Assessments
Of Learning…
Assessment of learning is what is most often accomplished through summative evaluations. These are the graded assignment that show up on quizzes, exams and report cards. They evaluate how much the student had learned or to what extent they have absorbed the material that the instructor has been teaching in the class throughout the reporting period. I have encountered this style of assessment through all of my classes in all of my years of school through unit exams, final exams, essays, and report cards. I believe that this is a standard experience among all students to participate in this type of assessment.
For Learning….
Assessment for learning is a type of formative assessment that will come from external sources around the student. This type of assessment could come from a teacher’s feedback or from peers assessing each other’s work during group activities or on any formative assignments. I’ve made great use of this assessment style as student each time I wrote an essay; I would always have one of my peers read it and provide feedback for me which I then would use in editing my essays. This activity deemed quite effective as major improvements became of my writing skills after people offering advice and criticism on my essay assignments.
As learning…
This is another type of formative assessment but it often comes from an internal source or stems from internal thoughts. Assessment as learning comes from personal reflections on what the students have learned and what they think they must work on to understand the material in a more in depth way. I have had to write many response paragraphs all through high school in reflection of past grades, past semesters and prerequisite courses in order to help myself set goals for what I wish to obtain from the current course I was participating in at the time. My teachers often would then collect these reflection papers to learn about me as a person to see what they could do to help me reach my goals by the end of the course they taught me.
Assessment as a teacher…
I believe that all three of these styles of assessment have an effective use for helping students learn but some more extensively depending on the subjects. If I ever am granted the opportunity to teach English or social sciences, I believe the use of assessment as learning would be a highly effective method for helping students grasp certain concepts in the course; they could reflect on how these topics have affected their world views and their perspectives on life. Furthermore reflections can then spark class discussions and give students confidence in their beliefs and opinions and a chance to express these feelings even if it’s in a journal that only they will see. However in this same idea the assessment for learning methods I believe would also be valuable in English or social sciences if as a teacher I took an essay that my students have written and instead of giving them a grade, make it a formative assessment where I solely give feedback on these essays. Thus instead of being constantly concerned about achieving a passing grade or high grade, etc. the students will simply have the chance to write and to learn without pressure and to take feedback without a graded consequence. This way of feedback learning is also useful in sciences as exit slip questions to evaluate the current understanding of a topic that is being taught in class. Whether it is a concept question in science or a problem in math to see if the students can work out the answer, exit slips where fast feedback can be given to the students would also make it easier to see if I need to go back and reteach something if an important step was missed the first time around before the summative assessments take place.
In this all, I believe that summative assessment is exactly as described; a way to evaluate how extensively a student has learned a topic and ultimately ends with putting a grade on their learning. I believe this form of assessment causes students to study what they know and to pay attention in the courses being taught; this is the major part of education, that part everyone looks at and the part most students dread or fear. In recognizing this, I believe then that students should be given many other opportunities to have formative assessments before they complete a summative assessment so that they are as prepared and confident in their knowledge as I can help them be. Summative assessments I believe should come at the end of units or the end of major concepts being taught and explored as well with small summative quizzes or responses along in between. The small summative assessment thus can help reduce the weighting of the larger assessments in the course in order to be less daunting to the students and hopefully aid in lowering their stress levels before completing a major summative assessment and hopefully help result in a better understanding of the material and a better performance on the exam.
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