective Learning.
American Library Association.
Formative assessments in my classroom, I felt gave students an opportunity to understand both the learning objectives as well as the assessment criteria. By giving students an opportunity to also choose their own learning tasks and use them to assess their own learning outcomes really gave them a sense of ownership of their learning. Formative assessments are a part of regular classroom learning. Harry G. Tuttle (2009) defines formative assessment as an assessment that is specifically intended to create feedback to improve and accelerate students learning. He mentions that formative assessment can be referred to as “continuous assessment”, “early warning assessment”, “interactive formative assessment” or “dynamic assessment”. This shows that formative assessment is not a specific type of assessment but rather than manner in which the assessment is used. “When you use formative assessments you identify the present status of the students in terms of learning standard, diagnose what to do to assist them, provide feedback, allow students to make the changes, and celebrate their learning successes.” (Tuttle, 2009) Assessment is necessary to my teaching because I feel it is important for students to not only check their understanding of content and skills but also to develop learning skills that they will be able to utilize in real world situations. “When you use formative assessments you identify the present status of the students in terms of learning standard, diagnose what to do to assist them, provide feedback, allow students to make the changes, and celebrate their learning successes.” (Tuttle, 2009) One type of formative assessment that I incorporated into my teaching was using mini-white boards. Throughout my lessons which involved reading comprehension, I would pause every few pages and ask a question about one of the characters or an action that just occurred. Students would display their answer on the white board and raise their hand when they felt they had the correct answer. Students would get one minute to express their answer on the white board. This helped me as a teacher to see which students were grasping the information and content and which students might be having trouble expressing their understanding. Students enjoyed the white boards because they were constantly engaged and it would actually motivate students to pay attention since they would be expected to answer a question at anytime of the lesson. This formative assessment also gives me feedback as a teacher on which parts of the lesson that students do not fully understand or which parts must be taught again. What is great about the white boards is students are able to erase them immediately and students will also realize that they can learn through their mistakes. Students were also able to self-assess themselves and really think about what they learned and also how to express their answers on their white boards.
Tuttle (2009) explains that when you use formative assessment as a teacher, you are better able to: determine what standards students already know and to what degree and from there decide what changes in instruction must be made that all students understand the content. Another formative assessment that I used during student teaching was a 3-2-1 exit slip. I would make sure that 5 minutes before the end of the lesson I would have students complete a 3-2-1 exit slip. Students would have to write down 3 things that they learned today, 2 things they found interesting, and 1 thing that they still aren’t sure about. This slip allows students to reflect on what they have learned and express what they think about the new information and concepts they have learned. These slips also help students process new concepts, look back on what they have learned already and discuss what content they are not understanding as well. This helped me as a teacher because this feedback allowed me to adapt and differentiate my instruction to cater to the students needs and student learning process. This strategy helped to give me an informal measure of the students readiness to learn a new concept or lesson. There are multiple formative assessments that are very beneficial to student learning. I personally felt that through my student teaching experiences that the use of the white board throughout lesson was an excellent assessment tool. After reflecting on this formative assessment, some students had trouble focusing on the lesson which did not allow them to fully get what they needed out of the activity. I think in the future I would have those couple students work with a partner who would help to motivate them and keep them on track. Having the partner could even help students to feel more comfortable sharing their ideas as well as having a peer discuss a strategy they used to understand a concept. For the 3-2-1 exit slip, I used the same one after each lesson. In the future I think I would want to change up the format and reword the questions so that students don’t feel that it is a hassle to do but rather a fun easy activity before they move on.
Self-assessment is part of the learning process for everyone. Whenever we learn something new, we tend to question ourselves with questions like, “Am I doing this correctly?, “Is this right?”, “Am I doing enough?, “How can I tell?”, “What do I have to do to go on?” By asking these questions and judging ourselves we begin to reflect on our learning and make decisions about taking our learning a step forward. If students are able to ask themselves these questions, it allows students to be accountable for their learning and to engage in critical self-assessment which is a very important aspect of their academic and personal development. When I was student teaching I made sure to tell my students that the purpose of “Checking yourself” was to encourage students to view it as a part of their learning development. According to Sophie Ioannou-Georgiou and Pavlos Pavlou in Assessing Young Learners, self-assessment improves children's motivation, enjoyment, and understanding of important aspects of leaning procedures and it also offers students basic skills on how to reflect on their learning. During student teaching I introduced to the students the concept of self assessment and guided them through the process of self-assessment by modeling how self-assessment works. My students needed to learn the basics of what self-assessment was because at first they did not really understand what is was.
