Module 26 & 28

Forms of Assessment

Blog Prompts

Posts due December 1st at 11pm, comments due December 4th at 11pm

Blog Post 1

• Discuss one question, confusion you have from reading Modules 26 and 28

With technology being used more in the classroom, I feel like most “assessments” are online quizzes and test. I’m not a big fan of this because I’m better at writing out and explaining my reasoning rather than just filling in a blank.

• One of the big ideas for Module 26 is understanding the difference between formative/summative/informal/formal forms of assessment. Despite some intuition, a formal assessment can be formative and a summative assessment can be informal. Fill in an example of how each of these can be used. You can use the chart, make your own, or write them out.

	FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT	SUMMATIVE ASSESSMENT
FORMALLY ASSESSED	These assessments have been preplanned before the day they were assigned. Some of the most popular examples are quizzes or overnight homework assignments. They help check the student’s understanding, progress or make adjustments to improve the student’s learning.	These kinds of assessment helps the teachers not only check on the student’s process but also how effective the teaching methods are to the students. An example of this can be portfolios that can help them achieve a specific goal in the classroom.
INFORMALLY ASSESSED Spontaneous	These spontaneous assessments tend to happen during the classroom, like checking if the students are getting the material so far of the teacher should slow down.	The only thing I can think of for this one is when the teacher makes sure that students in the classroom are paying attention to the lesson and taking good notes. If a student is being disruptive or sleeping then the teacher can asses and effort grade.

• SIMPLY BY LOOKING AT IT (or watching it), how can you tell whether an assessment is formative or summative? .... (HINT: This is a trick question. You can't, but why? HINT 2: The two kinds of assessment are defined in how they're used after the assessment moment....)

By simply looking at it you can’t tell which one is which because I think that they both work together. However, formative assessments I think happen during the lesson and are supposed to help the student learn the lesson a little bit better. Homework and quizzes are one way in which the teacher can monitor the student’s understanding and check on his progress. Summative assessments I think are more like an end of unit exam or final and this helps the teacher find out how much of the material they learned. If the majority of the students receive good grades then the teacher is going to know that his methods are working and if the students perform poorly then he will more than likely make changes to the lesson in order for it to be more effective.

Blog Post 2

• Discuss a question or confusion from reading Module 28
• Performance assessment is important for most of you because you are assessing a performance or action of some kind. How is this kind of activity different from other kinds of assessment? What might performance assessment look like in your content area and how, specifically, might you assess learning through performance?

I think that is different than the rest of the assessments because the students have to carry out an activity, perform or create something that represent their understanding. Also I feel like performance assessments are more efficient in certain subjects like choir, orchestra, art, or P.E. Since all the subjects have some kind of hands on activity is better to have performance assessments just to make sure they are mastering their skills. In my classroom I would give my students some kind of oral assessment. If it were for beginners than I would have them recite their ABC’s or the numbers in Spanish and help them out with their pronunciation. For the more advanced students I would have them recite a poem in Spanish or act out a historic event from a Spanish speaking country. We did both in high school for my French class and it helped me out because it forced me to use the Foreign language and practice it and I think that learning a foreign language is all about practicing and using it as much as possible.