Spink Master’s Portfolio 1

Standard #6: Assessment

The teacher understands and uses multiple methods of assessment to engage learners in their
own growth, to monitor learner progress, and to guide the teacher’s and learner’s decision
making.

As students develop through the learning process, determining progress and calculating
instructional choices becomes essential for a dynamic learning experience tailored to a
student’s needs and abilities. Assessment is the catalyst to evaluating and understanding the
present academic situation in the classroom and the means to make informed decisions on
future changes to curriculum (Leenknecht et. al, 2021). There are three types of assessment
that play a key role in this process and contribute to the overall picture of teacher and student
understanding. These categories, as outlined by the Northern Illinois University Center for
Innovative Teaching and Learning (2012), are diagnostic, formative and summative
assessments. Within my teaching practice I use a combination of these three types of
assessments in order to accurately capture where the class is and how the class can advance
best in the future. This approach is reflected in my Teacher Work Sample, a comprehensive
example of a three week mini unit on reading strategies focused on measuring growth and
student learning patterns. In this sample, I display and utilize all three assessments throughout
the process of the literacy unit that I taught and recorded.
The starting point for assessment, chronologically speaking, happens in the diagnostic
phase. A “diagnostic test in education is a preliminary assessment mainly used to detect
students’ strengths and weaknesses in learning. It allows educators to cater their teaching style
and content to suit to the students’ basic knowledge” (Geok et. al., 2017, p. 364). This pre-test
is essential in the beginning of the mini units that I plan and often leads to soft adjustments
within the material and content itself once I administer the test and receive the results. Within
my Teacher Work Sample, otherwise referred to as TWS, I used this approach, administering a
pre-test in order to guide any adjustments that I wanted to implement in my literature unit.
The first, and perhaps most important, part of a diagnostic pretest is it’s ability to
highlight the strengths and weaknesses that the students bring into a unit. In the initial phase
this is paramount because, as Debbie Miller puts it, “when planning I need to think through not
only what I want kids to know, do, and understand, but also how both of us will know what
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they know” (Miller, 2013, p. 75). The pre-test in a unit is essential in the planning process
because it lets the teacher know what the student already knows and is strong in as opposed to
gaps in knowledge and what the student is weaker in. My TWS focused on author’s purpose
and divided the three different categories into entertain, inform, and persuade. For my pre and
post-test I used a title sort in which students were tasked with separating nine titles into the
three different categories. My pre-test was interesting in that it confirmed that the students
had a vague idea of what author’s purpose was as they were all able to sort and get some of the
titles correctly placed. However, it showed one key factor that I hadn’t considered, almost all
of the students were much more successful with the entertainment based titles but were much
weaker in correctly sorting the persuasive titles and below average on informative titles. This
knowledge led me to adjust instruction, putting emphasis on persuasive and informative
literature while using entertainment as more of a contrasting element.
Once students’ strengths and weaknesses are confirmed in the pretest, the next step is
adjusting the style and content of the ensuing unit based on this knowledge. In this instance, as
alluded to before, I decided to dedicate more of the unit time to teaching persuasive and
informative texts. One variation on this strategy, in order for the material to connect more with
the participants involved, was to base the new literature and style of author’s purpose in a
familiar cultural context for the students. As my students are Inupiaq, I used excerpts from
books with Alaska Native history and legends, in order to peak interest and build on their
background knowledge. As Taylor and Nolen (2008) point out, “grades and assessments take
on different meanings, depending in part on what is motivating students to learn” (p. 76). With
both the style and content tuned into the areas that students needed support in the most, the
next step was developing instruction through formative assessment.
After the diagnostic pre-test, formative assessment is used to monitor how the class,
and individuals, are doing throughout the unit. Unlike the diagnostic test, “formative
assessment is seen as a cyclical programme of high and low-stake tasks in which students are
actively involved” (Leenknecht et. al., 2021, p. 237). Formative assessments can vary from
informal observations during discussion or group work to quizzes during the process. There are
several different forms of this technique but, regardless of which form these assessments take,
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I try to implement them in my everyday practice. In regards to my TWS, the formative

