Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Assesment Used In My Classroom

I use Formative Assessments all the time. I use Socratic Questioning to assess whether they are really understanding the topic we are working on and what level of mastery they have on the assignments. I do this informally in one-on-one conversations and demonstrations with the students. The Summative assessments are built into my curriculum, there are end of unit tests and final exams and I don't use any other elaborate method for Summative assessments.

I use the Ipsative Assessment with my higher performing students who are excelling in my curriculum. I challenge them to get an even higher grade, or make even better progress. Because all of my classes are self-paced with the reward that they get to go home early if they finish early, this assessment works well with my students. They are motivated to find better and better ways to complete the assignments successfully. The difficult part is to make sure they are actually learning something and not just getting more efficient at taking tests.

I use Peer Assessment with a few assignments. I have my students partner for a Process Essay assignment and they critique each others work all along the way. This works fairly well and has produced better work since I began doing it this way. The essay's are more logical, the writing is clearer, and they also tend to spot each others grammatical errors, even though that's not a grading emphasis with me. I also use Peer Assessment when a student is willing to publicly display some of their work, whether this is a presentation, or a writing assignment. One of my assignments is to write a "Commencement Address", and then if they are willing I have them give it in front of the class. Then I lead a discussion on what worked and didn't work with the speech. This is not mandatory in my my class, but when the student is willing this is a highly effective learning process.

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