Assessment in my classroom now has evolved to a good balance of authentic and traditional assessment. In the last term of this schoolyear, I have made a point to have equal amounts of each in my gradebook. For authentic assessment, I have done creative vocabulary card projects, and have led my students through the entire writing process (planning, drafting, revising, editing, publishing on computer), and have put these in as test grades. I definitely believe that these two long-term projects qualify as what the video called “fun tests” that tests students’ abilities, because students can ask questions while they do them, and the quality and depth of input into the final product is wholly in their hands. Thus, these authentic assessments evidence the students’ determination to get it right, which traditional, multiple choice tests cannot possibly capture.
As for the traditional tests in my classroom this year, they have been (as mandated by my administration) multiple choice followed by an essay portion. I design the multiple choice off of the SATP question style, but make sure that the language used in the questions comes strictly from either the novel we are reading in class or terminology we have reviewed in those weeks preceding (i.e., diction, oxymoron, author’s purpose, etc.). I like the multiple choice questions I give, but agree that authentic, live, original products measure a students’ capacity and illustrate his/her understanding better. As I see it, authentic assessment proves that a student has internalized the information, whereas traditional assessment can, at best, show that that knowledge has touched the surface of the students’ mind, but not necessarily penetrated or become permanently incorporated in it.
Next year, for assessing my students, I hope to develop: (1) more precise and fitting scoring guides for performance-based tests; (2) a way to incorporate more presentation into the assessment, so that peers can learn from each other; (3) one-on-one, 5-minute book discussions with each student, as the Urban Academy in NYC does, assigning student to chat extemporaneously with a ‘perfect stranger’ about a book they’ve read independently); and (4) some way to build-up to more independent, self-driven, self-monitored work from August through May.
If I am going to get really ambitious in thinking about next year, I think it’d be amazing to bring in local experts, so that, as Gary Wiggins said in the video, high-quality, local assessment would play out before my students’ eyes. If geometry students can be evaluated by local architects, English students can be evaluated by local authors or poets… imagine the possibilities! I heartedly agree with Doug Reeves, author of the 90-90-90 studies (esteemed by Ron Sellers), that assessment should be ‘for’ something, not merely ‘of’ something. In this case, being evaluated by an expert would be for the purpose of “assist[ing] educators to improve instruction and advance student learning,” rather than merely to quantify how well students caught on to a concept (from Reeves’ “Forum on Assessment”). Assessment should assist, buttress, support instruction, not be its hated pest.
My hopes for assessment this summer are to transpose the composing-process project I did with my classes this year. I find that evaluating students’ writing step-by-step, and affording students individual instruction throughout, is a good approach to performance-based, authentic assessment. Students can control their achievement if they are determined to produce the best product possible over a period of time and work. This might be a good time to experiment with presentations, since class sizes will be low and manageable.
The main roadblock in reaching my assessment dreams will be me entrusting students’ progress into their own hands. Letting students do long-term projects requires that the teacher give student time and space to create an original product. But my inclination, based on experience, is to expect students to get off task and never come prepared with what they needed to scout out on their own. Maybe if I do part of the leg-work, such as pluck out a group of books for students to work from in their research instead of setting them free in a vast library, for instance, the prospect of allowing them the freedom to create on their own will be less frightening to me.
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