Assessment in the Classroom

There are different forms of assessment in classrooms. There is diagnostic, formative and summative.

Diagnostic is like pre-testing. You want to find out what students already know about a topic. The big two are formative and summative.

Formative assessments are continuous and can be done in a variety of ways through journals, peer reviews, observation, etc.

Summative assessments are usually done at the end of units or in some cases at the end of semesters. They are summing up what students learned.

The difference between these two assessments is what the student gets out of them.

Formative assessments should be used throughout units to guide students learning. Students should be able to take the results from their formative assessment and use it to determine what he or she needs to work on.

The biggest part of formative assessment is feedback. Students need to know why they received the score they did and how to correct the problem.

The issue with a summative assessment is that there is no room for useful feedback. By the time a student has taken a summative assessment it is too late. The course or unit is already over and they have lost the opportunity to fix whatever it was they did not understand.

While summative assessment is necessary for teachers to give, it should not be the only form of testing. Teachers must find other ways to see how students are doing and use formative assessments to help students before it's too late.

In the article "A Conceptual Framework for Classroom Assessment," there was a question asking which combination of words I prefer...assessment for learning, or assessment of learning.

I chose "Assessment FOR Learning." While assessments should be used to determine what students have learned, it should also be used as a way to assess how the students can continue to learn.