I felt like I learned a lot of valuable information form the ‘good versus bad’ assessment lesson. I am a very visual person so it was helpful to me to have a solid, hard copy of good and bad assessment tools. I have always struggled in school when it comes to taking tests and learning how important it is to create an effective, clear, and straightforward test is very useful to know moving forward as a teacher. I always caught on to weird wording and over-thought at least half of my test questions convinced they were either just poorly written or meant to be a trick.
I am still a little confused about what I read in chapter 10 of the textbook. I feel much more connected to the ideas of different assessments after the activities in class, but terms like rubric and criteria and performance-based and project-based still have me a bit confused. I also struggle with what traditional assessments are appropriate and effective and also just how to make a clear rubric. I assume many skills will come with time and experience, but I and currently at a loss for how I am supposed to formulate criteria to relay to students.
Lane,
I agree that the terms can be very confusing. There are so many of them and many concepts have different names that mean the same thing. Jargon is a huge problem in education.
I can clarify a few terms for you. We talk a lot about rubrics. A rubric is a chart that identifies criteria for evaluating a piece of student work. A rubric offers a description of the qualities or characteristics of a performance at different levels (such as: beginning, intermediate, or advanced). The best rubrics offer the clearest details for each category of evaluation so that student work can be evaluated consistently.
Lane, thank you for your honest reflection. Actually, you are right where you are supposed to be right now as far as comfort level with the idea of assessment! One rule of thumb is to always begin with the standards and skills that are required for each grade level. As the teacher, you must recognize what it is that students need to know and be able to do. Pull that data out of the standards, review a sample rubric, and decide how you can embed on what students need to me assessed. Creating rubrics really works best when teachers collaborate. The discussions to get to the final product are invaluable.