Kristin Ramirez All About Assessments

September 20, 2020 Chapter 5: Creating Assessments for Learning

“When the cook tastes

What are Assessments?
the soup, that’s
Assessments are methods that we can utilize to help us evaluate students overall understanding of
formative assessment; instruction. There is a wide variety of tools at our disposal that are beneficial for students and
teachers. They allow for a clearer picture on where students are excelling, may need additional
When the customer support, and where teachers can adapt or change lessons for more effective instruction.
tastes the soup, that’s When we assess we need to keep three things in mind that assessments should do:
summative assessment.” 1. Enhance instruction
2. Help make instructional decisions
3. Provide feedback to help further students advancement
-Paul Black

Category of Assessments
Assessments are broken up into two major categories:
1. Summative
2. Formative
Summative Assessments
• “Assessment of learning”
• Evaluates students after the content instruction has been completed and allows for a
comprehensive score to measure the progress of the students.
• High stakes: state prepared and end of unit test function as summative.
• These forms of assessment are able to help schools and teachers, but their overall results do
not affect the instruction that goes on after they have been taken.
• Some examples may include:
- SAT’s, midterms, and finals
• To improve scores on these assessment:
- Instruct on big ideas of the curriculum
- Make sure assessing materials are valid and reliable
- Use problem-based approaches to prepare
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Formative Assessments
• “Assessment for learning”
• These forms of assessment are able to help the teachers track where the students are at while
carrying out daily instruction.
• This form of assessment is continuous, provides targeted feedback, and allows for teachers to
makes decisions about where there may need to be and is often times regarded as being one
of the most beneficial aspects that impacts student progress and success.
• Some examples may include:
- Observations, asking questions, interviews, and completion of tasks
• There are 3 key components:
1. Identify where the learners are
2. Identify the goal of the learners
3. Identifying paths to reach the goal

What to Assess?
Conceptual understanding and procedural fluency

• Conceptual understanding:
- Provided opportunities for students to show their knowledge over the concepts that
they are learning about.
- This can be done in a number of different ways like class discussion, tasks, and
observations.
• Procedural fluency
- How well the students understood the procedures that were carried out.
- How & why something is done.
Competence and adaptive reasoning

• Evaluate the students ability to access their knowledge through engaging in the 5 process
standards: Problem solving, reasoning, communication, connections, and representations
- These can be done individually, in a group, or as class discussions.
• Connect these to a rubric that will allow the students to have clear guidelines and
expectations presented.
- The instructor should explicitly model these with examples
- Do’s & Don’ts

Productive dispositions

• Gather information on how students well students persist in the work as well as how they
feel towards their abilities.
- Can be gathered through discussions and observations
- Student self-assessments

Rubrics
What is a rubric?
• A scale of specific expectations and criteria that can be used to assess students work and
performance.
Assessment for learning • Effective & more flexible
• 2 important functions:
requires that what you 1. allows students to view what is required to meet excellence
do next depends on what 2. allows the teacher to score students with support and equitability
• Is used when there is problem-based instruction.
you know about them • There are several types of Rubrics:
[the students]. - Generic rubrics (4 prong: split into two categories, which are both split into two more
- Task specific (performance indicators)

-Steven Katz
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Sources
• Assessment quote:
- https://www.pinterest.com/pin/227642956148890876/
- https://www.pinterest.com/pin/529876712381880539/
• Newsletter information:
- Van de Walle, J., Karp, A., Bay-Williams, J. (2019). Elementary and
Middle school mathematics: Teaching developmentally (10th ed.).
Boston, MA: Pearson.
- Chapter 5: Creating Assessments for Learning
• Pictures
- https://study.com/teach/summative-assessments.html
- https://bwatwood.edublogs.org/summative-assessment/
- https://cole2.uconline.edu/courses/333119/pages/formative-assessment-
purpose-and-function