The competent teacher understands and uses appropriate formative and summative assessments for determining student needs, monitoring student progress, measuring student growth, and evaluating student outcomes. The teacher makes decisions driven by data about curricular and instructional effectiveness and adjusts practices to meet the needs of each student.
This artifact is a quiz I created and gave to the students at my second student teaching placement. The quiz was open-notes, as they had taken guided notes a few times during the unit. There are 20 questions, all fill-in-the-blank, with a word bank.
This artifact meets Indicator 7E, which states that the competent teacher "understands how to select, construct, and use assessment strategies and instruments for diagnosis and evaluation of learning and instruction." I chose this type of assessment based on the students in my classes at this placement. There were several students with IEPs or 504 Plans. The course is part of the REI Initiative, which stands for Regular Education Initiative. The inclusion of the word bank in the quiz and the option to use their notes was done with this in mind. The students' scores were able to show me how much they had learned or if something else needed to be added to the unit, especially for use in the future.
I learned that this type of quiz or test worked fairly well with the students at my placement. Their scores ranged from 9 to 20 out of 20 questions. It also gave me some useful information when planning for future classes. For example, should the format be changed? Did I include the right concepts, or do they need to be adjusted? This data is valuable to know for the next time I teach about WWI again.
Overall, my Test Analysis Project demonstrates that I have met the performance indicators for Illinois Professional Teaching Standard 7 concerning using proper assessments. During the course of the project, I showed that I was able to meet multiple Standard 7 performance indicators. The assessment, as well as the test analysis and report, additionally allowed me to plan for instruction in the wider world.
To begin with, as I created the test digitally in the Google Forms client, I was meeting performance indicator 7O, which states, "The competent teacher effectively uses appropriate technologies to conduct assessments, monitor performance, and assess student progress" (Illinois State Board of Education, 2012). In my Test Analysis report, I also discussed administering an additional formative assessment to get feedback from students about the difficult concepts on the initial test. This would also be done using Google Forms. Additionally, all data for the project was compiled digitally, using both the information generated from the Google Forms test and through Microsoft Excel. Using these available technologies allowed me to compile data more efficiently and provided quick, easy-to-access results.
Furthermore, in the course of the Test Analysis Project, I believe I have successfully achieved the goals of performance indicator 7J, that "the competent teacher uses assessment results to determine student performance levels, identify learning targets, select appropriate research-based instructional strategies, and implement instruction to enhance learning outcomes'' (Illinois State Board of Education, 2012). After generating and compiling the results of my original test, I carefully examined the scores and determined what they showed about students' knowledge of the topics, terms, and concepts tested. I used this information to focus on the specific areas needed to be reviewed, setting future learning targets, such as to discuss foundational terms and definitions more in depth, as many students scored poorly on that category of question. I also planned to differentiate my instruction after viewing the test results to include more writing assignments and assessments due to the fact that my class scored high on the test's essay response questions. This was done in order to allow the students to effectively demonstrate their understanding of future concepts as a result of the scores of my assessment.
Finally, my Test Analysis aptly shows the necessary evidence for meeting standard indicator 7K: “The competent teacher appropriately uses a variety of formal and informal assessments to evaluate the understanding, progress, and performance of an individual student and the class as a whole” (Illinois State Board of Education, 2012). After examining the assessment scores, I discussed the class’s overall performance on the test, as well as noted patterns in incorrect and correct answers to test questions. I used this information to tailor future review of the concepts to focus on foundational topics of the concepts learned. I also planned to administer an informal assessment based on the scores of the test created for the project. This formative assessment would include questions about how students felt about the difficulty of the test and their confidence level concerning the knowledge of the topics. The results of this test would not be scored and only I as the teacher would see each student’s response. I also evaluated the work of two focus students who had the highest and lowest scores, and planned for modifications and interventions going forward.