Erin Roland ELEC-316 Dev Formal/Informal Assess

These weeks we learned about different standardized assessment terms. Something that was stressed was that we do not need to be a mathematician to understand terms scores.  Norm-referenced tests: compare results to things they are similar to. Example: SAT Criterion-referenced tests: predetermined criteria and testers. Example: Citizenship Test When testing in your classroom it is important to check for validity (does the assessment measure what it is supposed to?) and reliability (can the results be reproduced under the same conditions?).  Next we learned about mean (average), median (middle number), mode (most often occurring) and standard deviation (the distance scores are from the mean) and the importance of knowing how interpret these results. We learned how to find these scores using Excel. Using excel is a great tool because it keeps everything organized in one spot. I will be using Excel when I teacher to analyze the fairness of my assessments, keep track of assignments, etc.  

This week we had the great opportunity to hear from Ms. Lauren Wagner. Ms. Wagner is a Ph.D. student and formerly taught in elementary schools for 13 years. She shared many creative ideas of how to use formative and summative assessments. One example Ms. Wagner included for formative assessment is if a student is struggling with a specific blend before you start the week have the student read to aloud a passage. You as the teacher will time and mark their mistakes. This is a quick way to find what percent the student is at. I really liked this example because you have an idea of how the student is doing at the beginning of the week and after instruction, you can read the passage again and see how the student is doing. An example Ms. Wagner gave for a summative assessment is to have students at the end of a poetry unit create a poetry portfolio. As the teacher, you can create a student-focused rubric for them to evaluate their work and evaluate their works as well. I really liked this i