ASSESSMENT
InTASC Standard 6: The teacher understands and uses multiple methods of assessment to engage learners in their own growth, to monitor learner progress, and to guide the teacher’s and learner’s decision making.
Assessments go far beyond multiple choice and right-and wrong-answers. In an early childhood classroom, they provide invaluable information to educators and parents about how a child is developing. Teachers must use multiple methods to assess students because all students do not learn under the same pedagogy or with the same educational experiences. Ongoing age-appropriate assessments are incredibly beneficial guides to use while making instructional decisions about students learning and development. They lead to decisions that support children’s learning by highlighting children’s strengths, needs, interests, and preferences. Assessing children 5 and under should take place in a natural setting during the day-to-day activities they normally do since young students have not mastered the skills of reading and writing. These informal and formal assessments can be used for planning activities and track learning for the entire classroom or individual students.
In my classroom, I use diagnostic, formative, and summative assessments. These assessments help me gauge how well my students understood a lesson, a unit, or an entire year of learning. I learn about my students through these assessments and identify ways to support their learning and growth. Assessments help me become aware of student’s strengths and areas of their development and learning in which they may need further nurturing and support. I tend to gear most of my assessments towards informal assessments to measure my student's literacy growth.
Click on the links below to learn about the various methods of assessment I use in my classroom.
Year-long Assessment
Assessing Phonics
Making Assessments Meaningful
Conclusion
It is clear that using a range of assessment methods gives students more opportunities to demonstrate their knowledge and skills. Using diagnostic, formative, and summative assessments measure a variety of aspects of student learning, skill acquisition, application, and conceptual development. To be an effective educator, I must use these assessments to inform instruction within and between lessons for both students and myself. Adjusting my instruction early from information gathered during formative assessments will help students master concepts. Monitoring students' progress with observation logs, and learning trackers provide me with information on how well a student has mastered a learning target. By reflecting and examining information from student assessments I can make decisions on who needs additional challenges, who needs reteaching, and how students should be grouped for small-group instruction. It is critical for me to consider the data from assessment when I plan what to teach, how to teach it, and how I will structure my classroom atmosphere to support student learning.