To assess or not to assess is NOT the question

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When I think of assessment I immediately think of assessing a situation and to me that means taking into account the whole situation and trying to form some type of opinion and make a plan from that information. If I apply that same thought to the classroom, here is what I come up with; sometimes when we assess it can be targeted like a certain skill or piece of information but it can also be very broad like assessing the student as a whole. In order to be successful educators we will have to do both, targeted assessment and whole assessment.
I am EC-6th so I will have to assess my students in all areas. One of my favorite forms of authentic assessment is conferencing with a student to see what they know about what we just learned and if they got the important parts.
Another form of authentic assessment I plan to use is journaling. A science journal is different than a science notebook. It is less formal and students can ask questions in there, formulate hypothesis and students go back and look at previous thoughts and ideas.
I also plan to use rubrics as another form of authentic assessment. This is a way students have more freedom to show what they know and this information can usually be expressed in many different ways instead of a right or wrong, true/false test.

Comments

  1. Kimberly ReyesOctober 19, 2010 at 12:07 PM

    I like the rubic for the students to do themselves. I used a rubic for one of my observations and the students had to access themselves and some were honest and some really did not know what to do since the teacher had not let them do this kind of assessment before.

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  2. Melissa Torres' BlogOctober 19, 2010 at 1:05 PM

    I like the science journaling for assessing students. I like this idea because it gives students a chance to ask questions they normally wouldn't ask in class. Good idea.

    ReplyDelete
  3. KayleenHolderOctober 21, 2010 at 9:54 AM

    I like the journaling assesment. My FAVORITE part about it is that students can ask the questions they have without being embarrased or holding back. If they are required to write something--they are more likely to write about any questions they have.

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