Assessment

Blog Post #1:

Reflect on how your assessment experiences as a student in elementary and secondary school have influenced your beliefs about assessment.

As a former elementary and secondary school student, I have had direct experiences with forms of assessment that are typical to the traditional approach to teaching, such as testing, and given a numeric or alphabetical mark for almost everything. I feel as though these types of assessment may not have accurately represented who I was as a student, as my knowledge was considered in a fixed way. In addition, this way of assessment did not seem to focus on the growth of a student in terms in different ways. For instance, it more so looked at what I could not yet do as a student, as opposed to focusing on what I could do and helping me progress from that stage. 

However, as a Teacher Candidate, I have come to learn that although these forms of assessment are necessary and cannot be dismissed, they need to be combined with a constructivist approach to teaching that would include forms of assessment, such as observation, assessing student engagement in group work, and anecdotal recording. Although I have mainly been exposed to traditional, concrete forms of assessment based on my abilities and knowledge as a student, I believe that the way I was assessed in those years was not done in the best way possible. As a Teacher Candidate, I will take my prior experiences as a student and my new knowledge as an educator and embed them together in order to integrate them into a style of assessment that is effective, multimodal, and equitable across all students. 

Blog Post #2:

Think about the policies and practices described in Growing Success (2010), and in Growing Success – The Kindergarten Addendum (2016). Write a blog post about how Growing Success has impacted your beliefs about assessment. 

Growing Success has impacted my beliefs about assessment in many ways. The first policy of the seven fundamental principles have opened my eyes up to the importance of maintaining a growth mind-set and assessing each student individually in an equitable manner.  I believe that it is critical to continuously self-reflect as Educators, and in doing so we must ensure that we are meeting all of the seven fundamental principles when planning, instruction, and assessing. In addition, after learning about the 2nd policy within Growing Success, I believe that developing each student’s learning skills and work habits is an essential part of development and is necessary for every day life in the real world. When considering the third policy in Growing Success, I believe that it is important to effectively assess each of the achievement chart categories (Knowledge and understanding, thinking, communication, and application) in a way that balances them out so that students are given the opportunities to learn and grow in all ways possible. The fourth policy has an emphasis on assessment for learning, assessment of learning, and assessment as learning. Growing Success has impacted my beliefs in that Educators should always incorporate and development student skills that fall in the assessment as learning component. For instance, teaching students the ability to self assess, as this is also a moment of reflection that can be carried throughout a student’s education and their personal lives.  

When thinking about the 5th policy, it is important that we as Educators remember to judge the quality of student learning in a bias-free way and that the collection of evidence was achieved through a criterion-referenced form of assessment. With this being said, it is important to model student products when instructing tasks to be assessed as this is an important element that student’s can learn and grow from. When considering the 6th policy, I believe that it is important to look at this process as a showcase of a student’s overall development of skills and areas that need to improve on for the future. I also believe that is extremely important that if plausible, Educators should facilitate open and on-going discussions between students, parents, and themselves for the overall success of the student. It is also important that when doing so, comments that are directed towards parents are in an understanding and friendly language and strategies and/or thoughts on the student’s next steps are discussed. 

The kindergarten Addendum has impacted my beliefs about assessment. This is because prior to learning about the policies within this document of Growing Success I did not know about the major differences between kindergarten and grades 1-12 policies. For instance, kindergarten assessment involves a component known as the four frames, whereas grades 1-12 assessment has a component known as the achievement chart. Both of these forms of assessment focus on different things. In addition, the kindergarten addendum has no content standards, such as curriculum standards. 

All of the policies and knowledge within the Growing Success document have greatly impacted my beliefs about assessment and have taught me about what it is we do as Educators, how we do and why we do it in this way. Growing Success will continue to become a highly referenced document in my teaching career as it is both a requirement and a great source of knowledge.

AER Strategy Form 

Instructional Planning & Assessment Tool: Grade 5 Science Task