Assessment

I am currently working with a fourth grade class and the math lesson they are working on is fractions and decimals. If I were teaching this lesson, I would try to assess my students both informally and formally throughout the week. 

The first informal assessment that I would use in my classroom would be in a "Problem of the Day" format. Before each lesson, I would put a review problem on the board for students to complete. Ideally, I would like for each student to complete the problem on a small sheet of paper and for about five or six of them to turn it in so I could quickly assess if they understood the problem or if they were still confused. This assignment would be very informal and would not impact the students' grades in any way. It would mostly help me keep track of which students are struggling, and how successful my teaching approach is.

The second informal assessment I would use for this lesson would be observation. As students worked on their fraction and decimal problems, I would discreetly circle the room and work with students individually at their desk if they were doing the problems incorrectly. I really like this form of informal assessment because it would let me constantly check on my students' progress instead of finding out at the end of a unit that they have not understood anything since the first lesson.

The third informal assessment I would use in my classroom would be questioning. I would ask the whole class questions as we worked through problems together in order to make sure they are comprehending the lesson. If I notice some of my students answering incorrectly or looking completely confused, then I would know that I either need to reteach the lesson for the whole class or pull certain students aside in a small group for more individualized help.

The fourth informal assessment I would use after a math lesson is a Ticket Out the Door. I really like when we use these in our class because they allow me to reflect on my own learning and decide for myself what exactly I did and did not understand. I think this is a great idea to use for elementary mathematics because it would improve students' meta cognitive skills, allowing them to self-assess their own learning, and would give me a lot of individualized information about what I am and am not teaching well.   

To formally assess this lesson I would assign a few homework problems for the students to take home and complete each night. Because I plan on informally assessing my students everyday and making sure they are doing the problems correctly during class, I would expect them to understand how to complete the problems at home and would assign a grade for each night's homework. I think having the homework count for a grade would hold students accountable for their learning because they would understand that in order to do well on the homework, they would have to pay attention to the lesson and ask questions when they do not understand something. Formally assessing homework will also help the students prepare for their second formal assessment, the unit test.

The final formal assessment I would use for mathematics would be a test at the end of the unit. This test would be graded, as I would expect it to reflect what the students have learned over the past few weeks. It would combine problems from every lesson that I had informally assessed each day and all the homework problems that students had worked on each night. While tests can be overwhelming for students, I think the combination of informal and formal assessments that I have discussed would help students feel more confident in their abilities. Instead of letting a few students fall behind and continue to struggle with each progressing lesson, my plan for this type of assessment would be to keep students on track so they have a better chance of doing well on their final test.

When discussing assessment in my other education classes this year, our professors always tell us to think outside of the box for final assessments. Because I focused on math for this PLE post, I felt like a unit test would be the best and most probable way to assess my future students' math skills. For other content areas, there are numerous creative ways to formally assess your students other than multiple choice tests. The article that I found for this week is from EssentialSchools.org. My favorite part of this web page is the list of final assessments ideas that substitute for tests, including projects, performances, and process skills. I think it could be a great resource to use in our future classrooms to make assessments fun and informative.
http://www.essentialschools.org/resources/115