The Many Forms of Assessment

Informal vs. Formal Assessment

A form of informal assessment would be observation during an everyday routine in the classroom, like lunch. Cohen, Stern, Balaban, and Gropper (2008) encourage us as teachers to make note of the stimulus of the activity, the setting, the child's reaction, and what the child does immediately after in order to gain a real insight into what the child might be thinking (p. 15-18). This allows teachers to see how the environment might affect children and how they might adapt it to help the children succeed. A test is a type of formal assessment. It is something that the children know about ahead of time and are able to study for, and it lets the teachers see how much of the information the children are understanding.

 

Paper-Pencil vs. Performance Assessment

In my German class, we were assessed based on paper-pencil and performance activities. We were given written tests in which we had to answer questions based on a piece of German text. We also had to engage in a German conversation with a partner while the instructor observed. The paper-pencil test showed the teacher that we were learning the vocabulary while the performance assessment showed that we understood the grammar and were able to speak somewhat fluently.

 

Traditional vs. Authentic Assessment

An example of traditional assessment might be to give children a worksheet of math problems to see if they understand how to solve them. An authentic assessment of the same example might include engaging children in a board game where they have to count the dots on the dice and move their piece accordingly. Both of these activities assess the child's ability to work with numbers, but playing a board game is more likely to happen outside of class than a worksheet.

 

Standardized Tests vs. Teacher Developed Assessments

A standardized test could be a reading test provided to the teacher by the textbook company or a history test that is created from software that accompanies the book. These tests ask questions about what children should be learning from the materials that they are using, but they don't always accurately measure what they do learn. Teacher developed assessments are tests that teachers create that more accurately assess what the children learn from the materials. For example, the children may find something interesting, that the textbook company did not find relevant, and spend most of their time talking about that piece of the story. Using the standardized test in this situation would not accurately measure what the children learned.

 

Criterion-Referenced vs. Norm Referenced Assessments

Over the summer I completed my practicum with the infant classroom at the Early Learning Center on campus. I completed both criterion-referenced ad norm-referenced assessments on the children in my class. The norm-referenced assessment was called the Ages and Stages Questionnaire (ASQ). I had on for each child and the questionnaires are based on what's "normal" for children of a particular age in months. For example, the 12 month ASQ asked if the child was walking or showing signs of being able to walk. This allowed me as a teacher to see where the children were at developmentally in relation to peers of the same age. The criterion-referenced assessment involved a lot of observations. I created lesson plans and wrote out the objectives that I wanted the children to meet during the activity. I recorded when the children met an objective and entered it on the assessment website used at the center. This type of assessment allowed me to see how a child met an objective and if they didn't how to help them be successful the next time. It also helped me to reflect on my teaching strategies and adapt them if they seemed to be failing.

 

Reference

Cohen, D. H., Stern, V., Balaban, N, & Gropper, N (2008). Observing and recording the behavior of young children. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.