Assessment
Once the preliminary planning is completed, using a diverse preassessment to gauge initial student learning is essential. This will determine the direction and to what extent my instruction will follow within the guidelines of my original plans. Moreover, it allows me to focus more thoroughly on the material that my students find challenging or have little experience with.
Informal assessment is an important component to measuring understanding. The more often I check for understanding during a lesson, the more my lessons improve overtime. Making small changes as I go makes more sense than a complete overhaul for both the teacher and the students. Informal assessment allows me to really understand how my students think, how they understand, retain information, and even tackle those pesky misconceptions that sometimes manage to sneak through. It also communicates to my students that I care about their education. I want to see them be successful. I am on their side.
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Additionally, students should be given the chance to self-evaluate. Self-assessment promotes metacognition- thinking about your own thinking processes. As a result, students will be encouraged to use critical thinking skills and take responsibility for their own learning.
Ultimately, students will be required to show what they have learned. The question is, “How will I encourage students to demonstrate what they have learned?” I think that providing an array of different summative assessments while supplying the necessary instruction that matches and encourages these types of assessments is a proficient way to answer this difficult question. It begins during the planning phase, when I am creating or discovering projects that match both the instruction and student abilities. Utilizing backwards design allows me to assess students fairly because I have kept the summative assessment choices in mind while planning all aspects of instruction. |