Standard 8
ASSESSMENT
The teacher understands and uses formal and informal assessment strategies to evaluate and ensure the continuous intellectual, social, and physical development of the learner.
The teacher understands and uses formal and informal assessment strategies to evaluate and ensure the continuous intellectual, social, and physical development of the learner.
Evidence
Assessment has been the most difficult part of my student teaching experience because of the complex nature of evaluating learning. How do we determine a numerical grade for individual learning? Each assignment requires different goals and objectives for the learner to achieve and one rubric for an assignment will not work for another assignment. As I created the assignments for my students, I always considered my expectations for the assignment and I incorportated those expectations in my rubrics. I believe students should be assessed using formal strategies (rubrics) but I also believe assessment should allow students to express themselves without fear of being criticized.
Formal Assessment
In my classes, I use rubrics to formally assess student products for an assignment. Please go to the following page to see one example of formal assessment: The Canterbury Tales: Pilgrims Project
Informal Assessment
The picture below illustrates one way I use informal assessment in my classroom. In all classes, I ask students to mark one entry in his/her daybook for a daily grade. I pass out sticky notes to all students and they place the sticky note on the entry. I always remind students I will not read any other page in the daybook; I only read the marked entry. After receiving all the daybooks, I respond to the entry by writing a short response to the student. Each student will receive a 100 for a daily grade if they submit one piece of writing from his/her daybook.