Assessment Autobiography

Entry #1: Assessment Philosophy

What is assessment? What is its aim? What is the relationship between assessment, classroom environment, and instructional practices? What is important to keep in mind when designing assessments for your classroom?

Assessment was never something that was on my mind through grade school. I never thought about the process or the time it takes to grade assignments until I decided to become a teacher. Throughout high school, I always thought that the teachers based my grades they handed back to me off of the type of student I was, and that my work was very minimally considered. Being a university student, I started to learn about the process. I have begun to notice that assessment is more than just the grade. Assessment in my view, is how educators are able to evaluate the students’ work in relation to the outlined grading criteria and is what leads teachers to be able to produce a grade for the student to either pass or fail the class. Assessment is something that I have been gradually learning about throughout my university career, and have noticed that every teacher assesses uniquely. I believe the aim of assessment is incredibly important and feel that it is often lost in the demand to provide a grade. In my opinion, the aim of assessment should always be in favour of providing the students with enough educational support that the student is able to adequately meet the expectations that are set. I also think the aim of assessment is a way to guide teachers through assessment to see where the student stands in their learning process of the class. Speaking from my own experiences, I know that there are plenty of students that do not have a healthy relationship with assessment, and do not strive or enjoy receiving grades back as a basis for viewing their progress. As a future educator, I want to create a difference in my classroom between assessment and grading because I feel that as a student, seeing a number score on an assignment or test can be very stressful for some. I do not want the students to view the class as one they are trying to get by, but one that they remember enjoying. As I learn about the diversity of students and learning styles, I have a deeper understanding about how the environment of the classroom can affect the students’ learning process. When you graduate high school and step into adulthood you are often faced with a plethora of choices to make daily, and the freedom to make those choices is very new and can be challenging. In my assessment process as a future teacher, I want to recognize that some students do really well with hands-on projects or assignments, where others do better writing or testing. I want the majority of my assignments to be the students making their own choices of how they would like to execute the assignment to introduce choice, and the ability to explore how they learn best. Students will be able to learn more about their education, and how they receive content if they are given the opportunity to follow the path they are most confident in, in order to produce their best work for teachers to assess their grasp on the information better. All students learn differently, have different experiences and outlooks, and as they enter the classroom, they have different starting points. As a future teacher, I want to make sure that my assessment is based on the progress of my students from starting point to end point. This is where I think that frequently changing and updating instructional and delivery processes is extremely important. I am studying secondary education, and know that there is a large difference between university and high school. In my future classroom, I want my students to feel like their progress is being celebrated and acknowledged. Whether the acknowledgment is from small successes starting from square one of not knowing anything about the subject, grasping basic knowledge and information from the lessons, to if they already have a full interest in the criteria, and have started to gain a new perspective. When designing assessment in my classroom I will always believe that assessment should be something that I need to strive to make unique but equitable for students, while also learning as an educator how to create and implement better teaching practices to help my students progress properly to meet the outcomes for my class.

Entry #2 History with Assessment

Think back to your experiences with assessment in school (going as far back as you can remember, to recently), as a learner. What do your favourite assessments (or types of assessments) tell you about your preferences as a learner? What types of assessments have you become accustomed to? Are there types you commonly resist as a learner or ones you became frustrated about/resisted (and why do you think that is?) How might your own history impact your decisions around assessment as an education?

