Forms of Assessment

Informal vs. Formal Assessment

Informal Assessment: During some science lessons that I did at the preschool on campus, the children would ask questions and make comments as they worked with the flying machines they were creating. The conversations they had about the materials they were using to make the flying machines and what would fly better/more efficiently showed me what they knew about flight and gravity and the way air would affect their creations. It was helpful to use this kind of assessment to gauge their learning without putting pressure on the children to answer my specific questions.

Formal Assessment: In the same lesson, we had a contest and threw our flying creations off of the roof to see whose would fly the longest through the air. The children knew that this was the culminating event of the project, and they all worked towards winning this contest as they built. We had a planned time and day that the contest would happen, and the children were all really excited about whose flying machine would be the best. By building a flying machine that would actually fly the best, the children would have had to have gained real knowledge from the experiments that we did with lots of materials to see which ones would glide through the air best. Then they applied that knowledge to their own work. I needed to see what the children knew at the end of the semester in a summative assessment, but I wanted to be able to gauge all the children's work. I also wanted them to be excited about their "final" test with their flying machines.

Traditional vs. Authentic Assessment

Traditional Assessment: With my young toddler class, we had a little quiz about what colors they all knew. I read the colors out and had the children each point out something that color that they could find. With the traditional assessment, it was easy for me to go through and check yes or no for each color the children did or did not know.

Authentic Assessment: To gauge the young toddlers' art work from over the span of the summer, I had them each work with me to create a portfolio. It had images of the children working, some images of scanned work, and some videos of the children working too. This was authentic assessment, because the children were able to practice their drawing and painting skills and then show me the completed work in their portfolios. This worked well to see their progress over the entire semester and use their work production to assess their learning of the art concepts we talked about (how to hold a paintbrush, how to apply paint, how to clean a paintbrush, etc).

Criterion-referenced vs. Norm-referenced Assessment:

Criterion-referenced Assessment: With a kindergarten class, I could have a reading test of specific sight words and test the children's knowledge of those words by having them read them off to me. I could gauge their mastery/non-mastery by how many words they were able to recognize and read. This would give me a solid base to start building towards seeing which children would need more instruction with sight words.

Norm-referenced Assessment: In a kindergarten class, I could have the children each bring in a reading chart from home with the name of the book and amount of time the child either read at home with another person or by themselves. Then I could have a chart in the classroom on my desk to be able to personally gauge how much time each child was spending at home reading and see who was reading the most and who was reading the least comparatively to the other children in the classroom. I could break the children into groups based on this assessment and make sure I am giving children who may not have books at home or someone to read with ample time to work on their reading skills. It would also show me who was the strongest reader in the class (or most interested) and who I would need to work with more diligently.

Paper-pencil vs. Performance Assessment:

Paper-pencil Assessment: In a kindergarten class, I could assess if the children know how to write their name by having them write their name down on their name tags for their desks. That would also give them ownership of their name tag knowing that they wrote it out themselves. This kind of assessment would be nice for this, because the majority of children like to write their own name.

Performance Assessment: For a social studies activity with older elementary children, I could have them follow a list of directions on a map around the school to test their knowledge of north, south, east, and west. This would show me whether they could use those words with directions and a compass to travel around the school. This would be a more interesting way to assess the children's knowledge of directions than a true false quiz.

Standardized Test vs. Teacher-developed Assessment:

Standardized Test: The TCAP test for children in Tennessee is a standardized test provided to gauge the children's knowledge of concepts they think that they should know. This is helpful to see what objectives the children are not meeting and how to provide more instruction in these areas.

Teacher-developed Assessment: I could give out a spelling test I made for my third graders to test if they knew the spelling words we had been talking about in our class that week. I could personalize the test more towards my classroom and what we had been specifically talking about with one another.