What is the difference between assessment and evaluation?
Assessment: The process of gathering information from a variety of sources.
Evaluation: The process of judging the quality of student work and assigning a value.
What do we assess?
Overall expectations
• Enduring knowledge, skills and understandings
Specific expectations
• Clarifies the overall understandings
TACK
• Thinking, Application, Communication, Knowledge/Understanding
Program Planning: What do you want students to know, understand and do?
• start with expectations and link them to the Achievement Chart categories (TACK)
• choose the appropriate assessment methods
• choose the teaching/learning strategies that link directly with the expectations
• choose your topic/themes/resources
Why Assess?
• Diagnostic Assessment (plan for instruction) – occurs before instruction
• Formative Assessment (assessment for learning, motivation) – ongoing during instruction to provide feedback and motivation to students
• Summative Assessment (assessment of learning) – occurs at end of a block of learning/unit/course
What To Assess?
• Learning targets – overall and specific expectations from curriculum turned into student-friendly statements
• include knowledge/understanding targets, thinking/inquiry targets, communication targets and application targets
Methods Of Assessment
• Paper & Pencil
• Performance Tasks
• Personal Communication
Paper & Pencil: Written response to specific questions
• Assessment strategies: tests, quizzes, exams consisting of selected responses, essay, true/false, short answer
• Assessment tool: marking schemes
• Best for assessing knowledge and understanding targets. Can also be used for thinking and communication targets.
Performance Tasks: Demonstrations of what students know and can do
• Can result in a performance or product
• Assessment strategies: projects, presentations, experiments, role plays
• Assessment tools: rubrics, checklists, portfolios
• Best when assessing the targets of application and thinking. Can also be used for communication.
Key Characteristics of Performance Tasks
• Students perform, create or demonstrate some significant skills or knowledge
• Tasks clearly address key expectations
• Tasks are meaningful activities
• Specific purpose and audience
• Real-life problems
• Real-world connections and applications
• Students have choice selecting or shaping the tasks
• Tasks clearly identify performance criteria
• Tasks measure what they claim to measure
Rubrics/Checklists/Anecdotal Records
Rubrics: Used to assess the quality of targets in the performance task and are criterion-referenced.
Checklists: Used to record the presence or absence of targets in a task.
Personal Communication: Conversation or personal writing
• Assessment strategies: conferences, interviews, journals, learning logs
• Assessment tools: conference records, anecdotal observations, rating scales
• Best when assessing thinking/inquiry and communication targets. Great way to determine what students have understood after a lesson.
Designing Personal Communication Assessments
• Be clear about the purpose
• Aligned with targets
• Audience is clearly defined
• Models are provided
Example of Personal Communication Assessment
Journal Writing
• Encourages self-reflection of their ideas/learning
• Use prompts to point the way
• Can be used across the curriculum at all divisions
Journal Prompts For:
Math
• The most important thing I learned from this is…
• This was a challenge because…
• I think the answer is… because…
Science
• This relates to my world…
• I can explain that…
• Through my observations I learned…
• Write about your favourite season. Why do you like that season? What are some activities you like to do during that season?
How To Communicate?
• Keep a confidential record of assessments – never post student grades or announce them in class.
• Feedback during formative assessment is essential to improve student learning – can be verbal (conferences, models) or written (notes, comments)
• You need to be able to clearly communicate what the student is doing and how he/she can make it better
• Students need many opportunities to use the feedback to improve before a summative assessment
How To Involve Students?
• Make learning targets clear – student-friendly language
• Help student set goals for learning
• Have students self-assess their own learning
Evaluation
• Assigning a value to the assessments for reporting purposes
• Results of Diagnostic Assessments are never included in the report card grade
• Results of Formative Assessments are sometimes included in the report card grade
• Results of Summative Assessments are always included in the report card grade
• Grades must reflect the student’s most consistent level of achievement
Sources: “A discussion paper on assessment, evaluation and reporting for Ontario’s Beginning Teachers”
http://www.oecta.on.ca/agms/agm2001/other/discassessmt.pdf
“Rethinking Classroom Assessment with Purpose in Mind” (Webcast)
http://www.curriculum.org/secretariat/april27.html
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