Standard #6
Assessment
The teacher understands and uses multiple methods of assessment to engage learners in their own growth, to monitor learner progress, and to guide the teacher’s and learner’s decision making.
What the Standard Means?
This standard states that teachers must use multiple methods of assessment to determine where students are at in the learning process. This means that just administering tests at the end of a unit to evaluate students' learning is inadequate. Yes, students should participate in summative assessments to evaluate their overall learning, but teachers must also use formative assessments to monitor students' understandings from lesson to lesson. Therefore, assessments are meant to both monitor and evaluate students’ learning. Through these types of assessments, teachers can use the data they receive to guide their instruction for each student, as well as monitor the learner's ongoing progress.
Artifacts
What the Standard Means?
This standard states that teachers must use multiple methods of assessment to determine where students are at in the learning process. This means that just administering tests at the end of a unit to evaluate students' learning is inadequate. Yes, students should participate in summative assessments to evaluate their overall learning, but teachers must also use formative assessments to monitor students' understandings from lesson to lesson. Therefore, assessments are meant to both monitor and evaluate students’ learning. Through these types of assessments, teachers can use the data they receive to guide their instruction for each student, as well as monitor the learner's ongoing progress.
Artifacts
Why the artifact was chosen and how it is an appropriate representation of the standard?
The first set of pictures represent one way that I used summative assessment to evaluate students' recognition of high frequency words. Each trimester, students went through a list of 125 high frequency words that align with the phonics curriculum, Imagine It. This assessment helped identify the words students can recognize and the words they are still unfamiliar with. The first sheet shows the high frequency words that the student knew in October. The second sheet shows what she knew in February, and the third shows her recognition in April. The last photo is of the graph that the student created to represent her progress and growth over the course of first grade.
The other pictures display a few ways that I have used formative assessments in my classroom. The two pictures and the video in the second row capture a student self-assessing his handwriting after completing a journal entry. Every day after writing in his journal he answers the questions on the checklist to assess if his writing aligns with the 1st grade writing goals. Then, I go through and I assess his writing using the same checklist. If we are agree that his writing for the day meets all of the goals for a first grader's writing, then he can move on to drawing and coloring a picture that goes along with his story. If we disagree on one of the questions, he reviews his writing to self-correct his mistakes. This self-assessment gives him the opportunity to notice his errors and a chance to improve them, hopefully resulting in the application of the handwriting goals becoming an automatic habit where the checklist is no longer needed.
The stars and stairs sheet that I fill out, as seen in the third row, is another way that I provide students with feedback on their writing. The stars highlight the aspects of a student's writing that are impressive and skills I would like him/her to continue using while writing. The stairs outline areas of growth for a student's writing, especially skills I would like them to focus on in their future journal entries. This type of feedback compliments aspects of students' writing, as well as establishes a goal for them to work on.
Last is a picture of exit slips that I used to assess if students met the objective: Students will understand how rocks can be sorted. Before moving onto the next activity, students were required to fill out the exit slip and hand it in. The exit slip provided me with a snapshot of students' learning and a quick way to check the students' understanding of the lesson to determine if they met the objective. From the exit slips it was evident that students met the objective, meaning we could move onto the next concept during our subsequent science class.
The various types of assessments reflected upon above align with a variety of substandards. In particular, having a student self-assess his writing skills aligns with 6(m), "The teacher knows when and how to engage learners in analyzing their own assessment results and in helping to set goals for their own learning." The stars and stairs sheet correlates with 6(d), "The teacher engages learners in understanding and identifying quality work and provides them with effective descriptive feedback to guide their progress toward that work." These assessments combined with the other assessment artifacts demonstrate my performance and knowledge of 6(a), "the teacher balances the use of formative and summative assessment as appropriate to support, verify, and document learning," and 6(j), "The teacher understands the differences between formative and summative applications of assessments and knows how and when to use each." Since assessments are a vital in recognizing students' learning and guiding instruction, it is important that teachers employ a variety of assessment methods, as demonstrated above.
How the artifact represents growth and development as a teacher.
The opportunity to teach and assess a class of 25 students during my student teaching placement provided me with great insights about the importance of using multiple forms of assessment to obtain data. While administering the assessments, I was surprised to learn how many different ways students can show that they understand a certain concept. Also, I learned how to analyze assessment data to provide meaningful feedback to the students. My analysis of the assessments also helped guide my planning and instruction for future lessons. Therefore, I learned how to analyze data and use it to guide my instruction and benefit the students.
The first set of pictures represent one way that I used summative assessment to evaluate students' recognition of high frequency words. Each trimester, students went through a list of 125 high frequency words that align with the phonics curriculum, Imagine It. This assessment helped identify the words students can recognize and the words they are still unfamiliar with. The first sheet shows the high frequency words that the student knew in October. The second sheet shows what she knew in February, and the third shows her recognition in April. The last photo is of the graph that the student created to represent her progress and growth over the course of first grade.
The other pictures display a few ways that I have used formative assessments in my classroom. The two pictures and the video in the second row capture a student self-assessing his handwriting after completing a journal entry. Every day after writing in his journal he answers the questions on the checklist to assess if his writing aligns with the 1st grade writing goals. Then, I go through and I assess his writing using the same checklist. If we are agree that his writing for the day meets all of the goals for a first grader's writing, then he can move on to drawing and coloring a picture that goes along with his story. If we disagree on one of the questions, he reviews his writing to self-correct his mistakes. This self-assessment gives him the opportunity to notice his errors and a chance to improve them, hopefully resulting in the application of the handwriting goals becoming an automatic habit where the checklist is no longer needed.
The stars and stairs sheet that I fill out, as seen in the third row, is another way that I provide students with feedback on their writing. The stars highlight the aspects of a student's writing that are impressive and skills I would like him/her to continue using while writing. The stairs outline areas of growth for a student's writing, especially skills I would like them to focus on in their future journal entries. This type of feedback compliments aspects of students' writing, as well as establishes a goal for them to work on.
Last is a picture of exit slips that I used to assess if students met the objective: Students will understand how rocks can be sorted. Before moving onto the next activity, students were required to fill out the exit slip and hand it in. The exit slip provided me with a snapshot of students' learning and a quick way to check the students' understanding of the lesson to determine if they met the objective. From the exit slips it was evident that students met the objective, meaning we could move onto the next concept during our subsequent science class.
The various types of assessments reflected upon above align with a variety of substandards. In particular, having a student self-assess his writing skills aligns with 6(m), "The teacher knows when and how to engage learners in analyzing their own assessment results and in helping to set goals for their own learning." The stars and stairs sheet correlates with 6(d), "The teacher engages learners in understanding and identifying quality work and provides them with effective descriptive feedback to guide their progress toward that work." These assessments combined with the other assessment artifacts demonstrate my performance and knowledge of 6(a), "the teacher balances the use of formative and summative assessment as appropriate to support, verify, and document learning," and 6(j), "The teacher understands the differences between formative and summative applications of assessments and knows how and when to use each." Since assessments are a vital in recognizing students' learning and guiding instruction, it is important that teachers employ a variety of assessment methods, as demonstrated above.
How the artifact represents growth and development as a teacher.
The opportunity to teach and assess a class of 25 students during my student teaching placement provided me with great insights about the importance of using multiple forms of assessment to obtain data. While administering the assessments, I was surprised to learn how many different ways students can show that they understand a certain concept. Also, I learned how to analyze assessment data to provide meaningful feedback to the students. My analysis of the assessments also helped guide my planning and instruction for future lessons. Therefore, I learned how to analyze data and use it to guide my instruction and benefit the students.