As a teacher, I felt that I was better able to support the changing needs of each student in my classroom through the self-assessment strategies I used. One strategy that I used very frequently was an “I can” exit ticket. After the completion of a lesson, students would have to fill out this exit ticket where they would fill in one of 3 boxes which was a self-evaluation of if “ I got it!”, “sort of got it”, or “I didn’t get it”. After filling in one of the boxes they would then write one of two “I can” statement and then at the bottom of the exit ticket, they would give and example or explain what they understood about the lesson. Students would then place their exit slips in there own self-assessment folder. This folder would hold all their self-assessments, include the 3-2-1 exit slips which I also used at the end of certain lessons. The “I can” strategy really allowed students to think critically about what they just learned and actually give an example of their learning. I felt that these exit slips really gave students opportunities to take their knowledge a step further and think more abstractly about the content. This is also a fast way for me to check for student understanding from the lesson. Students who were not able to complete or give an example and explain, would help me to see which students did not fully understand the topic and what parts I would have to go back and re-teach. For example, if many students were able to write what the topic was about and what they learned but most were not able to explain or give an example, I would make sure to start my lesson the next day going over how students can prove what they say they “Can” do. There were a few students in my class that I was positive did not understand what was going on, I would bring them back into a small group while others are working independently, and use this time to practice more problems as well as correct the mistakes they are making. Addressing these students in a smaller group setting gives students more one on one attention and the chance to ask questions that they may be too shy to ask in a large group setting. I found it was also beneficial to also include a few students in the groups who understood the concept completely. This also allowed students to work together and see the steps that other peers took to find their solution to different problems.
Another self-assessment strategy I used was a behavioral checklist. I used this checklist specifically with a few of my students in my 2nd grade inclusion class. Many of these students had ADHD and struggled with staying on task and paying attention. At first I was very frustrated and many of the strategies I tried did not work. I decided to break down the day into different sections. Each student would have a checklist laminated on their desk, the checklist would have the different parts and different activities that would occur. Students would get a sticker after each section of the day. The stickers seemed to keep the students motivated to stay on task and pay attention because they knew that if they did not complete their work and they were off task that they would not receive a sticker. The sticker served as motivation for the students to work hard and prevent unwanted behavior. This checklist really helped students to understand that they have to stay on task in order to give themselves a sticker. Students were able to assess themselves and their behaviors. This even helped students to monitor their behaviors because they knew that they were working for something. This checklist strategy was extremely beneficial for the student, the students other peers in the class and also for the two teachers in the room. It limited the interruptions as well as distractions and it promoted more focus on learning. Students were able to take responsibility for evaluating and judging and even improving upon their own performance.
After reflecting on the self-assessment strategies I used, I found that both were effective in my student teaching placements. Students responded well to the self-assessments and were able to stay on task more because they started to realize that they were responsible for their learning and progression. In the future, I would definitely also use the 3-2-1 exit slip and combine it with the “I can” exit ticket. I think this would save more time for me as a teacher while also providing more information to improve my teaching. I think that I would also try to change it up sometimes by have a class “I can” exit ticket discussion. This would allow all students to discuss with each other what they may have learned and it would also provide opportunities for students to learn from their peers and possibly be reminded of some key points they might have forgot from the lesson. As for the behavioral checklist, I believe it worked very well for these students in particular. My co-teacher and I thought of this strategy a few weeks into school and we were able to see huge changes in the focus level of these students. There were times that the specific students did not stay on task and needed some assistance, but other than the little push from a teacher or another peer, this strategy worked very well.
