Assessments are Essential
It's about the Student
"Assessment is not about you as a teacher; it is about your students” (p.97)
Lopez tells us in the readings that assessments is a way to know how your students are doing and to give them opportunity to hone in on their skills to better them as students. I agree with his theory and ideas. In my classroom we use assessments as a means to give us a benchmark on how our students are achieving their goals. We can then adjust our means of teaching to set them up for success rather than having goals that set them up for failure.
Lopez, D. (2013). No excuses university: How six exceptional systems are revolutionizing our schools (2nded.).Turn around Schools Publications.
Defending Our Assessment Practices
- Why are you participating in the assessments that you use with students? As I stated above, I am using assessments to assist me in gearing my teaching to fit my students learning and understanding of concepts.
- Can you share in explicit detail the value that you find in each assessment? In my work we use Early Head Start Standards and GOLD; Teaching Strategies to assess the learning of the infant to three years we work with. I find it quit valuable. It tells me if the children are understanding the concepts we are working with them on. It shows the parents the positive learning their children are engaged in and what we can all work on together as we move forward.
- Do you participate in assessments that you find no value in for students? There is a social/emotional assessment we use for each child in the program that I do not find helpful. The reason is it is a assessment that the parents fill out where depending on how the parent is feeling about their child on that day will be accurate or not. I have found that the some parents rate their children very high on each question without even fully reading the questions they are being ask while others rate their children very low, feeling that their children are always being "bad".
- Are you using an assessment you have no idea how to deliver, but are afraid to ask for help with? No, when I first started in my job I was confused about some of the assessments, however I felt comfortable reaching out and asking for more clarification.
Partnership with Students
I guess for the most part I fail at making my students partners in assessments. I guess it is mainly because they are so young. It may not be age appropriate to do so. I do make their parents partnerships and I sometimes find that useful and sometimes struggle with it depending on how vested they are in theri child's education.