The theme of this upcoming week in AEE 412 is evaluating student performance. Exploring the provided references has given me clarity while sparking uncertainty in other areas. Assessing student knowledge is vital. Assessment can be an essential tool to determine previous knowledge. What do my students know already? I can build them up from there. Evaluating student knowledge doesn't need to be long our drawn out either. Many teachers perform this assessment verbally with the entire class. The teacher just has to ask the right questions. This relates back to my post two weeks ago on effective questioning. Experienced teachers ask the right questions, process what they hear from students, and build form their current level.
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| http://www.teachhub.com/teaching-21st-century-skills |
Why do it?
Besides assessing previous student knowledge, evaluations will allow you to determine whether or not your students are achieving the course objectives. This is the bottom line in the classroom. Are students learning the fundamental objectives? Formative assessments like individual tests will allow you to determine what the individual student needs. Do one or two students need help? Or if the whole class does bad, do I need to reteach this content?
How do I do it?
As aspiring educators, we hear about the importance of variability everyday. Before doing the reading, I had not thought about the importance of variability in evaluation. It really makes sense though. If we are going to teach different ways in order to reach all students, we must evaluate in different ways so students can showcase their knowledge to be best of their abilities. The tests we give our students should have a fair mix of true/false, multiple choice, matching, and open ended questions. Also, all of our assessments should not be "Tests." This usually is not a problem with the "hands-on" nature of Ag education. Students should be given projects as well. These projects usually expose students to more real life skills than exams.
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| https://education.uky.edu/evaluationcenter/ |
Some questions I have after reading:
How do we grade fairly when our classrooms have students of special populations?
What determines fair?
What do I do if other students think this is unfair?
What will the parents think?
I'm thinking back to workforce ed, and the discussion we had on national teach ag day. Fair means everyone gets what they need, not giving the same thing to everyone. It may be hard for others to understand this, that is why it is so important to stay transparent and objective with what we do.
ReplyDelete"Do one or two students need help? Or if the whole class does bad, do I need to reteach this content?" I really like this line. It sums up why consistent assessment, and not just end assessment, is so important.
Asking for help from the special education teacher is something I think I will do because I have some of the same fears. Here is an equity vs equality image to help with that idea: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-XTRZnOkfj4U/VQIMm2oXZ8I/AAAAAAAACaA/BgSAaZFoAi4/s1600/Equality%2Bvs.%2BEquity.jpg
ReplyDeleteEvaluating student performance is vital, and you are right about that! I have similar questions on what different and unique ways are there to accomplish this and how? I know this week has helped us answer some of these questions.
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