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Understanding Formal vs Informal Assessments

Formal assessments, such as exams and achievement tests, measure students' knowledge through standardized scoring and allow easy comparison between students. Informal assessments, like projects and presentations evaluated with rubrics, assess student performance without standardized scores and evaluate instruction. The author plans to incorporate both formal assessments, like exams, and informal assessments, such as lecture check-ins and short writing assignments, into their classroom to fully understand student progress and improve lessons.

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68 views1 page

Understanding Formal vs Informal Assessments

Formal assessments, such as exams and achievement tests, measure students' knowledge through standardized scoring and allow easy comparison between students. Informal assessments, like projects and presentations evaluated with rubrics, assess student performance without standardized scores and evaluate instruction. The author plans to incorporate both formal assessments, like exams, and informal assessments, such as lecture check-ins and short writing assignments, into their classroom to fully understand student progress and improve lessons.

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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Hunter Warner

Journal 2
C&T 100
11 February 2015
Formal and Informal Assessments
Formal and informal assessments are methods of testing a students knowledge. Both
assessments help educators to better understand what progress their students are making
and how to improve their lessons so that students achieve the maximum amount of
learning. However, formal and informal assessments are also different from each other.
Formal strategies have standardized measurements and expectations. Formal assessments
include exams, achievement tests, and other tests in which the scores are calculated in a
mathematical way, such as percentiles. Formal assessments help teachers to easily compare
students to each other. Informal assessments, on the other hand, evaluate students
performance and skill level without a specific scoring patter. Examples of this method
include projects and presentations, often using rubrics. This form of assessment is used to
evaluate instruction; where as formal assessments assess students overall achievement.
All in all, both formal and informal assessments are useful in their own ways. I plan to
incorporate both into my classroom. Formal assessments, such as multiple choice and
written exams will be given at the end of units to allow me to get an overall idea of how my
students have grasped the information that I gave to them. In between units and lessons I
will use informal assessments, such as stopping during a lecture and having my students
show a number one to five on their fingers of how well they understand the key concepts as
they are being introduced. Another useful informal assessment for me as an English teacher
will be having my students do short writing assignments based on rubrics. I understand that
the most effective teachers use a healthy mixture of both methods.

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