Assessment

     

Assessment is one of the most vital parts of successful instruction. By assessing your students in some way for everything that you teach, you are able to see what they do and do not understand. You are able to tell where they are in their understanding, where they are likely headed in their understanding, and ways that they could likely close the gap between what they do not know yet and where they need to be.

     Grades can never be confused for assessment. Grades are simply the number or letter given to an assessment of some kind, but it is not the assessment, itself. Assessment is something that is conducted in order to utilize in order to build upon what is already known. It also requires great communication between students and teachers in order to provide and make proper use of feedback given. Assessment will provide teachers and students with a way to identify how to move forward with instruction in order to close the gap between what is already known and what needs to be known by the end of a designated segment. Assessment should be used directly, indirectly, formatively, and in a summative form. By providing multiple forms of assessment throughout everything that is being taught, students are more likely to take charge of their own learning and assist you in closing the gap. 
     Formative assessment is a form of informal assessment that is made up of different types of observation done during learning. It is used to motivate learning, and it may help teachers reevaluate how they are teaching and how they can better suit the needs of their students if what they are doing is not working like it should. It improves future performance and is often data-driven.
     Formal assessment, also known as standardized testing, is very structured and provides information on how students are doing at the end of a lesson or learning segment. Summative assessment is an evaluation of performance. 
     In my future classroom, I will make sure that my assessments are intentional, are based of just standards and expectations, are offered in multiple forms, and are utilized for data and feedback purposes. By providing my students with all of these aspects of a proper assessment, they will be much more likely to succeed. 

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