A time and a place for all things...

Chapter 2- Nature of Student Assessment

Summary: Assessments can come in many shapes and sizes and be utilized for specific purposes. The four types of tests can be put into four categories, which can all be beneficial depending on what students are expected to demonstrate in their learning. Selected response tests require almost no time to grade but they do not show a very representative view of what reality would show them. The Supply-response tests require the students to just give small amounts of information, which can be helpful to see learning. Restricted performance assessments are very structured and have specific targets to demonstrate learning. Extended performance assessments require students to almost be “in” the situation and act is if were real life, which means there is no real structure to the answers on the teacher’s end. Allowing for real life scenarios and questions in important because it will help them get exposed early on. The norm-referenced and criterion-referenced tests can be helpful in their own ways; the former giving an accurate comparison of student performance and the latter defining their performance in a set of tasks.

Reflection: Knowing when to use each type of test depending on the depth of the lesson taught is very important. There is a time and a place for each type of assessment and I would hope to know when each one would be best used in my classroom. Although extended-performance assessments can be quite difficult to grade, I think it is very worth it to see the responses I would receive from my students. But, if I am just testing them on basic skills that I want to make sure they have mastered, I would just use one of the lower end tests so that the testing can be quick and the results can get to me quickly also. It is important for me to leave time for all of the grading and planning for the assessments because calculating student performance can be a difficult task if done incorrectly. I think it is only fair to my students if I test them in many different ways because it will help them demonstrate their learning in several ways.