Week 11 Reflection: Assessment

Northwestern University. Assessment Cycle. [Online Image] Retrieved from http://www.northwestern.edu/searle/assessment-of-student-learning/assessment-process/index.html#!

To start of this week we had our last two presenters, Anthony and Alexa, present their activities. I was in Anthony’s group this week where we focused on technology and math.  The website that we used is found here. The activity focused in on grade 7 fractions. On the website, we were able to use online manipulatives to help us solve the problems. This was a great tool for we were able to visualize the fractions in the problem and use the online blocks to help us solve the problems. This tool can be used in multiple ways in the classroom. It can be used in a whole class setting where the teacher is teaching a lesson for the beginning of the unit on the whiteboard and uses these online tools to help teach orally and visually to the students. The teacher can make the lesson interactive by inviting students to come up to the computer to use the online manipulatives to solve a problem for the class so that the whole class can see what is being explained. This tool can also be used individually for students to work on their own with the online manipulatives to work on problems. This tool allows all students to participate in using manipulatives and not having to worry about there not being enough physical materials to use as manipulatives, and it also prevents a mess being made. Teachers just need to ensure that they have the proper equipment in the class for everyone to use in order to harness the online tool. Overall I found the tool to be very useful for in the classroom, and it is also a tool that students can access at home on the computer to aid them in homework.

Coming back together as a class, this weeks focus was on assessment. We determined that assessment “involves the multiple steps of collecting data on a child's development and learning, determining its significance in light of the program goals and objectives, incorporating the information into planning for individuals and programs, and communicating the findings to parents and other involved parties.” (Hills, 1992, p. 43) We saw that there are 2 types of assessment; formative assessment and summative assessment. We use assessment basically for improving student’s performance. There is assessment AS learning, assessment FOR learning and assessment OF learning. In assessment for learning, we looked at a great assessment piece “My Favourite Number” which can be found here. The concept of this assessment piece is to provide feedback to students to help them advance their learning. The teacher provided a warm-up routine that allows them to see who understands the math concept being taught, They collect everyone’s answer and makes a ‘yes’ and ‘no’ pile determined if the student got the answer right or wrong. From the no pile, the teacher chooses her favourite wrong answer to share with the class. The class talks about first all of the right aspects of the answer. From there they determine what the mistakes are and fix the answer. This method allows for students to know that it is alright to make mistakes and the whole class is benefiting from this learning experience.

Compton,M. Assessment. [Online Image] Retrieved from https://www.tes.com/lessons/LSRCUr88b6Xwiw/assessment-for-learning