Mar

But What Do You REALLY Know?

Expectations of educational assessment include demonstrating comprehension of informal and formal assessment practices, which should begin with planning and modifying of instruction, and should be evidenced through successful understanding and interpretation of curriculum. In other words, classroom teachers should be able to show the ability to create and implement measurable tools that provide evidence of understanding and application—the key components of genuine learning. To emphasize, appropriate assessment is crucial to learning, because students’ understanding and interpreting learning objectives drives instruction going forward. The following paragraphs will introduce informal and formal assessment as experts in the education field describe them, and how I plan to apply these assessment ideas in my own teaching career.

As stated above, educators use assessment as a measure of how much student learning has taken place, and informing instruction for future lesson design. In first looking at informal or formative assessment, learning is measured as it is taking place. It is an process rather than one fixed point in a unit or lesson. As suggested by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe (2005) in their professional work, Understanding By Design, it is very important to measure genuine learning as we teach, rather than after we teach. Informal/formative assessment is crucial in “uncovering learners’ understandings and misunderstandings along the way.” Further, assuming correct answers on a quiz or exam does not indicate learning has happened.

Formal or summative assessment serves the purpose of measuring learning after instruction has taken place and informing instruction for future lesson design. Using this form of measure helps the teacher to know if and what instruction needs to be re-taught once curriculum for a lesson or unit has concluded. Formal assessment also measures whether students have met state or local academic standards required in order to advance to the next level. There are two types of formal assessment: static and performance.

Beginning with an analysis of static assessment, Alan J. Singer (2003) in his book, Social Studies for Secondary Schools: Teaching to Learn, Learning to Teach, describes this concept as appearing in the form of standardized tests that measure the level of subject content memorization necessary to proceed to the next academic level. An example would be New York State Regents exams.

In 1991, the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) suggested, “The overriding purpose of testing in social

studies classrooms is to improve learning.” NCSS saw testing as a tool in the learning process, rather than a measure of learning that already took place, so seems to follow more than transmission model of teaching—an ideology Singer does not support, yet is the traditional way of viewing formative assessment (Singer, 2003).

Counter to the NCSS view, Singer (2003) sees using static assessment as the exclusive measurement for learning as ineffective in tracking real learning. In other words, he sees the goal of such a practice as being the generation of grades irrespective of successful learning. Instead, he believe it is most important, if using tests as assessment tools, to also, “make assessment part of learning, and to use a variety of [other] assessment tools to discover what individual students understand.”

Performance assessment can be defined as an interactive form of assessment that can measure the during- and end-products of learning, but also the learning process of understanding curriculum. Richard D. Kellough and Noreen G. Kellough (2006) further this definition in, Secondary School Teaching: A Guide to Methods and Resources, by writing that in order to accurately measure the level of a student’s understanding or learning, a teacher must use assessment that requires more than just knowing facts, vocabulary, and dates. They identify advantages of authentic assessment, including measurement of what a student knows about a unit or lesson in addition to his/her ability to demonstrate use (i.e. practical application) of that knowledge. Disadvantages they note include challenges for the teacher in maintaining consistency for validity, reliability, and comparability when grading such an assessment. In restating the Kelloughs’ comments, authentic assessment applies learned skills and knowledge to a real-life situation rather than a contrived classroom activity.

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Applying best assessment practices to the classroom, I have played an active role in both informal and formal assessment during my student teaching experience. An example of using informal assessment measures lies within tutoring sessions with a struggling English student. The student found it difficult to grasp big ideas within literary works, and so that was a focus of our sessions. In a literacy case study I documented, I incorporated a number of informal assessment strategies. First, I used a pre-reading technique of having the student identify unfamiliar vocabulary within the literature. I did this in order to assess his ability to use context clues in discovering the meaning of words, his ability to use resources (i.e. dictionary) to find meanings of words he could not contextualize, and to note what role unknown words played in his struggle with comprehension and formation of higher-level connections. Additionally, I asked scaffolded discussion questions to further assess the student’s comprehension and then to lead him toward critically thinking about the literary work. Whenever I assessed that he was not grasping a concept, I would ask questions about his own life that were analogous to the same concept I wanted him to learn from the literature. Once I assessed that he was grasping the concept with that strategy, I would then re-introduce my original questions, and he would make the desired connections. Seeing that these strategies were effective with this student, I plan to continue using such informal assessment in my full-time teaching career.

I also have had the opportunity to use formal assessment in my student teaching experience. One example of this practice occurred during the spring semester in a tenth grade Global History class. During the spring semester of my student teaching experience, I taught a unit on the Rise of Communism. To create a formal assessment that would be similar to the Regents exam they would take at the end of the semester, I attempted to create an exam that would contain components resembling those in the Regents exam. I chose my multiple choice questions from a combination of Regents-related databases—making sure to include the questions that most closely followed my teaching during the unit. I also administered and proctored this exam, providing clarification for students also. As long as I teach in New York, I will try to incorporate this type of exam in my teaching. However, it is important to note that I will also use performance assessments, following with my thoughts above.

Authentic performance assessment is an assessment method I wish to continue including in my teaching repatoire. During the fall semester, I designed an authentic assessment that appears in my Instructional Lesson Plan from a Civil Rights Movement unit. The assessment requires students to take the information they hopefully acquired from previous lessons and apply it to either a letter to Coretta Scott King or to President Lyndon Johnson. The former letter requires student to express the impact her husband made on their lives, and the latter requires students to play the role of activist group members seeking more government support for their causes and the rationale for why they deserve that support. A rubric for this assignment is included here too.

A second example of an authentic assessment I wish to use going forward is one that I designed for the spring

semester. In a global history classroom, I designed a unit for the spread of communism. Near the end of this unit, I designed a project that asks students to play the role of a high school student during the Vietnam War. They were to create letters, political cartoons, or subway advertisements that supported their perspective on whether or not the United States should become involved in the war effort. With these products, student demonstrated their understanding of how US involvement in the Korean War and Cold War illustrated the rivalry of communism vs. capitalism. By sharing their ideas during the class workday, the students jigsawed for each other multiple perspectives on the same historic issue. It is a challenging exercise, but one that I believe students found engaging and educational, plus helped me measure student’s understanding of the unit’s curriculum.

REFERENCES

Kellough, R. D. & Kellough, N. G. (2006). Secondary school teaching: A guide to methods and resources. Boston: Pearson Merrill Prentice Hall.

Singer, A .J. (2003). Social Studies for secondary schools: teaching to learn, learning to teach. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Wiggins, G. P. & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by design. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development.