In the beginning of the semester, I felt as though I had no idea what assessment in the classroom really entails, and how it can be conducted. Within the first few weeks of this course, we were asked to complete a Personal Learning Plan in order to set a goal to achieve by the end of the semester. In this document I described my understanding assessment at that moment in time, so before I begin to discuss my takeaways and achievement in this course, I would like to revisit my initial ideas. At the beginning of this course, I stated:
Assessment can be used for a variety of reasons. Assessment can be used to determine what the next lesson in a unit should be, communicate student progress with the adults in the student’s life, and to help students to set goals and see where they are going. Assessment helps to address the learning goals of the lesson or unit, making it much easier to answer the three main questions in this course, ‘Where are we going?’, ‘How are we doing?’, and ‘Where to next?’, giving a very clear plan as the purpose of every lesson that is taught in the classroom.
Looking back on this description of assessment, I feel that many of my ideas have remained the same, but they have expanded into deeper understandings. With the combination of learnings from this course and experience in my pre-internship, I have had the opportunity to look at assessment in ways I never have before. In this paper I will go over my five main takeaways from this course along with the ways these learnings have contributed to the achievement of my S.M.A.R.T. Goal I had set out for myself.
My first take away from this course is that assessment can be conducted in many different types of ways. Similarly to how there are many ways to teach a lesson, there are also many different ways to conduct assessment. The chosen assessment should reflect the learning in the lesson or the unit, allow for feedback to be given to the students, and guide the teacher in their next steps for facilitating learning.
My second takeaway from this course is that assessment should be collaborative. I have learned from both the text and class activities that assessment should be conducted in a way that involves feedback and involvement from others. This can occur in a variety of different ways like co-constructing rubrics, self and peer assessments, collaborating with colleagues, and many other methods. Collaboration helps to remove biases and inconsistencies in assessing, and also gets students more involved in their own learning.
My third takeaway from this course is that there should always be a clear reason for assessment. Throughout the semester we have learned about the different reasons for assessment, assessment as learning, assessment for learning, and assessment of learning. Each of these assessment types play a different role in the classroom, making it important to utilize them all in a unit. Assessment as learning is always conducted formatively and is used to assess students while they are working on a new concept. When this assessment type is conducted, the teacher is able to observe students in the moment to give them feedback on their current learning. Assessment for learning is again a formative assessment method that is often used at the end of a lesson. This provides the teacher with insight into the student’s understanding helping to provide specific feedback as well as guide the teacher in next steps for instruction. Finally, assessment of learning is often conducted as a summative assessment of outcomes or learning goals. This type of assessment is used to assess the overall learning, often used for the students’ final grade in the unit.
My fourth takeaway is that along with assessment comes documentation. As teachers we will often be questioned on why students received the mark they did, so in order to be able to answer these questions we must have evidence. Along with the evidence we collect from students we should also have various examples and assessment tools that back up our choices. When we can compare student work to examples and criteria, our reasons for marking not only can be used to back up our choices, but also act as a way to keep assessing consistent.
My fifth takeaway is feedback is a key part of assessment for any age of student. As a student I really appreciate feedback from my profs on how I could improve on my assignments. So, I do not see why my students would not feel the same. I have learned that providing meaningful feedback to students before, during, and after their learning can help to keep students invested and in control of their own learning. As teachers we want our students to have the opportunity to do the best they can in each lesson we teach, and providing students with feedback on how to improve is a great way to do that.
These five takeaways helped me to achieve the goal that I had initially set out to achieve this semester, the goal I set was to be able to identify multiple ways (3-4 ways) assessment could be conducted in my lessons to better suit individual student needs. I feel my learning in this course has helped me to achieve this because they helped me to realize the importance of differentiated assessment. In my pre-internship I was able to take my learning from this course to ensure that the assessments I conducted for each student, whether the same for each child or different, allowed me to document their work, give meaningful feedback, and involve them in their assessment. I was able to consider the reasons for my assessment strategies as well as the method I was using to create the best possible environment for my students to be successful in my unit.