Assessing and Evaluating

Mentor Training

You may choose to go through these modules in any order. It is estimated it will take 30-45 minutes to complete each module. Upon completion of your three modules each semester, please complete the evaluation and submit a form to earn your certificate of completion. These are found on the Conclusion page

Module Introduction

Similar to other modules, you may already be very experienced at alternative assessments, so this module will be a refresher and hopefully provide resources for you to support your teacher colleague.

It's very difficult to look at assessment in isolation, and even more difficult when considering alternative assessment. As educators, you know that assessment, planning and instruction go hand in hand. Many of our induction candidates have selected CSTP 5 (assessing for learning) for the ILP focus.

I often find when I ask a new teacher, how will you know the student has learned/met the learning outcome, the response is- using a rubric or sharing an expected percentage on a paper/test/...

Few of them know the difference between the tools they use to evaluate and the intended learning outcomes. Think about the objective writing where they write- 4th grade students will be able to score 80% on a math test or SWBAT earn excellent on the rubric- without considering what learning is occurring and how they will determine the learning occurred.

This module contains some reminders of different types of assessment and approaches to (and tools for) evaluating learning, as well as some tips and tricks for alternative assessments.

You may also want to look at the additional resources on Wakelet

After spending about 30 minutes on the resources on this page, complete this form.

Diagnostic, formative, summative, assessment, evaluation,... What do they mean?

This is an area that new teachers tend to need a lot of support. They often think mostly about standardized assessments, end of unit assessments and then the occasional 'observation' informal assessment. They use assessment and evaluation interchangeably.

Have a look at any of these resources so you can help your new teacher distinguish between all the elements we tend to call assessment.

This site lists a whole slough of key words for educators to know. Not all related to assessment but some good reminders here for sharing with your new teacher colleague.

This is a great discussion of the difference between evaluation and assessment. The cake analogy works well for me!

This site, although for a higher ed audience does a really great job of describing and giving examples of diagnostic, formative, and summative assessments.

Check out NWEA's excellent discussion of when to use formative assessment at this site. I appreciate that they discuss HOW to use data as much as how to collect it.

Different tools and strategies for assessing learning

Carl Hooker gave an excellent presentation at the ISTE conference (International Society for Technology in Education) that looked at what assessment is and connected different tools and strategies for assessment. His slides can be found here. I like the idea of assessing OF, FOR, and WHILE learning.

This is a great list of assessment tools and practices. Lots of good questions for asking learners.

Twenty-seven formative assessment strategies can be found at this blog.

Want to create rubrics for your lessons? Check out the curated list of rubric generators from PBIS here.

This is a great blog about alternative assessment. It includes definitions and examples. It does a good job of helping one to understand when alternative assessment are appropriate and what the benefits may be.

Have you heard of side-by-side assessment? If not, check this out.

Get some ideas for student self assessment at this Edutopia page. This blog also gives good reasons for trying self assessment and includes tips as well.

Check out this blog for a range of idea to leverage technology in alternative types of assessments.

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