This semester, in both instructional design and social studies, forms of assessments have been an important piece of each course. When you start to unpack different kinds of assessment strategies it makes me feel both overwhelmed and supported at the same time. Overwhelmed with the idea that because there are so many pieces, there are many elements to use and confuse (as noted in all of the bad assessment samples). The variety also makes me feel supported to know that as the classroom teacher, I am still provided with the choice to determine how I’m going to evaluate what my students have learned. For me, rubrics are a significant contributing piece to my success as a student at UR. It helps me to outline and define clear expectations as well as the ability to compare and contrast what is important/relevant and what is not. That being said, using these rubrics for performance-based assessments seems to be dauntingly inconsistent across educators. Like Deborah brought up in class, it also seems at times unrealistic that teachers will have such time to set aside to making “grading” consistent and equitable across the board. I am still wondering, if we aren’t giving percentage grades on all performance-based assessment, is the grade more for us as teachers to understand where our students are, rather than students trying to reach some numerical achievement? I really appreciated the review of bad examples of assessment. I have experienced assessment in both good and bad ways and this class has really demonstrated a clear path to providing good questions that require students to incorporate the six competencies in Deep Learning and more. What really resonates with me is that it’s not about trying to trick students, or to make questions as difficult as possible, but to provide and create questions that encourage critical thinking and information recall in a way that they can apply knowledge and not just regurgitate it.