My Assessment Blog Posts

Blog Post 1: Reflect on how your assessment experiences as a student in elementary and secondary school have influenced your beliefs about assessment. Describe your current beliefs about assessment in elementary classrooms.

       As a student in elementary and secondary school, I have always been an independent learner, studying in classrooms where learning was always very passive and teacher-oriented till I was in grade 3. When I moved to Canada in grade 3, I found out the way we were assessed here was quite different. I felt that we spent a lot of time collaboratively working with other students on projects. Except for math where we were taught concepts and had to write a unit test using the traditional pen and paper method to test our knowledge. As a student, I have been relatively shy in class not only with working on assignments but also asking questions when I needed clarification. Due to my shy nature, I actually preferred being individually tested and assessed rather than working collaboratively to demonstrate our acquired knowledge.

     My current view of assessment now is very different because I now believe it is very important to assess students in various ways not just through the traditional method. Teachers should constantly seek various methods to assess students in a way that will break them out of their comfort zone slightly, enabling students to reach beyond their limits. The power of collaborative study is remarkable, and is a great way of assessing students through approaches such as project-based learning, mind mapping or the jigsaw method. Through the use of various assessments, teachers are not only able to help guide the growth of students by giving positive feedback, but also reflect on what is, and is not working. Finally, assessment is a tool teachers are constantly using throughout the school year to help them evaluate and report a student’s achievements.

Blog Post 2: Think about the policies and practices described in Growing Success (2010), and in Growing Success – The Kindergarten Addendum (2016). Describe how Growing Success has impacted your beliefs about assessment.

    My beliefs about assessment have been immensely impacted. Assessment was one subject area that I used to feel the most anxiety about. Although, I have to say that there is still a lot more that I still need to learn about assessment. There have been success in my understanding of what assessment should look like in the classroom, but I still need to get a deeper understanding of what it looks like when it is practiced the classroom.

    At my placement, I taught a math lesson on patterning and I had all the parts of the lesson plan charted out, but one thing I forgot to add was an assessment tool. During my personal reflection I was writing down the students who had struggled understanding the learning goals that were to be achieved by the end of the lesson. Upon having a conversation with my associate teacher, she pointed out that making anecdotal notes was the “assessment portion,” of the lesson plan. I can relate this back to the kindergarten addendum where it states, “Noticing and naming the learning,” in the Assessment for and as learning policy. This is where the teacher gets students to notice what they are learning and assigning a name to it, such as identifying what a pattern looks like. In my case, I was assessing the students unknowingly through conversation. I soon discovered that in fact I was taking anecdotal notes through when I was reflecting on my lesson with my associate teacher. I feel like while it is good to have this basic understanding of how and when assessment is accomplished; it is not until the teacher candidates practice what is learned that they gain a deeper understanding of these various policies. They can then identify where and when to practice the different policies outlined in the growing success document.

    Something that I wish to learn more about is students that need to be modified either to higher or lower grade level. This means that teachers need to be aware of the curriculum in the various grades in comparison to the chronological age of the child. This also means that there needs to be enough evidence collected in various forms to analyze what grade level the student is at and how can teachers help them progress in their learning. I can see this as challenge for teachers who have students on either end of the spectrum (above grade-level or well below grade-level) and how it impacts the instruction the teachers chooses to give based on the various student profiles of the classroom. Overall, there has been a lot learned through reading the document, and I feel there is still a lot more to be discovered.




AER Form:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vSDnErpDIkUw4aTRZlkGnwTozKSPhkTM33cYhj6cTJj0TScXXfKYNT97maza0Ye1sSvjlJCfb388Pt1/pub 

Revised Instructional Planner:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vTYnMpcnesnGH45AIdCUrrDYxENeEt7McBFV6CN7a7fKvNHIrcVsU41WhuT0IMT7a5RU9kYdxrm6xGS/pub