1f: Designing Student Assessments

Good teaching requires both assessment of learning and assessment for learning. Assessments of learning ensure that teachers know that students have learned the intended outcomes. These assessments must be designed in such a manner that they provide evidence of the full range of learning outcomes; that is, the methods needed to assess reasoning skills are different from those for factual knowledge. Furthermore, such assessments may need to be adapted to the particular needs of individual students; an ESL student, for example, may need an alternative method of assessment to allow demonstration of understanding. Assessment for learning enables a teacher to incorporate assessments directly into the instructional process and to modify or adapt instruction as needed to ensure student understanding. Such assessments, although used during instruction, must be designed as part of the planning process. These formative assessment strategies are ongoing and may be used by both teachers and students to monitor progress toward understanding the learning outcomes.

Danielson, C., 2013

Artifact 1f-1: Formative Assessment Plan

Artifact 1f-2: Pre-Assessment and Progress

This is a pre-assessment plan and student examples (high, medium, and low results) from my 1st grade grammar unit. I learned that most of my questions were cohesive, while one item resulted in confusion--many students did not know how to answer the question (aside from content). This was a valuable learning process for me; I have adjusted my post-assessment to be clear and more aligned with assessments they have previously taken.