Assessment is an ongoing process. Effective teachers are constantly using formative assessment to diagnose problems and plan for future learning. Formative assessment should be for the learner as well as the teacher. This involves observing, note taking, and communication while the students are involved in mathematical problem solving and investigations. This informal tool allows the teachers and student to learn, grow and set goals. Summative assessment provides an overview of a year or unit of study. This is used to compare and chart the growth of students.
Visit our STEM Resources website and check out the assessment collection. “Assessment exerts a powerful and ever-increasing influence on our standards-based educational system. There is a growing body of information to demonstrate that students enjoy greater success in classrooms where assessment data is regularly employed to inform instructional decision-making. A well-designed and comprehensive assessment plan is an integral and key component of effective instruction. Because of this, the assessment resources in STEMresources.com while recognizing the impact of state-accountability systems, emphasize practices that teachers can employ in the own classroom settings.
The Assessment Collection relies on the principle that the regular, frequent, and strategic use of assessment opportunities can help teachers better accomplish the broad educational goal of student learning. The collection offers ideas for assessing students before, during, and upon completion of every learning experience.
The Way it Works…
“…we need to nurture strategic learners who can sort, analyze, compare, contrast, synthesize, infer, apply, make decisions, and use information meaningfully in their lives.” Their, 2002
The Assessment Collection is divided into sections that offer multiple strategies for pre-assessing student understanding and for monitoring (formative assessment) and evaluating (summative assessment) student performance. Each section includes a concept map that clearly outlines the potential applications for the materials found in each assessment category.
For the purposes of convenience, different assessment approaches have been grouped according to their most-likely classroom application. Teachers who have used these assessment approaches indicate that there is no hard and fast line among the different sets of assessment tools. The methods can and should be used interchangeably to accomplish a variety of assessment goals.”
