First Post for My Assessment Class

      Welcome readers to my page on Assessment, Evaluation and Reporting! Here I will be writing about what I am learning in my Assessment course and my reflections on assessment in education. In class today we got a chance to discuss what our experiences have been like in our own education with regards to assessment. Here I will provide some of my own experiences and beliefs on the topic education assessment.

     Although I do not have many negative experiences with assessment in my school career that I can recollect, I do remember the teachers who put forth effort in their assessments. I remember as a student how frustrated I would be if I received a mark that I was not satisfied with and there was no feedback provided to help me understand why I got that mark. This was especially true for classes without concrete right or wrong answers, like English for example. One experience I particularly remember was a social studies project I put a lot of effort into, but got a grade significantly lower than I expected. I was more frustrated with the lack of feedback as to why I received that grade because the teacher would simply circle marks on the rubric. In this particular case it was not the grade itself that I was upset with, but the fact that I had no direction as to how to improve or how it could be corrected. However, this is not to say that I do not have good memories of being assessed. I remember one English teacher I had who knew that I struggled with interpreting texts would always be prepared to not only help me with an assignment, but would also provide a lot of feedback so that I could improve as a writer. I believe that this teacher made me a better writer because she took the time to show me how I can be better. Her assessments would be fair, but would also be graded based on whether or not I was improving and correcting my mistakes. Another experience I remember was when one of my teachers helped me in math through his assessments. This teacher knew that I struggled in math but always wanted to be better. So, instead of just simply marking an answer wrong he would take the time to mark down where in my work I went wrong so that I learned from my mistakes. As a result, I could learn from these mistakes and apply it to different questions on the same math topic to test my knowledge in the material. Due to his efforts, I got one of the highest grades in math that I had ever received and felt more prepared about math in the next grade.

            There is no doubt that my experiences with assessment have influenced my beliefs in it now, but I do not believe that this is negative if taken the right way. As with any experience, my philosophy is to learn from the positive aspects by incorporating it into my own life, and learn from the negative ones by reflecting on how it could have been handled differently. I applied this philosophy to my beliefs on assessment in order to construct my approach to it. Firstly, I believe that assessment should be fair and unbiased, meaning any student has the potential to do better or worse on an assignment and that grades should be determined by biases the teacher might have. I also believe, especially with regards to elementary grade levels, that assessment should come in multiple forms. For example, a student’s math grade should just be simply determined by their mark on a test, but through observation of their effort, participation in class, and ability to communicate the material in different ways. Assessment should also be descriptive, in that it should be made fully clear why a student received a particular grade. To me this is more than just rubrics, but clear explanations about why a student failed or succeeded at reaching a certain level. Finally, I think that the purpose of assessment is to show students how they can improve and monitor their learning. Sometimes I see some teachers just give a student a grade, but no feedback as to how to improve. In my opinion, I believe that this defeats the purpose of assessment and that students should always be taught what steps they can take to improve their abilities. All in all, as teachers I believe that everything we do should be focused on improving the education of our students and assessment is central to this goal when done correctly. I am eager and excited to learn about this important role that educators have.