The teacher understands and uses formal and informal assessment strategies to evaluate and ensure the continuous intellectual, social, and physical development of the learner.
Increasingly, assessment and accountability are societal expectations. Assessment must drive instruction to ensure that teachers are able to keep student learning outcomes in focus throughout instruction. Assessment takes many forms to meet learners' diverse needs and occurs throughout the teaching and learning process. This includes self-assessment and evaluation to inculcate professional habits of constant growth and improvement.
Beginning with the review of transcripts, the National Teachers Exam/PRAXIS test scores, and the pre-admission interview, MAT faculty are using multiple sources of data to inform our assessment of a student's ability to be successful in our program. Additionally, the MAT Program has well-established vehicles for providing feedback to students in the program. Active, effective advising, an interactive format for course delivery, and ready access to instructors outside the classroom are several of the ways we ensure the continual intellectual and social development of our students. To this end, frequent self-assessments and peer evaluations are also provided during the program (both on coursework and on clinical experiences and fieldwork) to assist students in understanding their own development as a teacher. Performance assessment and instruction are the norm for the courses our students take, and are also the focus of the internship. The feedback and evaluations provided by our graduates and their employers assist us in revising our problem-based program of study to be responsive of the needs of the school systems and national, professional organizations.
As
a final project, my students compiled individual poetry books with the poems
they wrote throughout the unit. They were guided by a rubric that we developed
together based on examples of published poetry anthologies. Because the
analytic rubric provided precise criteria, I decided to challenge the students
to self- and peer-assess their products to promote personal responsibility for
their learning. First, the students assessed their own poetry books while I
modeled how to use the rubric as a scoring tool (A). This exercise prepared the
students to work in pairs to discuss and evaluate their peers' work (B). Grades
were determined based on the average of the two peer-assessments, although
students had the option to reject this
grade in favor of a teacher assessment. Only a few students were dissatisfied
with their peer evaluation (C), confirming my assertion that this group of
sixth graders has the social maturity necessary for this activity. Although
this process produced the final grade for their work, authentic assessment
occurred when we opened our classroom doors to family and friends for a Poetry
Sharing Day (D). -Renell Welch
This
is an example of formal assessment. I created this test and administered it to
a group of tenth grade biology students after they completed a unit on the
fossil record. -Renee Strode
I used peer assessment for this homework in response to my observation that students were turning in work and tests that were often imprecise, incomplete, and even ineligible. After we discussed what an acceptable answer could be for each question, students had to correct their peers' homework. I collected the assessments and graded the completeness and accuracy of the assessor's comments. The assessments suggest that after doing this activity, students had a much better understanding of the material and they recognized the importance of preciseness and clarity in their answers. -Maureen Honeychuck
8.4 Formal Assessment – Running Records and Recommendation
Ongoing assessments provide essential information to me as a classroom teacher about my students' development. Running records are essential tools in reading instruction at the primary level. This tool provides vital information in regard to a student's specific decoding skills and strategic reading behaviors. I conducted two running records of students at two different reading levels (a). I was able to collect important data on these specific students that I could act on when reading with them again, and make definite recommendations to my mentor to aid future instruction (b). This type of assessment fosters the opportunity to adapt instruction to my learners' needs, and creates a professional predisposition to frequent and productive evaluation. -Bill Selak