Parts of a Whole

Chapter 11- Portfolio Assessment

Summary: When using a portfolio of student learning, students, parents and teacher are able to see student work compared to past work rather than compared to that of a classmate. There are ways to choose what should go into a portfolio, such as allowing students to pick from their work and also choosing work that is aligned with learning outcomes. When the portfolio is being developed, it is important to share the progress being made with all parties involved and utilizing it to build on strengths and weaknesses. In order to maintain a stable system throughout to demonstrate progress, the teacher can use a rating scale to mark progress made and a holistic score for the final project.

Reflection: I am a huge fan or portfolios because in my school that I teach at, we do not give many grades to students. Instead, we test them three times throughout the year on a specific set of skills and we are able to see their progress in these areas. It is important thought that I keep an ongoing set of examples that show their writing, math skills, letters, etc. so that their parents can see progress, the students can see progress, and I know where they are and how they will best benefit in certain areas. I think portfolios will be an essential tool in my new classroom this year, especially in their writing.

Show Me Whatcha Got...

Summary: Performance assessments are made for situations where paper and pencil tasks are not sufficient. The real-world issues that can be applied to these assessments and the reactions of the students require preparation and thought when planning and then require a great deal of grading or analyzing afterwards to measure student achievement.  Using performance verbs, such as those often found in Bloom’s Taxonomy, can help the students see what specific set of skills they will be asked to perform. The varying levels of higher order thinking skills can be used throughout these performances, especially depending on what type of assessment is being given. The students could be asked to focus on a procedure or a product or both, depending on the situation. In this setting, rubrics would be a great component to learning and assessing because the students would have a guide to help them instead of just being given a final product sample and being asked to achieve that.

Chapter 9- Performance Assessments

Reflection: This type of assessment reminds me of project-based learning, except in the assessment form. I think it is very important for students to demonstrate their learning through hands on activities, which is something that I will try to do more of in my classroom. Often times we have engineering units and the students are asked to construct something of their own at the end and this is always a great way to implement performance assessments and allow them to show real world skills simultaneously.

Thoughts on Paper!

Chapter 8- Writing Supply Items: Short Answer Essay 

Summary: Short-answer items are a supply-type item because it requires the student to fill in the blank with information they are going to recall. The question must be stated in a way where only one answer can properly answer the question and only one answer, or word, is needed from the student. They are still pretty easy to grade but will require a little more time to go through. Essay questions, on the other hand, will take more time to grade because they are answers that students provide in writing. The answers given can be in a restricted-response form, where only a few sentences are allowed and boundaries are set, or they can be in extended-response form, where answers are generally pretty open for the students to expand on. Directions should always be stated clearly, give the students a good idea of what is expected of them, and should state the amount of time they have to complete the essay.

Reflection: Using essays is my favorite form of assessment because I am able to see what students are thinking and how they express themselves on paper, which can often be way more than they would ever say in front of their peers. Although they are the hardest to grade, I think it is worth it because of the value of seeing their thought processes. I will now consider using more supply-type items in my first grade class, especially the short-answer items where only one answer is needed. I think this would make the students think hard and they wouldn’t be able to just guess the answer. I think I would use these types of assessments more when they are not for a grade though and just to evaluate their learning progress because I would not want to put too much pressure on them the first few times I used this type of assessment. 

Truth be Told..

Summary: True-false test questions are quick and easy to use, but do not always measure learning accurately since there is a 50% chance of getting the right answer. In order for these to be most effective, negatives and extras should be avoided and statements should be short and simple. Matching items can be a great way for students to utilize process of elimination to arrive at the answers and are easy for teachers to score. The negative side to these types of questions is the simple knowledge that it tests. The responses should be put in some type of order so that the student does not pick out a pattern and one set (either answers or questions) should be larger than the other. Interpretive exercises are able to measure more complex learning objectives and the teacher can see if the student is able to interpret printed information, but the grading is still pretty simple. If the student is unable to read well, however, this would be a much more difficult faucet to use for testing.

Chapter 7- Writing Selection Items: True-False, Matching, and Interpretive Exercise

 

Reflection: I think true and false questions can be difficult sometimes if not constructed properly. This chapter helps me see the best way to set this up for my students. Matching is actually my favorite because there are so many options to choose from and it makes the students read through and read again. I would definitely like to use this more in my first grade classroom because it shows kids to look for parts of a whole. The interpretive may be a bit difficult for me to construct for first grade, but I would love to use it by making a graph or a picture story and then have the students go through the answer choices together, since reading in the beginning of the year can be especially rocky.

Which Shall I Choose?

Chapter 6- Writing Selection Items- Multiple-Choice

Summary: Multiple-choice test questions are great for testing learning and usually give the students a %25 percent chance at getting the right answer. Multiple-choice questions consist of a stem, alternatives, and distractors (questions, answer, wrong answers). Each of these plays an important role in the assessment and should be used most effectively. There are many things to keep in mind while writing these questions and making sure they are effectively measuring the targeted learning outcomes. These tests questions should be clear to the students, with answers that are usually much shorter than the questions. Grammar should be of upmost importance and negatives should usually be avoided. If a student does not know the answer, they should not be able to guess too easily what the right answer would be just based off the wording, the length of answers, or any other type of pattern. All in all, it is up to the teacher on how he or she would like to construct the questions, but in order to make them most effective, it is best to follow the guidelines.

Reflection: The only reason that I have a problem with multiple-choice questions is because I feel like they do not show me what the student is thinking and I wonder often if they guessed the right answer or they actually knew it. Setting up the questions myself however, would help me feel more at ease about how the questions are presented and what the students can show me that they know. If I follow the guidelines given in this book, I think I will have a better feeling about multiple-choice test questions and their effectiveness.