What have I learned about assessment that will help me to improve student learning?

What have I learned about assessment that will help me to improve student learning?

This course helped to bridge the gaps in my understanding about assessment, and how evaluation strategies relate to the Key Concepts in the Growing Success document.  

Key Concepts from Growing Success:

1) Fundamental Principles

Upon studying the content of this course, I now have a better comprehension of how the achievement chart categories and curriculum expectations are connected, in order to create the success criteria and learning goals for students. One of the 7 Fundamental Principles outlines in this category of Growing Success is to ensure that the assessment meets the curriculum expectations and learning goals of students, as well as catering towards their unique learning styles. Through building the unit plan, this concept became much clearer for me, and I now know how to create a unit to organize students’ learning. I also learned that grading is not solely based on student achievement, as their individual learning styles also play a role in their academic success. Having achievement chart categories to support student understanding helps teachers to determine and justify a grade for their performance, and provides them with criteria when assessing.

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2) Assessment FOR Learning and AS Learning

The connection between assessment strategies and lesson plans also became clearer, as I learned how to differentiate between Assessment FOR, AS and OF learning. While watching the video that focused on feedback, I learned about how to provide opportunities for students to self and peer assess. The video provided simple and clear ways to implement these feedback opportunities in the classroom, while promoting the power of positive feedback.  A helpful strategy that this video provided, was to create learning goals as a class, and have students put their name next to their individual learning goal they wish to achieve. I would like to implement these strategies into the classroom and learn if it is more beneficial for students to have personalized learning goals, compared to ones that are based on collaborative criteria from the class.  The video also outlined that feedback and assessment needs to be focused on the learning, rather than the child. This means that the teacher needs to assess what the student has learned, rather than the individual child.

3) Reporting Student Achievement

Through our Professional Learning Conversations, we were able to discuss the ways in which grades and changed, and use our experiences as students to guide our assessment choices as future educators. We also discussed the importance and relevance of grading for students, as they will be assessed in other capacities in their futures, outside of the academic environment.  I learned many new ways that I can collect data regarding student achievement. This course exposed me to different ways to track student progress, and gave me new ideas for assessing learning, such as anecdotal records, rubrics, checkbrics and feedback. These also qualify as formal and informal assessment records, and are imperative for teachers in order to defend the final grade they give their students.

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4) Performance Standards- The Achievement Chart

Something I found very helpful in this class was being provided the list of verbs in order to determine success criteria and distinguish between the 4 categories (Knowledge, Thinking, Communication, Application). This was also put into effect when we created our unit and lesson plans, and it became clearer on how we create criteria that is expected of students. The reading, “What One 8^th Grader Thinks About Report Cards,” relates to this concept, as it outlines that grading should not be focused only on student learning of curriculum content. It is imperative that teachers value student learning methods, and their social skills, in addition to their general knowledge. The Achievement Chart allows for educators to evaluate the whole picture of the students’ learning, and allows students to be successful, no matter their learning strategies. These categories also provide a way for teachers to evaluate their students, in ways other than assigning a grade to their learning and overall success. Finally, students can refer to these categories and view which one they need to improve upon, in order to become a well-rounded learner.

 In conclusion…

Upon reviewing the content from this course, I have some new questions regarding assessment, and how it is changing as a practice in the new climate of education. I would like to learn more about how teachers will be able to assess self-directed learning? What practices and strategies will I be able to utilize that are already in place, in order to assess students’ learning, if it continues evolving into student-led? I am interested to learn how and if the curriculum expectations and content will stay relevant as we enter the age of inquiry-based learning.