SPED 2 Portfolio: Assessment

 

Image retrieved from Teachers Pay Teachers 

Formative assessment AKA assessment for learning: The emphasis here is on providing assessment to help the learning process and guide the teacher's lessons. Here assessments would be given to help identify the level of understanding so that the teacher can plan the next step to support the student. Formative assessment usually happens informally and often. (Gardener & Ebooks corporation 2012, 2011& National Resource Council, 2001)

Some examples of formative assessment that I use include:

• Drawings
• Conferencing
• List of 10

• Graphic organizers

• 3 facts and a fib

• Matching activities

• 1 sentence summaries

• Problem-solving

• Learning log

For more ideas for formative assessment, check out this presentation by David Wees "56 Ways to Gather Evidence of Student Achievement"

According to the National Research Council (2001), some helpful questions to use to guide assessment for learning include:

• Where are you trying to go?
• Where are you now?
• How can you get there?

Summative assessment AKA assessment of learning: The emphasis here is placed on determining the student’s comprehension level. This usually occurs at the end of a topic or unit. It helps teachers understand the students overall learning of a unit and may also be used as formative assessment by teachers if perhaps many of the students didn't show that they reached a strong level of understanding at the end of a unit. (Gardener & Ebooks corporation 2012, 2011& National Resource Council, 2001)

Examples of summative assessment might include:

Conversations:

• explaining thinking

• learning logs
• conferring

Observations:

• anecdotal notes
• checklist

Products:

• Class book or Individual book
• Art
• Compare and contrast charts
• Poems
• Tableau/Role-play
• Portfolio

Assessment as learning AKA Self-assessment is determined through self-assessment and self-reflection of students on their own learning facilitated through teachers. This helps teachers understand how comfortable students are in their understanding of a topic or unit and can provide useful formative information to the teacher.

This could look like self-assessment sheets, journal entries, exit slips, group reflections orally through a sharing circle, etc.

For information on triangulation of data and data collection, please see a previous post of mine: Communicating Daily Student Learning

References:

Gardner, J., & Ebooks Corporation. (2012;2011;). Assessment and learning (2nd;2; ed.). Thousand Oaks,         Calif; London: Sage.

National Research Council. (2001). Chapter 3: Assessment in the Classroom. In Classroom assessment and the national science education standards (pp. 23–58). essay, National Academies Press.