A couple
of weeks ago I was listing to a #EDCHAT podcast on assessments (formative and
summative) while running on the treadmill (one of the best ways I have found to
get past the boredom) and it made me think more about how we assess our
students in schools. A few of the
discussion points focused on standardized assessments based on geographic
locations whether it was an end of course/grade or ISTEP. These assessments are the most natural
summative assessments as teachers and school leaders do not receive scores that
impact the students’ learning and most of the data is very vague in assisting
with the planning process. This just
strengthens our need to have a way to assess our students that impacts our
teaching and more importantly their learning.
At
#NCTIES2015 I had the opportunity to hear from a group of educators from Flat
Rock Elementary in Surry County who shared their top 8 ways to assess without a
formal test. Here are some of them (I added in Socrative)
Some
great tools to use:
QR Codes codes
Socrative
– 3 types of ways of giving the assessments – self paced, groups paced, or
teacher paced
All of
these tools are good to use with kids, but to truly be a formative assessment
and impact learning students need to receive immediate feedback. Feedback needs to be more than “good or not
correct”. Each of these tools starts the
conversation but isn’t the whole conversation.
It is important for our teachers to create assessments that start the
conversation and then have the power to extend the assessments and not just
move to the next question. If you just
move on the next questions are teachers needed?
I continue to see more and more nicely wrapped educational software and sites
that will “fix” students. Many of these
sites are neat and provide great practice for students, but do we want to teach
our students through a one-sided computer?
I hope not…
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