Importance and Summary for Assessments
InTASC Standard six, Assessments, focus on the different ways students can demonstrate their knowledge. To promote student growth, the teacher includes multiple methods to observe learner progress and content knowledge. Giving the students various forms and different opportunities to demonstrate their understanding provides the students multiple ways to show what they know. Still, they are also helping the teacher to realize what is working and what needs to be changed. I can demonstrate my understanding of assessments through knowledge checks, pre/post unit tests, and utilizing project rubrics.
Artifact #1: Knowledge Check
This is a Knowledge Check from a third-grade science unit plan I created my junior year. The specific SOLs covered are SOLs 3.4 and 3.5, which consisted of food chains, ecosystems, and adaptations. This knowledge check should not be challenging to the students because it would have been given the day before the test review, but if there were multiple low scores, I would need to reteach the material. This is also a good resource for the students to review in preparation for their unit test.
Artifact #2: Pre/Post Unit Test
Pre and post-tests are essential for teachers because they allow the
teachers to see and know what the students already know. While I was student teaching, I made a two-week unit plan on money. I gave my students a pretest that covered everything we needed to learn. Here is a picture of the scores (right) as well as a link to my pretest. This information was helpful to me because it let me know that the students had a strong understanding of the coin names and their worth but still needed to work on counting the same coin groups and mixed coin groups.
Artifact #3: Project Rubric
Projects are a good way for students to express their knowledge in a way that best suits them. The students can demonstrate what they know while meeting the requirements that the teacher has set in place by following a rubric. Rubrics help the students to meet the needs while also leaving enough room for the students to be creative. While student teaching, we have had the students follow a couple of different rubrics for different topics like our Candy Store Creations. My students will be completing a group project where they will have to use a rubric when they make Flipgrid commercial advertising their candy store and candies and use a different rubric for their Candy Store Creations. The teams will collaborate to make the best five candies. Then as an extension on our last day of money, the students will set up their candy stores and try selling the most candies. The students are not allowed to buy their candy and must buy three pieces. The team with the most candies sold gets extra credit on their final math test then everyone will get a piece of candy or two. Here is the link to the grading rubric.