Assessments are an important aspect of professional practice standards, as they show student subject mastery and students who might need more help from teachers. The purpose of assessments are to show teachers how well they covered a certain unit and which students need more individualized help. Ensuring that lessons are on the appropriate level of learning for every student is the primary goal of assessment. The central objective of assessments is to provide teachers with an in-depth look at each student’s strengths and weaknesses.
Formative and Pre-Assessments
Formative assessments, used during lessons or unit, provide teachers with a look on both how well they are teaching a subject and how well their students are learning the material. They show specific areas of weakness that teachers can address, so that every students needs are met. During my student teaching at Bonsack Elementary School in the third grade I used many types of formative assessments; the most loved type was the Kahoot. My formative assessment for the unit I taught on Ancient Mali, I created a Kahoot. This Kahoot gave me an idea of which students were struggling and might need extra time to review the material.
You can find the video here.
Pre-Assessments show teachers where students might struggle with material before the unit is taught. They also give teachers an idea of student’s prior knowledge of the subject material. During student teaching I used many KWL charts, “What I Know About…” four squares, and quizzes. Here is an example of a “What I Know About…” four square on Civics/Services that one of my students completed before we started the unit.
Summative Assessments
Summative assessments give teachers a look at overall subject mastery after a unit has been taught. These assessments can take many forms such as tests, projects, or presentations. Summative assessments can also be viewed as teacher assessments as they can provide teacher with a look on what they might need address again and what to work on in the future. For the summative assessment on the unit on Famous American’s and Basic Rights, the students took a curriculum aligned test in order to assess their subject mastery.
The students pictured are working on social studies, specifically, Famous Americans and Basic Principles.
Grading
Grades provide both teachers and students qualitative and quantitative proof of subject mastery. Grading rubrics for projects, presentations, and speeches are a good way to show students exactly what they are being graded on and what they might need to work on for the next project. Test grades can show teachers exactly where both students’ weaknesses are and where their own weaknesses might be. Here is a graded pre-test and post-test from my two week unit that shows that shows the growth of the student after the unit was taught.
Assessments of and for student learning are qualitative and quantitative measurements of both teacher effectiveness and student subject mastery. They can provide important data that can pinpoint exactly where each student is struggling and where teacher might want to add further instruction on a unit.