assessments were used in the mini lessons, in which each day I read a short story or excerpt
and students recorded which author’s purpose they believed it was and why. I did some
quicker rounds with white boards for fun, made the process into a little game, and then also
added in some partner work in which students analyzed a short story or book and supported
their theory with evidence from the text.
One of the great characteristics of formative assessment is its immediacy in that it’s the
closest real time analysis of how a unit is developing. I always want to have an open dialogue
with my students and establish a feeling of safety and trust throughout the day, encouraging
students to voice their opinion when they are lost or confused. As Kohn (2006) puts, “as a
general rule, it’s important for students to trust their teacher, to know she respects them and
to feel safe in speaking their minds with her” (p. 122). The formative assessments often tell me
half the story, or give me indicators on potential problems, and allow me to encourage these
interactions with students, to encourage them to open up about a potential issue in the lesson
that they are having trouble with. In the case of the TWS, I was seeing a lack or misuse of
textual evidence supporting students’ theories on their chosen author’s purpose. After talking
to students, I realized that I hadn’t explicitly taught how to use, or obtain, textual evidence
since the beginning of the year so I implemented a mini lesson the next day on the specifics,
leading the class in practice until they voiced their comfort with the procedure.
On top of structuring consistent tasks throughout the unit, it is also important to
emphasize student autonomy and self-analysis. The reason being, is that “in a way, we are
teaching them to teach. If students can provide productive feedback, then collectively they will
tend to get more feedback” (Johnston, 2012, p. 36). This reciprocal relationship between
involvement in the process and growth is very consistent in my experience as a teacher, the
more that a student interacts with the material and others around them, the more their peers
respond and the more I have to work with as a teacher in giving them feedback. This was
evident in the TWS when I had two pairs of students come up to my desk, and point out that
the books they were reading had both elements of entertain and inform in them. I hadn’t really
thought of this entering the lesson, but of course, in conversing with the students I realized that
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all of the books had more than one purpose evident in them, the trick was narrowing down
which one was the overlying purpose of the book. I asked the students to help me present this
point to the rest of the class and sure enough, the next day the written responses were much
more accurate when I went through the papers. In both of these cases, the formative
assessments led me to vital student interactions and adjustments in instruction along the way
in order to clarify the material.
The final step in the assessment process is the summative portion. This traditionally
consists of pen and paper tests within curriculum guides but this narrow focus often fails in fully
evaluating a students’ understanding of the material discussed (Forsythe et. al, 2019). One
approach to broadening the summative tools at a teacher’s disposal is “by using standardized
test questions to inspire summative performance assessments, teachers can not only improve
their evaluation of student learning, but they can also indirectly prepare students for success on
state accountability measures” (Forsythe et. al, 2019, p. 67). Both improving evaluation of
student learning and preparing students for success on state accountability measures are
important when considering summative assessments and is reflected in the two final activities
within the TWS.
The first activity was a performance based summative assessment that focused on
improving my evaluation of student learning. Not only am I looking at students’ abilities to
confer their understanding through writing, which is still definitely important, I am also looking
for students creativity and ability to apply material from the unit in a more dynamic, or realistic,
way. As Wiggins and McTighe (2011) point out, “we are looking for the ability of learners to
transfer prior learning to new or novel-looking tasks or settings, with minimal or no prompting
from the test or the teacher” (p. 90). Certain tasks measure the depth of a students’
understanding instead of just surface knowledge and to accomplish this I had students fully
analyze one book and create a poster presentation, with a partner, that represented the story
and the author’s purpose through visual examples, textual evidence, and verbal explanations. I
wanted the students to have multiple ways to communicate their understanding and plenty of
opportunity to show how they understood this specific content or author’s purpose.
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The second final activity to the TWS bookended the diagnostic test and was a title sort
with the same, or similar titles to the pre-test sort. This summative test touched on the second
factor in testing as a whole, improving students’ ability to succeed on state accountability
measures. The state test in my district not only has a lot of sorting activities, it also requires
students to fully understand title pages and author’s purpose. For my final sorting activity, I
wanted students to see how far they had come since the beginning of the lesson and the
pretest. Debbie Miller (2013) says it best when reflecting on summative assessments, stating
“It’s really a celebration of learning, and a wonderful opportunity for children to do some self-
assessing and teachers to gain insight into how children view themselves as readers and
learners” (p. 91). After the test I had a follow up discussion with the class as a whole to go over
how students felt about the unit and to assess the instruction and growth through the process.
In the end, the improvement in scores was as much due to the students’ involvement in the
process as it was to my teaching or instructional decisions.
These three forms of assessment; diagnostic, formative, and summative, are all vital
parts of the learning process that help illuminate needs for change and adjustment within a unit
itself. A final element, or form of assessment that I add over the long term is a portfolio for
each student. As Taylor & Nolan (2008) note, “the process portfolio communicates that there is
value in the journey as well as the destination” (p. 344). This is essential to the growth
perspective that I try to communicate to my students, that perfection is not the goal, that
developing over the long run is the aim. In the unit, I celebrated any growth between the pre
and post-test, and took a student article from the two week span to help build each students’
portfolio. Although no test is perfect, encouraging student involvement in the assessment
process benefits the lesson itself and the learning benefits of the experience as a whole,
resulting in a more tailored and beneficial learning environment.

References
Johnston, P. H. (2012) Opening minds: Using language to change lives. Stenhouse
Publishers.
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Kohn, A. (2006). Beyond Discipline. (2nd ed.). ASCD.

Leenknecht, M., Wijnia, L., Kohlen, M., Fryer, L., Rikers, R., & Loyens, S. (2021). Formative
assessment as practice: The role of students’ motivation. Assessment & Evaluation in
Higher Education, 46(2) 236-255. https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Formative-
assessment-as-practice%3A-the-role-of-Leenknecht-Wijnia/
e2fd047e2443fe3b8d4f8701134a8356e9c75809
Michelle, F., Julie, J., & Jeffry, K. (2019). Turning tests into tasks: How to build summative
performance assessments from standardized test questions. Science Scope, 42(7) 67-74.
https://s3.amazonaws.com/nstacontent/ss1907_67.pdf?
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UKSortGWUR2FUMl6bHnc%3d
Miller, D. (2013). Reading with meaning: Teaching comprehension in the primary grades.
(2nd ed.). Stenhouse Publishers.
Northern Illinois University Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning. (2012). Formative and
summative assessment. Northern Illinois University Center for Innovative Teaching and
Learning. https://www.niu.edu/citl/resources/guides/instructional-guide/formative-
and-summative-assessment.shtml
Shim, G. T. G., Shakawi, A. M. H. A., & Azizan, F. L. (2017). Relationship between students’
diagnostic assessment and achievement in a pre-university mathematics course. Journal
of Education and Learning, 6(4) 346-371. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1161283.pdf
Taylor, C. S., & Nolen, S. B. (2008). Classroom assessment: Supporting teaching and learning in
real classrooms. (2nd ed). Pearson Education, Inc.
Wiggins, G., & McTighe, J. (2011) The understanding by design guide to creating high-quality
units. (J. Houtz, Ed.). ASCD.