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 is a student assessment that I created with the grade level of the student I had in mind. I created this assessment with the intention of "maintaining useful and accurate records of student work and performance" like in performance indicator 7M so that I could know not only what her running record was, but also learn about how she feels about school and learn more about her in general as well.
I used these results to write a report with all of her records and results to track them and give them to the teacher. I also knew that this was indicating "how students learn and what they know", which is talked about in knowledge indicator 7B and how that student was learning and growing in and out of school.
Something that I learned during creating this was that creating everything was very time- consuming but fun as long as I was able to make it so.
This was the test that I made after the class had retaken the knowledge test they were given at the beginning of the science unit as well as the test that another teacher had made. I created this because I wanted to use different concepts and have students show their mastery of different areas, like when they had to shade in the binary code. This is focused on knowledge indicator 7E. Another thing about my assessment is that it shows that I "understand the purpose, characteristics, and limitations of different types of assessments" indicated in knowledge indicator 7A as stated before, I wanted them to show mastery of the concepts, not just answer the same questions that they have been answering the whole unit, over and over.
Something that I learned when making this test was that I wanted to have a variety of different questions that all of my students can answer. We went over a lot during this unit and I wanted to encase a variety of questions for them to respond to. I also made this in the first place because the students did not do that well on the previous test they had taken so this was made to replace it.
Standard 7 of the Illinois teaching standards is all about assessments. For the final project in my Educational Psychology class, we had to create a test that students could "take" and we could assess them. The test and everything else we did are related to what we learned and talked about in our textbooks and weekly discussions. This was a summative assessment because I wanted to see how well my students knew the material and so I did this in a technically eleven-question format. Eight of the eleven were multiple choice and the last two questions were short answer ones. These questions were also a mix of evaluating, applying, and creating levels from Bloom's Taxonomy levels. I created this test on google forms and since it is through Google, I can see all of my students' answers right after they take them. It does not tell me how long it took them but that is okay since this test can be taken any time and anywhere. Of course, if I had to do an official due date, my students could handle it. After I got my students' answers, I got to grade them with what I picked as what were the right answers. Then after getting those percentages, I was able to use online calculators and systems to find the z-scores and I was able to calculate the z-score afterward. When I saw all of my students' data, I knew that some things would have to change for the next test because only one of my students scored above an 80.
Therefore, the specifics of this standard are exactly what I did when I worked on this project and created this test. From creating the questions from scratch to figuring out what the next steps will be for all of my students, but especially the ones who need the least and the most amount of help from me. Before this class and project, I had never created a test and had "students" take it before. I used my knowledge from the chapter to create good scenarios. They might have been long but they did get better over time. Even though all of my students got at least two questions wrong, I know the things that I can work on for next time which include having more precise questions, bolding important reminders, and having fewer opinion multiple-choice questions.
One performance indicator I focused on was maintaining "useful and accurate records of student work and performance" (7M) by keeping track of every student who took my test and calculating their results right away. Everyone was graded the same, no matter if they knew the material or not. I am not biased towards any of my students no matter their score or level. I also used Google forms to create the test, google sheets to start the data, and google docs to compile all of the data together. This corresponds with the 7O indicator which says that I " effectively [use] appropriate technologies to conduct assessments, monitor performance, and assess student progress". Google is a great source to keep track of information and work with my students to let them know their scores discretely instead of telling everyone in the class or passing out physical copies. In the end, I focused on what I would be doing moving forward now that I have everyone's data and know where they are. Of course, that was only one test and it does not go over everything that they should know but I will be working with them more to make sure that they know the material much better before taking tests in the future. This connects to the 7J indicator where I " [use] assessment results to determine student performance levels, identify learning targets, select appropriate research-based instructional strategies, and implement instruction to enhance learning outcomes". My students are important to me and I want the best for them. I will work with them with their different learning styles, abilities, and anything else to make sure that they are getting some of the best learning possible in my classroom and the rest of the school