III: Assessments Test Questions With
Guaranteed Pass Solutions.
III - Assessments - Answer Assessment refers to the process of drawing inferences about a student's
knowledge and abilities based on a sample of the student's work. Assessment goes well beyond just
assigning grades. When used successfully, assessment results can provide valuable information about
students' achievements and motivations to teachers, parents, students, and educational administrators
as well as information about the success of the teacher in meeting his or her personal and professional
goals.
Assessment Purposes - Answer Assessment is a process by which teachers can evaluate student
learning and achievement, the success of a lesson, or other elements of classroom experience.
A teacher should view assessment as the criterion for determining whether an instructional goal has
been achieved.
Assessments in the Lesson Planning Process - Answer Effective teachers consider assessment when first
planning a lesson, and many make the assessment tools (e.g., rubrics, scoring systems) available to
students at the start of the lesson to help them focus their attention on the learning goals, identify the
cognitive processes necessary to achieve those goals, and provide ongoing feedback about what has and
has not yet been learned. To be useful, assessments must be clearly tied to learning objectives and any
content standards, but they should also be flexible enough that the teacher doesn't end up "teaching to
the test." Wise teachers also realize that no single assessment measure should serve to determine a
student's achievements, aptitudes, or abilities.
What's critical is that the proper assessment be selected for the intended purpose. For example, if the
instructional objective involves students' ability to use various scientific formulas successfully in
hypothesis testing, then any assessment should measure those procedures, rather than merely recall the
formulas themselves. If the instructional goal includes students' use of proper spelling in an essay, the
assessment should require students to write an essay, rather than identify misspelled words, either in or
out of context.
IIIA(1) - Types of Assessments - Answer ...
,Formative Assessments - Answer Formative assessment is conducted during implementation, often to
evaluate the need for change.
Formative evaluations are designed to provide information regarding what students know and can do
before or during instruction. For example, a geography teacher may interrupt a lecture to say, "Please
make a list of all the state capitals you can think of right now," or an English teacher might say, "Take out
your journals and summarize the main points we've been discussing today." Use of formative assessment
helps to drive the direction of the lesson — allowing teachers and students to judge whether the lesson
is going well, whether students need additional practice, or whether more information needs to be
provided by the teacher. Teachers engaging in reflective practice often use formative assessments to
evaluate their own achievements in light of student performance as well (e.g., how well am I getting the
point across? am I providing enough opportunities for critical thinking? etc.).
Summative Assessments - Answer Summative assessment is conducted after instruction to assess
students' final achievement.
Whereas formative assessments generally address the question, "What are students learning?"
summative evaluations address the question, "What have students learned?" In other words, summative
assessments provide information regarding what students know or have achieved following instruction.
Final exams are summative assessments; so are high-stakes achievement tests. As with all assessments,
it's critical that any measure designed for summative assessment adhere closely to the learning
objectives.
Diagnostic Assessments - Answer Diagnostic assessments are intended to identify what students know
before instruction.
Although sometimes used as pretests at the start of a term or unit, diagnostic tests are more commonly
used to identify exceptionalities in learning, including disabilities and giftedness. IQ tests, for example,
were originally designed for diagnostic purposes. Diagnostic assessments are frequently conducted
outside the classroom by education specialists or school psychologists.
Assessment Measures - Answer ...
Informal Assessments - Answer Informal assessments are spontaneous measures of student
achievement. For example, teachers who listen to the types of questions students ask during a lesson are
informally assessing the degree to which they comprehend the lesson. Similarly, when teachers observe
children during daily tasks — at play, with peers, at their desks, during routines — they are informally
, assessing them. Informal assessments are not graded and are primarily used for formative purposes:
Data collected via informal assessments offer continuous feedback regarding the daily lessons, classroom
experience, student motivation, and so on.
Formal Assessments - Answer Formal assessments, in contrast, are planned and structured, although
they can be used for formative as well as summative evaluation. For example, a pop quiz can be
formative if the teacher uses the information not as an assessment of each students' final knowledge but
rather to identify areas that need additional instruction, whereas the same quiz at the end of a unit may
be summative. A variety of measures can be used for formal assessments.
IIA(4): Assessment Tools - Answer ...
Rubrics - Answer The main distinction between an analytical rubric and a holistic rubric is that an
analytical rubric measures performance on each element of the assessment, whereas a holistic rubric
measures performance on the assessment as a single entity.
Holistic rubrics can use numerical values or describing terms and can be used for measuring tasks in any
discipline. Additionally, both types of rubrics can be created entirely by the teacher or in cooperation
with students or colleagues.
The greatest impact of rubrics on student achievement comes from encouraging students to be more
thoughtful.
IIIA(5). Self-Assessment and Peer Assessment - Answer Teachers who focus on self-directed learning
often encourage students to engage in self-assessment, in which students have input in determining
their grades, based on reflection and objective evaluation of their work. In other situations, students
evaluate each others' work. In this case, students should have an opportunity to challenge or discuss a
peer-assigned grade.
In general, self-assessment and peer assessment allow students to serve as agents of their own learning
and can lead to increased motivation for schoolwork. However, it's necessary that the teacher guide the
process, sometimes by providing standards for evaluation and other times by facilitating a discussion in
which students come to agreement regarding those standards and the procedures to follow. Once
standards are developed, students can use checklists, rubrics, rating scales, observations, or other tools
to identify the extent to which they, or their peers, have met those standards. Journals can be
particularly effective for encouraging less formal and more reflective, qualitative assessments.
