Standard 5

 

	Standard 5. Assessment in a multi-racial, multicultural democracy
5.1	Understand that assessment is an integral part of teaching and that children’s developmental and academic interests, accomplishments and challenges should drive their daily instructional decisions
5.2	Know the different uses, advantages, limitations and biases of different types of assessments and understand that appropriate assessments must consider cultural, familial and community contexts from which children come
5.3	Know how to use a variety of formal and informal assessment tools and strategies to monitor and promote each student’s learning and development
5.4	Use formative and summative assessments to determine students’ understanding in each subject area, and be aware of technological tools that can facilitate assessment

         

            Assessments are the foundation to any classroom. If used properly, a teacher can be provided with an overview of her class in order to understand what material her students have mastered and what subjects needs further instruction. A teacher should not only use formal assessments such as tests to monitor her students, but she should also use informal assessments such as check lists, observations, or conversations with the students to assess their knowledge on a particular subject.

            Within teaching, many teachers use assessments incorrectly. The assessments are used to see who either passed or failed but the ideas of which students understand the topic are never explored. Experts in the field of education, Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggins (2005) created the lesson plan template known as Backward Design. The idea of Backward Design was for teachers to create their lessons with the assessment identified first. Therefore a teacher would identify the results (objectives, outcomes, and goals) of the lesson before designing the actual lesson. By knowing what the assessment of the lesson will be before creating the lesson plan, a teacher is able to recognize if the flow of the lesson will meet these expectations.

            By using the concept of Backwards Design, a teacher should be using assessment as a tool for students understand rather than a way to measure a child’s competency for a specific subject/concept. Connoisseurs in curriculum design and assessment, Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey (2007), explain how formative assessments (ongoing assessments, reviews, and observations within a classroom during lessons) are used to check student’s understandings throughout a unit or course and also allow a teacher to adjust future lesson planning to help students understand more efficiently within a subject, while summative assessments (tests at the end of a unit or course) are used primarily for grades and to measure what a child has or has not already learned, (p 4). An educator needs to make the shift in realizing that assessment is a compilation of evidence providing an insight to a child’s understanding throughout a unit or year rather than one test used to determine what a student can and cannot do during that specific instance.

For children to learn within a classroom, the material being presented to the class must be academically appropriate for the children. It is impossible for a teacher to gauge the understanding of her students within the classroom without material to base her planning of. By using summative assessments, the teacher can be reassured that a child has a full grasp upon the curriculum and that her teaching is meaningful and successful for the students. I believe that in order for assessment to be accurately used by a teacher, the assessment should be based upon a child’s ongoing understanding rather than retained knowledge at a specific moment. I do believe that summative assessments should be used in order to identify what students have learned for a specific unit or subject, but if formative assessments are used throughout the learning process a summative assessment may not be difficult for students who have already mastered the knowledge required for the specific unit. Formative assessments are important to use throughout lessons due to the fact that they allow teachers to view how students are learning throughout a specific lesson which helps a teacher adjust her future lessons to her student’s needs. Rick Stiggins (2005) explains that when a teacher provides feedback to students through the use of formative assessments “students are inside the assessment process, watching themselves grow, feeling in control of their success, and believing that continued success is within reach if they keep trying,” (p 327-328) rather than feeling unsuccessful when they receive a poor grade after a summative assessment.

During my sophomore year at Wheelock I was enrolled in Teaching Reading. For this class, I went to the King Elementary School in Cambridge, Massachusetts to tutor one student on four separate occasions. During one visit I preformed the Developmental Reading Assessment (DRA) on my tutee, May. This reading test is correlated with a system of reading levels; each student’s independent reading level is determined according to accuracy, fluency, and comprehension based on a short story.  Artifact 5.1 is May’s DRA test after she independently read The Flood, a short story about a boy whose basement flooded due to a near-by river overflowing. May was able to understand the concept of the rivers, rain, floods, and how these affected the activities which the young boy wanted to engage in outside. But, certain children may not understand how water engulfing a person’s house is connected to an overflowing river. Within my full-practicum at the Joseph Lee Elementary School in Dorchester, Massachusetts, I tested a majority of my third grade students using DRA’s. Many of the students who were strong readers performed poorly on this assessment due to their own personal cultural and community differences. Students did not recognize character names or the concept of a pet store and therefore were not able to concentrate or comprehend on what the story was about. Standard 4.2 explains that teachers should understand how a child’s direct surroundings can directly affect a child’s assessment in a negative way and I believe that by having a variety of children take the DRA’s I have seen how limitations on assessments can negatively impact a child who would otherwise succeed.

            Standard 5.3 focuses on understanding how to use formal as well as informal assessment within the classroom. During my time at Joseph Lee Elementary, we followed the TERC investigations mathematics curriculum. This scripted curriculum provides educators with an outline of how to assess for understanding informally throughout a lesson as well as provide students with the ability to perform well on formal assessments. TERC suggests making checklists of what objectives the teacher aims to have her students reach. Artifact 5.2 is a copy of a checklist I used after I taught a lesson about place value and 1,000 charts. I was able to walk around the classroom and check off each objective I wanted the students to reach. After the math lesson was completed, I was able to look back upon the checklist and determine which students understood the concept of 1,000 and place value and which students needed further instruction. By using checklists for lessons, I was able to assess each child individually throughout the unit rather than on the final assessment at the end.

            I believe that throughout my classes at Wheelock I have gained a concept of how crucial assessing for understanding is within a classroom. I feel that my supervising practitioner based her classroom solely upon a summative assessment which would be given at the end of a unit. I believe that this approach negatively affected many of the students’ math abilities within the classroom. My supervising practitioner did not use any type of formative assessments (she did not collect any work to assess or use any checklists to identify who had or had not reached desired outcomes of a lesson) When it came time to grade the end of the unit assessment, we would we would discover multiple children who appeared to have no understanding for the material which was taught. By the time this was discovered, the curriculum suggested beginning a new unit. This meant that there was no way to go back and re-teach what the students should have known. I believe that if summative and formative assessments were used throughout the unit, and not just waiting until the summative assessment at the end of the unit, my supervising practitioner and I would have had the chance to adjust future lesson planning to help each student master the subject. I believe that my experience within the field has provided me with the ability to understand and reach this standard.

Works Cited

Fisher, D. & Frey, N. (2007). Checking for Understanding. Alexandria, VA: Association for

Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Stiggins, R. (2005). From Formative Assesment to Assessment FOR Learning: A Path to Success in

Standards-Based Schools, Phil Delta Kappan, Vol. 87, No. 04, 324-328.

Wiggins, G. & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by design. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.