InTASC+6+Assessment

Formative and summative assessments are a vital part of education because they allow teachers to evaluate students’ knowledge, reflect on their own instruction, and create developmentally appropriate lessons. Teachers should constantly use formative assessments to gauge students’ progress in a given lesson or unit of study. Because formative assessments are as informal and quick as thumbs up/thumbs down or call and response, teachers can use them during instruction in order to monitor student learning and adjust instruction if necessary. On the other hand, summative assessments are more formal and need to be carefully planned. In order to reliably assess if students are meeting objectives, goals, and standards, teachers need to match objectives and assessments both in topic and level of cognitive demand. For example, if an objective asks students to analyze rhetorical devices in a text, an appropriate assessment may ask students to explicate a text. An assessment that only asked students to define rhetorical devices may yield a false positive because it is asking students to function on a lower level of Bloom’s taxonomy. Inversely, an assessment that asked students to evaluate rhetorical devices to determine author purpose may yield a false negative because it assesses students at a higher level of thinking than the objective. Furthermore, teachers need to ensure that a lesson or unit’s activities prepare students for the objective. Instructors ought to test what is covered in class in order to prepare all students for success on summative assessments. Particularly when these summative assessments are coming at the end of the unit and carry a large point value, teachers need to carefully model the final product and the thought processes necessary to reach the desired goal. For instance, if I wanted my students to compose an argumentative essay, I would explain both the prompt and rubric, review what elements are needed in argumentative papers, facilitate class brainstorming sessions, model an essay, allow opportunities for revision on feedback, and require that students self-reflect on their writing process. By doing this, I would ensure that students received the scaffolding necessary to succeed on the assessment and demonstrate their knowledge. After students’ complete assessments, teachers need to evaluate the data and reflect upon their own teaching. For example, if none of the students could correctly identify logos, ethos, and pathos in a speech, the teacher ought to review his/her lesson, determine the area of confusion, and reteach the material. In addition to students’ achievement data, teachers also should examine standardized tests in order to understand students’ needs. By examining these texts independently and collectively, teachers can identify where students are underperforming in relation to their peers and use this information to modify instruction. By giving, analyzing, and acting on assessments, teachers are ensuring that their students receive the best instruction, tailored to their individual learning needs.

While a student teacher at Owings Mills High School, I completed a validated practices project that demonstrates my ability to use assessments to inform instruction. The completed project can be found in Appendix I of this wiki. I focused this project on my ninth grade Gifted and Talented English class and selected three objectives that I wished them to meet over the course of instruction. Before beginning instruction, I gave students a pre-test, which I used to determine how much background knowledge students possessed. For instance, I learned that the majority of my students could define the elements of the rhetorical triangle (88% accuracy), but they could not identify examples of rhetoric (33% accuracy). Therefore, I modified my original instructional sequence, so students could focus more attention on the rhetorical devices and simply review the rhetorical triangle. By doing this, I ensured that students did not receive unnecessary instruction on topics they were familiar with and could spend class time learning and practicing skills that they had yet to master. In addition to this pre-test, I used formative assessments throughout the week of instruction. I reviewed students’ classwork, exit writings, and discussions in order to gauge which objectives students were meeting and which objectives students were struggling with. After identifying student needs, I modified instruction to ensure that students who needed remediation were given it. Finally, I gave students a post-test to assess how much they grew as a result of my instruction. This assessment was identical to my pre-test, and the results demonstrated that students drastically improved (59% improvement) as a result of my instruction. In using both formative and summative assessments throughout this project, I provided my students with instruction that was developmentally appropriate and prepared them to successfully meet objectives aligned with the Common Core Curriculum.