Actively utilizing the for, as, of assessment methods will benefit the student, family, and educator in delivering the most optimal learning.
Assessment for Learning
Formative feedback and assessment of prior learning is essential in learning your students, which is then used to guide lessons going forwards.
I like to use traditional call and response methods for this type of assessment because it helps me gauge which students are active participators, and which students are shy towards speaking up, in addition to helping me understand prior knowledge. On top of all that, call and response is an extremely easy method of pre-assessment, with little preparations required.
Assessment as Learning
Learning on the fly is my favourite method to teach. My style seems to be short lessons, with plenty of time for students to actually do something.
In the chemistry classroom, much of the work is concept based, and traditionally it has been taught from notes and textbook definitions. Labs are occasionally used, but tend to be “cookbook” labs where students just follow detailed instructions –attempting to simulate a methods section of a formal report. My chemistry classrooms revolve more around exploration in labs, within the confines of safety protocols. For instance, in S3 organic chemistry, students are expected to do a lab on creating esters, and a qualitative indicator of their success is the scent of the ester. However, allowing students to eyeball the quantities of reagents can dramatically change the expected scent from oranges to vinegar to acetone. This transitions well into other lessons such as stoichiometry.
In the physics classroom, safety is arguably less of a significant issue so the boundaries of experimentation are lifted. For inclined planes for instance, I like to utilize numberless problems where students try to conceptualize reasonings for certain observational phenomena. I love doing this lesson because at the end my students will present their hypotheses in a jigsaw, and their minds are blown when learning the fundamentals of these phenomena are simple trigonometric relationships that they already learned.
Assessment of Learning
Unfortunately, as long as exams and post-secondary educational institutions exist, summative assessment will also exist. I will still be giving tests, quizzes, and exams in my courses, as they are mandated by administration, and the province in some cases. However, I will do my best to redesign exams to align to the assessment as model more often than not.
At the very least, assessment of learning allows me an opportunity to teach my students about test taking skills, which will be essential, should they proceed to post-secondary institutions. I would never want to subject a student to formal tests as a weighted method of assessment, unless I was forced to do so by administration or a department.