Ithaca College teaching professionals demonstrate the ability to develop and utilize a variety of assessment tools and techniques designed to evaluate student learning and performance, provide feedback, and shape future lesson planning, programs, and curricula.
An assessment functions formatively to the extent that evidence about student achievement is elicited, interpreted, and used by teachers, learners, or their peers to make decisions about the next steps in instruction that are likely to be better, or better founded, than the decisions they would have made in the absence of that evidence.
― Dylan William
I believe in the importance of formative assessment for both the student and the teacher. I also focus on the need to have multiple forms of summative assessment to ensure that the proper knowledge/skills are being assessed. Students need a way to express their understanding, and teachers need a method for knowing what their students know. In that regard, frequent formative assessment throughout a lesson is necessary for a productive classroom.
When creating lessons, I practice Backwards Planning (Wiggins & McTighe) in order to ensure my assessments and my teaching are genuine. I create an assessment of what I want my students to know and be able to do, and then plan lessons that will allow them to be successful. This also provides a form of differentiation, as I can provide additional supports or challenge to individual students to assist them in being successful.
Specific types of assessment I employ are: exit tickets, often in the form of a concluding claim and evidence statement, targeted circulation looking for use of vocabulary words/key ideas, and quick check multiple choice questions with flashcard answer systems. These three types of formative assessment allow me to know that my students are on track with their learning and my teaching is effectively reaching them. Using formative assessment allows me to know when I need to further assist students with a specific topic, or if I need to reteach altogether.
Finally, summative assessment is a vital part of education. Specifically, in New York State, students must will take Regents examinations and should be prepared to answer those types of questions. While in my classroom I employ Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences and allow for varied form of assessments, I also ensure that students are familiar with the Regents format and typical questions that appear on the cumulative exam. I have students answer Regents exam questions as quick check questions or at the end of a worksheet/lab. For my own assessments, I use projects, portfolios, and vocabulary/equation quizzes to ensure students have the skills and the knowledge to master the content.
Artifacts:
When starting a lesson, I often like to see what students already know. This lesson was conducted in a classroom where I was teaching one day only and had never been there before. I wanted to quickly assess the class’s understanding of friction, so the first question was more open ended. As students shared their responses, other students realized they knew more than they thought they did.
The second question was more of a challenging, thought and discussion provoking question to encourage students to use what they knew in a real world scenario. This form of assessment is often more meaningful for both teacher and student, as misconceptions become apparent and students are challenged to apply what they know in a different way.
I used this exit ticket to assess if my students could correctly define mass and read a triple beam balance. I was also able to see what students already knew about density, before we had started learning about it. From student responses, I realized that students did not understand this was an individual activity. In the next exit ticket, I made sure to explain to them that, while this was ungraded, I wanted to know what they knew, not what their neighbor knew. I also explained why I wanted to know this and how they could use the “un-grading” scale of check, check plus, and check minus to understand how much they knew.
This is the rubric I used to grade the Force and Motion Unit on Acceleration. Students earn points for organization and completeness as well as accuracy of their responses. Many activities are graded as they are completed so that students can edit or redo any sections as needed before the final portfolio is turned in. Students, in addition to handing in all activities, also have a short essay to write, in which the write a final claim and justify it with evidence from the unit. This portfolio includes many modalities, such that students who struggle with one aspect of the class can still achieve a good grade. It also provides a way for students who are poor test takers to make up for any low exam grades (in addition to test corrections).