Typically, when teachers and students think of assessment, they think, "ugh!" Teachers picture endless hours of grading. Students think of studying and days spent quietly taking a test. Fortunately, there are better ways to assess students! One way that is more beneficial to students is to use student self-assessment. Self-assessment is a form of authentic assessment. Authentic assessment is when students are performing real life tasks to show what they know. This prepares them for the real world much better than a traditional pencil and paper test. By using a self-evaluation, we can give students a more personal assessment which motivates them to do their best. A possible downfall is that some students may just give themselves the highest grade without analyzing their work. To avoid this, it is important to teach students how to perform a self-assessment. The Four Stage Model to involve students. The most important aspect is to give students a criteria for their assessment and to help them to use it.
To help teachers to create authentic assessments, there is an Authentic Assessment Toolbox! This guide provides tips to teachers who are trying to create an authentic assessment. It stresses that teachers must first select the standards that they wish to address. Then they should give students an authentic task to analyze and perform. The task is rated by a criteria and then scored on a rubric that follows the criteria. Authentic assessment is much more meaningful to everyone!
Another authentic assessment that teachers can use is electronic portfolios. Student online portfolios can contain student work and teacher observations. It can be especially effective to allow students to help select the work that will go into their portfolio. They can also be shared with parents so that parents always have access to some of their child's work. With ePortfolios, schools won't need to dedicate as much space to storing student documents! Dr. Helen Barrett provides a lot of information on her website, although it is a little hard to find things on it. Some of the programs that she discusses are very expensive. Personally, I would rather just keep all of my work on my flash drive.
An important way to use assessment results is to differentiate instruction. This means that the teachers must alter their teaching based on the needs of each particular class. To determine appropriate instruction, it can be helpful to give a preassessment. The preassessment can be used to find out how students learn, their strengths and weaknesses, anything that they already know, and what they are interested in. By understanding more about our students, we can then differentiate our teaching to benefit them the most. In today's schools, this may also mean selecting appropriate technology for each particular class. The more we know about our kids, the more we will be able to teach them!
Sarah discusses Digital Storytelling in her blog post. Check it out!
Pia talks about differentiated instruction in her blog! Read it for more info!
The idea of using efolios as authentic assessments is a wonderful ideas. I do agree with you about having the efolios on a flash drive. In my opinion, I feel it would be easier to find the information on the flash drive.
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