In a perfect world, how would you assess your students? Discuss the benefits and challenges to implementing that in the SOL-driven world that we live in.
In a ideal setting, I would assess my students in countless varieties of ways. When I sit down to plan a lesson I start by thinking about what objectives I have in mind that I want my students to accomplish. When I think about assessing my students on these objectives, I like to think about what task(s) would give students the opportunity to demonstrate their mastering of these objectives. It is important to choose an assessment that aligns with your goals and objectives in order to get a true picture of what your students know. Instead, teachers are faced with pressure to produce assessments that can be quickly analyzed for data. Our school systems are under pressure to perform well on standardized testing, which leads to some disconnect between what we know is best practice and what types of assessments are actually used. This disconnect leads to meaningless assessments that require students to simply regurgitate information presented to them.
Assessments can be formal or informal. Sometimes when you are mid-unit, a quick check for understanding is all that is necessary to continue progress in the classroom. Other times, more formal assessments are required by teachers in order to document student progress, check for misunderstandings and misconceptions, and adjust the curriculum accordingly to meet the needs of individual students. With that being said, assessments do not need to be in the format of multiple choice, true/false, or matching tests and quizzes. Assessments can come from interviews between the teacher and the student, observations made during activities and lessons, or by analyzing a product that is being created. By engaging students in project-based learning, teachers become facilitators who get to observe the student’s thought process and guide their thinking in the right direction. When students create meaningful work, they can also demonstrate understanding. Through creative outlets such as videos, photo stories, experiments, oral presentations, powerpoint presentations, designing or creating original work students can demonstrate their understanding without the use of a paper and pencil test.
