Standard #8: Assessment of Student Learning
The teacher understands and uses formal and informal assessment strategies to ensure continuous intellectual, social, and physical development of the learner.
The teacher understands and uses formal and informal assessment strategies to ensure continuous intellectual, social, and physical development of the learner.
Formal and informal assessments are administered regularly throughout the day in order to evaluate student understanding and plan future instruction that supports intellectual, social, and physical development of the learners. For each lesson I write, formative assessment is incorporated so that I am able to see what students understand and what they still need to work on in order to plan instruction. In addition, students with disabilities participate in assessment in order to help understand them as a learner and write Individual Education Plan goals for the following year. During my special education student teaching placement, I was able to observe and facilitate different assessments to the students in the class in order to further understand what they know and to help write IEP goals for the following year. The summative testing that was used are all tools that provide some information about the student, but do not give all the information about the student. This is why it is important to have a mixture of formative and summative assessments to make student thinking visible.
The artifacts that I chose to demonstrate Standard #8 are formative assessment practices I have used during lessons to track student progress. In the first picture you will see record keeping sheets for each unit of reading and writing that were used to record notes during reading and writing workshop. After the mini-lesson is completed, students are dismissed back to their seats to work independently. During this time, my cooperating teacher and I would circulate around the room and have individual conferences with students. While conferring with a student, we would listen to them read their independent book or writing piece and note what they did well, what they need to work on, and a specific teaching point taught during the conference. After taking notes on the students, we would look to see if there were any similarities and would either plan whole group mini-lessons or small group instruction depending on how many people had similar needs.
The second picture is a word study records sheet used to record how many words were missed during the word study independent work portion of the day. Each day, students would have a different activity to complete in their word study notebooks. Some of the activities included word sort, blind sort, timed sort, and word scavenger hunt. When the students came up to get their work checked, the recording sheet was used and each student either received a check if all words were correct or a minus with the number of words missed. This recording sheet was a quick way to see who understood the word sorts and who was still having trouble. Based on this information, small word study groups were created to provide extra support.
The third picture is a Ganske Spelling Assessment that I administered during the IEP testing to one student. The Ganske Spelling Assessment is given to student to see where they are in spelling development. Based on the results of this test and other assessments, IEP goals will be written for the following year. Using summative assessments such as this provides baseline information for where a student is developmentally. The data that is collected can then be compared to other summative and formative assessments that have been given in order to understand the learner and determine appropriate goals and learning objectives that will help him/her succeed.
All three artifacts demonstrate my growth as a teacher because they show my understanding of formal and informal assessment strategies that evaluate student learning and ensure continuous intellectual, social, and physical development of the learners in the classroom. Using a mixture of formative and summative assessments daily will provide information needed to create lesson plans that will be beneficial to all learners. In the future, I will continue to use assessment strategies in order to teach efficiently and effectively.
The artifacts that I chose to demonstrate Standard #8 are formative assessment practices I have used during lessons to track student progress. In the first picture you will see record keeping sheets for each unit of reading and writing that were used to record notes during reading and writing workshop. After the mini-lesson is completed, students are dismissed back to their seats to work independently. During this time, my cooperating teacher and I would circulate around the room and have individual conferences with students. While conferring with a student, we would listen to them read their independent book or writing piece and note what they did well, what they need to work on, and a specific teaching point taught during the conference. After taking notes on the students, we would look to see if there were any similarities and would either plan whole group mini-lessons or small group instruction depending on how many people had similar needs.
The second picture is a word study records sheet used to record how many words were missed during the word study independent work portion of the day. Each day, students would have a different activity to complete in their word study notebooks. Some of the activities included word sort, blind sort, timed sort, and word scavenger hunt. When the students came up to get their work checked, the recording sheet was used and each student either received a check if all words were correct or a minus with the number of words missed. This recording sheet was a quick way to see who understood the word sorts and who was still having trouble. Based on this information, small word study groups were created to provide extra support.
The third picture is a Ganske Spelling Assessment that I administered during the IEP testing to one student. The Ganske Spelling Assessment is given to student to see where they are in spelling development. Based on the results of this test and other assessments, IEP goals will be written for the following year. Using summative assessments such as this provides baseline information for where a student is developmentally. The data that is collected can then be compared to other summative and formative assessments that have been given in order to understand the learner and determine appropriate goals and learning objectives that will help him/her succeed.
All three artifacts demonstrate my growth as a teacher because they show my understanding of formal and informal assessment strategies that evaluate student learning and ensure continuous intellectual, social, and physical development of the learners in the classroom. Using a mixture of formative and summative assessments daily will provide information needed to create lesson plans that will be beneficial to all learners. In the future, I will continue to use assessment strategies in order to teach efficiently and effectively.