Assessment

InTASC Standard 6: The teacher understands and uses multiple methods of assessment to engage learners in their own growth, to monitor learner progress, and to guide the teacher’s and learner’s decision making.

INTRODUCTION

I use a variety of assessment types to monitor both my student's academic performance and their independent reading habits. I use a balance of formative and summative assessment to support my students' learning, and assessment occurs on a daily, weekly, and year-long basis in my classroom. I use the data I gather through assessments to understand my students' progress and to inform my future planning, such as which students to pull for small group instruction and tutorials.

I use exit tickets, Currently Reading prompts, and Status of the Class checks to gather formative data on student progress. These pieces of data help guide my decision making as the teacher. For example, if I see from the exit ticket data that one of my classes did not understand the skill we practiced that day, I can provide them with extra review or clarification the next day to correct their misconceptions. Currently Reading prompts and Status of the Class checks help me gather data on students' individual reading habits and comprehension, which I use to hold one-on-one reading conferences with students on a daily basis.

I use individual reading conferences, reading response prompts, text-based activities, and Fountas and Pinnell reading level data to assess how students are comprehending a variety of texts. This helps me monitor my students' progress with texts that are at their independent reading level. I also use summative assessments in the form of cumulative novel projects to assess how students comprehended our class novel and to guide my future decisions regarding our read-alouds.

Finally, students engage with their own data by setting goals for the state standardized test, reflecting on and analyzing their test performance, and participating in Objective Mastery. These activities guide my students in examining their own thinking and monitoring their own academic growth. As a result, students have an increased ownership over and awareness of their individual strengths and areas for improvement.

Please click each image below to see how I use multiple forms of assessment in my classroom.

Formative Assessment

Student Engagement with Data

Reading Response and Comprehension

CONCLUSION

It is important that I use different assessment techniques because not all students learn in the same way. By using multiple-choice questions, open-ended writing prompts, face-to-face conversations, and creative reading response activities, I am engaging learners in multiple ways of demonstrating their knowledge and skills. A variety of assessments also helps me have a more holistic view of each student as a unique individual and learner. The combination of formative and summative assessment on both independent reading books and class novels allows me to more accurately monitor student progress and gives me data that help guide my instructional decisions. Using multiple and different types of assessment data helps me identify each student's learning needs and determine what skills I need to focus on during individual reading conferences and small group instruction. Finally, having students engage with their own assessment data and instructional growth helps them understand the concepts in which they need to improve and empowers them to take control of their learning by setting appropriate learning goals.