10 Assessments You Can Perform In 90 Seconds 10 Assessments You Can Perform In 90 Seconds by TeachThought Staff Good assessment is frequent assessment. Any assessment is designed to provide a snapshot of student understand—the more snapshots, the more complete the full picture of knowledge. On its best day, an assessment will be 100% effective, telling you exactly what a student understands. This makes a strong argument for frequent assessment, as it can be too easy to over-react and “remediate” students who may be banging against the limits of the assessment’s design rather than their own understanding. It is a huge burden (for both teachers and students) to design, write, complete, grade, and absorb the data into an instructional design sequence on a consistent basis. Simple Assessments The word “simple” here is misleading. Then, due to their brevity, they’re simple to grade–in fact, you can grade them as exit slips–which makes taking the data and informing instruction (the whole point of assessment) a much simpler process as well.
Reading Assessment Tool | An App for Android and iOS – iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch Announcing FluencyFinder 2.5 Brand new tools for a new school year! Here’s what’s NEW NOW… ** NEW! Data-sharing e-mail function** NEW! Comprehension questions for a one-step fluency and reading comprehension assessment And what’s COMING SOON… ** COMING SOON! Dear FluencyFinder Friends and Aficionados, You spoke, and we listened. You’ll find all the features you love about FluencyFinder in the 2.0 version, plus a few that you told us you wished for – including data sharing with the new email function, and a one-step comprehension assessment for all 48 passages. Unlike other educational tools that require a one-minute reading fluency assessment, PLUS a separate assessment step to measure reading comprehension, FluencyFinder 2.0 lets your student read the entire passage in one quick sitting. When the assessment ends, FluencyFinder instantly calculates the results and stores them in your Student Record for immediate access. Sincerely all things “fluency” and otherwise, FluencyFinder P.S.
How Should We Measure Student Learning? 5 Keys to Comprehensive Assessment Linda: The United States is at a moment where it could really transform its assessment systems. Most of our testing is multiple choice tests, pick one answer out of five, which is something you will never do in applying knowledge in the real world. Our assessments need to evolve to reflect the skills and knowledge that we actually value and that we need schools to teach and our children to learn. Human beings are naturally learners. We are learning every moment of every day. In school, we have particular things to learn and we know that students learn more effectively when we're clear about what the goals are. Chinasa: I kind of like, I want like a goal in my head about what to do with information that I get. Erin: I look at the beginning of the year and I say, what are the big ideas that I want students to know in the whole year and what are the major skills I want them to be able to do? Linda: Assessment should occur early and often and throughout the process. Student: Connection.
If Grades don't Advance Learning, Why Do We Give Them? Posted by Bill Ferriter on Friday, 09/18/2015 Warning: I'm more than a little grouchy today. It's probably because I spent close to four hours hunched over a stack of student work in the back of a dirty McDonalds grading papers yesterday. It was a total grind -- marking errors, leaving comments and looking for patterns in the mistakes made by close to 100 middle schoolers so that I can plan my next instructional steps is a heck of a lot harder than most people realize. And that all has to happen BEFORE I transcribe student marks into a paper version of my gradebook and then entering scores into our district's online gradebook program. All of that time was essentially wasted, however, the minute that I turned the assignment back to my students. Sound familiar? Chances are that it does. What's even more frustrating is that feedback and assessment experts have been pointing out the flaws in our grading practices for a long, long time. Need proof? Stew in that for a minute, would you?
Free Resources and Tools for "Authentic" Assessment The key to innovations in assessment and curriculum planning are trust, transparency, and collaboration -- and providing the professional development and training teachers need to succeed. Credit: Tom LeGoff Note: The School of the Future is part of a network of New York schools that develops and uses its own assessment techniques, referred to as DYOs. The school also uses Tasks on Demand, or unannounced assessments that do not provide supports for the students, in order to measure their learning at regular intervals. Resources On This Page: Do Your Own (DYO) Assessment Examples, Rubrics, Data, and Data Analysis Examples of criteria used in authentic assessment Back to Top Skills Spirals and Tracking Sheets Ideas for moving curriculum into a circular pattern and tracking performance to expose students to a wide variety of topics over and over again as the material gets more challenging SOF's Instuctional Tools for Teachers Tools for Developing a High School Humanities Project -- Persepolis
Know Students Better: 15 Tools for Formative Assessment When teachers know their students well, they can build strong connections that lead to better learning. Knowing students’ interests, strengths, and weaknesses help teachers tailor learning experiences for their students. Formative assessment involves the teacher collecting information about what students know, don’t know, and want to learn. There is a very wide variety of digital formative assessment tools that can be used for free (often charging for extra features). One of the biggest advantages to using these kinds of tools is that they give every student in a class a voice.
Designing Rubrics to Fit Assignments Highlights Earth Day Kids love hearing about the Earth and ways we can be better to our environment! We've gathered some great resources to help you celebrate Earth Day (April 22) with your class. Videos Interested in using different types of media in your classroom? April Calendar of Events April is full of events that you can incorporate into your standard curriculum. Coding & Computer Science Introduce your students to basic coding and computer science! NAP - NAPLAN The National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) is an annual assessment for students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9. It has been an everyday part of the school calendar since 2008. NAPLAN tests the sorts of skills that are essential for every child to progress through school and life, such as reading, writing, spelling and numeracy. The assessments are undertaken nationwide, every year, in the second full week in May. NAPLAN is made up of tests in the four areas (or ‘domains’) of: reading writing language conventions (spelling, grammar and punctuation) numeracy. NAPLAN tests skills in literacy and numeracy that are developed over time through the school curriculum. To get a sense of the ‘look and feel’ of the tests and to understand what types of questions are asked, a full set of example NAPLAN tests is available. For more information about the move to deliver NAPLAN in a computer-based environment, go to NAPLAN online.
Refocusing assessment on teaching and learning This post is sponsored by Curriculum Associates. Assessment. It could almost be considered a “bad word” in the education world. With varying opinions, bringing up the Common Core State Standards or discussing state tests can sometimes feel like opening the ultimate can of worms. Can we achieve these goals by using assessments in smarter ways? I recently had a chance to sit down with Ken Tam, executive director of personalized learning at Curriculum Associates to get his thoughts on assessment and where it is headed in the future. Why has assessment become a “bad word” in some circles? There has been too much focus on high stakes assessment for purposes like accountability. We also haven’t done a good enough job at getting information to teachers in a timely manner, with enough detail so they can adapt teaching and learning. What is the purpose of assessments? I think this is a false choice. Yes, I think so. What questions should educators ask as they evaluate their assessment strategy?
50 Digital Education Tools and Apps for Formative Assessment Success The beauty of formative assessment is that there is no shortage of strategies and techniques available to teachers to use in their classroom. They provide teachers the valuable feedback they need to adjust their teaching so student learning moves forward. Today, digital tools available in smartphones and tablets make implementing formative assessment as easy and effective as ever. Back in April, we updated our growing list of digital formative assessment tools and it’s time to update that list again. We’re now at 50 digital education tools and apps that can help teachers implement formative assessment in the classroom, and this list can surely continue to grow. AnswerGarden – A tool for online brainstorming or polling, educators can use this real time tool to see student feedback on questions.Ask3 – This app for the iPad allows students and teachers to collaborate on lessons both in and outside of the classroom.