Assessment is something I work with every day in job. Most of the assessment I work with is formative. I'm assessing what a student knows about a particular math skill at a particular point in time. This guides the instruction I provide. Summative assessment occurs on a less frequent basis. I think of summative assessments as typical end of unit, end of course assessments. These generally assess many skills where as formative assessments often involve only one or two skills.
The key to having assessments that are valid and useful lies in the creation of questions that truly require a response that reflects the level of knowledge attained. Sometimes it is okay to ask a question that requires a student to identify an object or concept while other times the student needs to be able to demonstrate their ability to perform a skill or communicate their deep level of understanding of the concept. Tying test questions to a tool such as Bloom's taxonomy is useful. I find that instruction that begins with the consideration of where a lesson activities/content falls in this hierarchy is almost always better than lessons that are more random in nature. In fact, I like to begin designing a lesson or activity with the questions I would use for assessment. This insures that I truly teach the content that is important.
As I think about my project, assessment is in my mind. Students need to understand and be able to correctly use math vocabulary. A project that requires them to do more than recognize a mathematical term would benefit my students. This week I began a project that originated with a question my students asked. They were curious about which ice cream treat is the most popular in the cafeteria. Furthermore, they want to know if there is a difference between grade levels. Each grade level I teach has a data unit. I could easily turn this into my project as we collect data, create graphs, and then analyze the graphs to answer the questions. Technology would be involved on several levels: we would vote for our favorite treat using activotes that connect to the Promethean Board, we would create excel spreadsheets to record our results, and we would create a presentation to share with the school that reveals the results. Each grade level from 1st to 5th would participate at any appropriate level.
I'm pondering on this one...
OK, my main comment has very little to do with assessment but much more to do with vocabulary! I give you two thumbs up for focusing on vocabulary. For an assessment for one of my algebra classes, I actually had the students not solve the problem, but write what they would do.
ReplyDeleteThey would look at the instructions and not have a clue what to do. If I prompted them with information such as..."This is the one where you find the slope and then use point slope..." they knew what to do. But if they saw, "Write the equation of the line in point slope form," then were stumped.
So I love the focus on vocabulary. And starting young will really help the when they are at the high school level.
I like the ice cream idea a great deal, but that is because I like ice cream a great deal. It also sounds very authentic, very engaging and like it would be easy to assess. If the students did the work in groups, that is the hard part, as it seems is a point in many of the blogs. I agree with Tami, that you deserve a kudos for using vocabulary as part of your assessment thinking.
ReplyDeleteBloom's taxonomy is very useful for setting up a lesson plan, from assessment questions to objectives...I totally agree with you. As far as the ice cream idea, i think that would be so much fun and educational for your students. It is a perfect marriage of being educational and applying to real life! I wish I was teaching elementary, this project sounds so cute :-D
ReplyDeleteCarla, I am glad to hear that you think of how you will assess students in the very beginning of your course design. In fact, this is what is desired to do. We should always align the assessment with what we teach (instruction). This is not only applies the traditional format of assessment but also to any type of assessment. What teachers want to assess in any learning activity directly relates to objectives for the instruction. Having the clear objectives should lead to the effective design of the course. Thank you for your insightful posting!
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