As a teacher it is extremely important to be able to adapt to your students and the change the occurs in your classroom everyday. Teachers must make it a priority to take a step back and explore their own personal classroom practice. Reflective teaching involves looking at what you are doing in the classroom, asking yourself why you do what you do and examining if it works to help promote student learning. This process of self-evaluation as a teacher is very reflective on how effective you are as a teacher and if you are assessing your students correctly. On of the most important things a teacher must do to reflect on their teacher is to collect information, analyze and evaluate what goes on in the classroom. This in turn helps teachers to identify and explore our own practices and make changes where they are needed. Char Booth discusses in Reflective Teaching, Effective Learning that being an educator is about laying yourself on the line and being open to criticism and accepting vulnerability so that others may gain knowledge. She says that “every learning interaction becomes an opportunity to either stretch or flinch”. As teachers we must take on this challenge and accept that reflective practice is a process. It is a process of understanding and shaping your skills and abilities as you teach. One method that I used to reflect on my teaching and assessments was my student’s feedback. As I discussed earlier in this reflection, students completed formative and self-assessments which also provided me with feedback on what concepts they understood and what concepts they might need to revisit. I would also have small discussions with my students after different assessments and ask their opinion on the difficulty level on different parts of the assessment. I would then document this information in a small diary. When creating my next assessment, I would make sure to change different parts so that students would feel more comfortable communicating their learning. For my student teaching, every few weeks a colleague would come in and observe me teach a lesson and assess students. I was able to receive feedback from her about different observations and evaluations she made about my teaching techniques and strategies. By collaborating with her, I was able to learn some new assessment techniques and different steps that I could use to improve my teaching and be a more effective teacher for my students. This professional development helped me to generate more student learning.
When student teaching, I felt that teachers need to take an active responsibility in making decisions about the purposes for assessment and the content that we want to be assessed. Assessing students helps teachers to draw information about students and make decisions based on the students needs. The information that I received from the formative assessments, student self-assessments, and my professional development allowed me to improve my instruction to make my teaching more effective and enhance student learning.
Standards
In this reflection Standard ten is addressed which states that teachers understand and uses formal and informal assessment strategies to evaluate and ensure the continuous intellectual, social, and physical development of the learner. I was able to meet standard ten through assessing students through observation. Students completed formative assessments throughout the school day which allowed me as the teacher to gain feedback on their learning. I also was able to meet standard ten by having students complete a 3-2-1 exit slip which helped students to reflect on what they learned and also helped me to reflect on how well students understood and recalled the material. The 3-2-1 exit slips and the “I can” exit tickets allowed me to collect data while also allowing students to express and demonstrate their understanding of the topic. Finally I was able to meet standard ten by have students complete self-assessments which allowed students to acknowledge their strengths and the areas they understood and also acknowledge areas where they made need more work or more development. The “I Can” exit tickets helped students feel comfortable about reflecting on their knowledge as well as expressing that they are continuously developing new knowledge.
In this reflection Standard eleven is addressed which states that teachers are very reflective and are continuous learners and seek opportunities to grow as a professional and be a more effective teacher to generate more development. I was able to meet standard eleven through creating assessments which help me to reflect on my instruction and see what worked and what didn’t. I kept a small diary each day to reflect on my teaching and remind myself to adjust my teaching behaviors. I also met standard eleven by collaborating my colleagues to improve upon my instructional methods. By receiving this feedback from my colleagues, it allowed me to change my instructional methods which would therefore maximize my students learning even more. Finally I was also able to meet standard eleven by using the most recent educational techniques. I was able to use classroom management strategies to help increase my students attention. The behavioral checklist I used really helped to have students self-assess themselves and stay on task. This self-assessment technique really helped my class run smoothly with less distractions.
References:
Ioannou-Georgiou, Sophie, & Pavlos, Pavlou (2003). Assessing Young Learners.
Oxford University Press.
Tuttle, Harry G. (2008). Formative Assessment: Responding to Your Students.
Eye on Education, Inc.
Booth, Char (2011). Reflective Teaching, Effective Learning.
American Library Association.