Student Assessment

This week is the last week of our regular class schedule.  We have been talking a lot about assessment, and different ways to assess student learning.  One thing I found important about these in-class discussions was Dr. Smirnova’s comment on recognition questions.  These are questions asked throughout a lesson that allow students to spit back repetition of facts and details.  This type of questioning should be avoided because it makes it more difficult for the teacher to figure out what the class is understanding, versus what they have stored in their short-term memory.  In order to be able to thoroughly assess a student’s learning and progress, teachers must ask questions that do not give room for guessing or memorization.  Instead, we must ask questions that are focused on testing a student’s comprehension skills.

As future teachers, it is important to recognize the different types of assessment that we should involve in every lesson we teach.  The first type of assessment should occur at the beginning of each lesson-- diagnostic assessment is a form of pre-assessment where teachers can evaluate students’ strengths, weaknesses, knowledge and skills before their instruction.  With this form of assessment, teachers can plan meaningful and efficient instruction and can provide students with an individualized learning experience.  Diagnostic assessment can be done in the form of brainstorming ideas, for example.  We can also compare this type of assessment to the part of the scientific method where we make a hypothesis.  

The second type of assessment is known as formative assessment.  The goal of formative assessment is to monitor student learning to provide ongoing feedback that can be used by instructors to improve their teaching, and used by students to improve their learning.  Basically, formative assessment helps students identify their strengths and weaknesses and target areas that need work.  Formative assessment can be given by having students record their thoughts and observations without allowing them to be influenced by the thoughts or opinions of others.    

The final type of assessment is an ending evaluation that summarizes what students have learned over the course of the lesson.  Teachers usually test a students’ learning in this way by comparing their knowledge to a standard or benchmark.  Summative assessments usually consist of high stakes, high point value tests or projects.  An example of a summative assessment is a midterm, a final project, or a conclusive essay.