How Am I Doing? Assessing Student Progress
Carolyn Hornik
As educators, it’s critical to know how each of our students is progressing so that we can plan lessons and strategies to suit each student’s needs. We want to be able to use
each student’s strengths to build up areas of weakness. Assessments are used as guidelines to enable educators to differentiate instruction. In order to improve the overall quality
of students’ performance, assessments should be based on a wide range of materials and tasks. Testing alone is not a sufficient tool to assess all aspects of student performance.
Steps to Effective Evaluation
Align standards, learning goals, objectives, and aims to a set of performance criteria.
Consider your students diverse learning styles and multiple intelligences when establishing assessment criteria.
Define and base criteria on specific skills, concepts, psychomotor and affective development, including attitudes, values, and inquiry.
Set up performance tasks or projects-based tasks to demonstrate or showcase students’ knowledge and attitudes, acquired in your class, according to the criteria established.
Make students of the criteria being used to assess their performance.
There are many assessment tools educators can make use of, including formative and summative assessments.
Formative tools assess where students are at the beginning of a lesson or unit of instruction.
Formative assessments determine student’s pre-instruction knowledge and are used as needs assessments. They lead to future remedial and/or enrichment steps to be in place as part
of an instructional plan. Formative assessment tools include:
standardized and classroom diagnostic tests/quizzes
writing samples
questionnaires
The K (What Do We Know) on a KWL chart
pre-unit conferences
graphic organizers/planning charts
brainstorming sessions
observation of students
Summative assessments chart progress made by the end of a lesson or unit.
Summative assessments are evaluations at the conclusion of a unit of instruction or activity. They determine student skills and knowledge acquired as a result of instruction and/or learning
process. Summative tools include:
rubrics
checklists
culminating projects and/or student work samples (final written work, videos, photos, slide shows, skits, oral presentations, dramatization, journals, charts, art work, composition of
songs, music or dance)
post unit tests
observations and anecdotal reports
student self-evaluation
peer assessment
post unit conferences and discussions
student portfolios
Just as a physician performs continual testing of patients in order to formulate a plan of treatment, educators use formative and summative assessments in creating an educational plan of
action for students. Along with testing, alternative assessments serve as complements in providing educators and students with a complete picture of overall performance.