Going down memory lane, since becoming an adult learner, I have a very clear understanding that I was not a very attentive person when it came to my studies until I decided to go to university. As for my grade school years I have very few to no memories of myself receiving positive feedback, or an exceptional grade on any assignment. Now that I am studying education, it is prominent to me that my absence of drive for school in my K-12 years relates back to the assessment process and the lack of information I was provided with around the importance of outcomes. The minimal memory I have of assessment feedback provided were mainly quick notes written at the top of the page with red pen beside the grade, nothing extensive unless I approached my teacher to ask them for further explanation or more feedback to apply. After learning about the different types of assessment I have found that my favourite type of assessment is formative. The formative assessment strategy really aligns with my personal teaching philosophy as I feel that this assessment strategy provides students with more opportunity to succeed because it is recurring throughout the year or semester. As a learner, I know that I prefer and do better in my classes when there are multiple learning opportunities with different assignment tasks to complete. I am not the strongest writer, but I find I do my best at creative outlets for conclusions of learning, such as video, art, and descriptive projects and when grading these types of assignments, it is always well appreciated as a student when the teacher recognizes the effort and multiple skills that can be put to use. Using formative assessment tells me a lot about myself as a learner. I love to share my opinion, have discussions, and participate in class and it is always a bonus for myself when it is counted towards something. As a future educator I believe that formative assessment is a great strategy to consider as it gives the students that are not the most word savvy an opportunity to voice their learnings, and have them count towards something. I also believe that formative is a great way to connect with quieter students, and build a relationship with them through conversations of their learnings and understanding while also providing them with a way to ask questions in a comfortable way if they have any. I have grown very accustomed to summative assessment as participation was never a part of the final mark throughout my grade school years, and often in my university classes as well. I find summative assessment beneficial in the way that it helps me continue to learn to pay greater attention to outlines, expectations, and grading rubrics, but I am not necessarily a fan of it. Even being accustomed to summative, I do not prefer it. I feel there is often little room for me to show everything I have learnt in the class, when focusing completely on completing the assignment to the standard the teacher has set to try to get the best numerical grade possible. I very often resist summative assessment to the point that I avoid taking classes that have final exams, because I enjoy making connections with my teacher through sharing my personal learning experiences through final projects. Like many other students, tests, quizzes and exams make me very anxious to the point where I can barely remember information that I had spent weeks studying. As a future educator, my opinion around summative assessment makes me reluctant to implement it in my own classroom. From my personal history, I will not let it impact what the best decision is for my class. Even though I am in favour of formative and very familiar with summative assessment, I am hoping to gain a deeper understanding of authentic assessment and other processes to make a professional decision of what type of assessment will create the most success for my students.

Entry #3 Assessment in the K-12 Classroom

*My apologies if names are misspelt*

Choose a strand (elementary or secondary). Watch the introductory video, and then four additional videos of educators talking about assessment. Choose four topics you are interested in learning a bit more about, and are curious about how teachers do this work in the classroom. Identify a few key takeaways from the video around this assessment topic. And then discuss what surprised you or was unexpected about what educators were saying about assessment in the classroom, and their own experiences. In viewing all of the videos, look for commonalities and differences between approaches. This is especially important when watching the secondary education videos. While assessment is in many ways subject-specific, you will likely note some philosophies, positions, approaches, and concerns that teachers take up/identify regardless of the subject area they teach.

The first video I viewed was of secondary teachers surrounding the topic of the feedback process, and I noticed how the educators have very common morals for the importance of feedback. I found it extremely interesting to hear how the feedback process works in their classrooms as I have never had the chance to hear from teachers about feedback from a colleague’s point of view, it has always been introduced to me as the student. They all teach different subjects, but yet all find positive ways to track and communicate their feedback to their students. They recognize how key giving valuable feedback often is to the students’ success which was very inspirational to watch. There were many takeaways I had from this video starting with Reg, the ED for the Saskatchewan Physical Education Association, who claimed to be “old school”. He mentioned very quickly that he picks up the phone to deliver feedback to parents or guardians on a regular basis. This was surprising to me as I am very unfamiliar with this happening in classrooms when I was in grade school. I believe that not only building relationships with the individual students is extremely important, but also making those connections with their families. I really like the thought of having open communication lines within my classroom as I think it will not only keep students more connected with their own learning, but give parents the chance to hear the teachers’ side of their child’s education and how things are going at school. It can be very easy for kids to disengage with school, and having those open lines of communication can help in supporting students and preventing them from “falling in between the cracks”. I also really admired Carmen from Johnson Collegiate and her rock wall analogy. Her analogy is fun, and simple enough for most high school students to understand and get a clear picture. She makes a very valid point that I find should be more prominent in every classroom: it’s okay if you start out at a one or a two on her rubric, because the end goal is to get to a four, not to start there. I enjoyed listening to Jill from Campbell Collegiate the most as she recognized that sometimes it may be the teachers’ delivery that is causing the hiccup in the students’ work. She mentions that maybe going back and re-teaching is something she considers doing, and I LOVE this idea because it puts the students’ success first. Another thing she said she often does is give group feedback. If she notices there is a common mistake amongst many different students, she will make sure to let them know to fix it prior to submission to ensure she has a product that can be properly graded. It Is amazing to see so many educators be dedicated to providing that quality feedback for their students, and being able to modify their approaches varying between the subjects they are teaching from the written feedback right on the assignment to the Julie from Churchill Community who writes her observations down to touch base with the students after.

In the video regarding self and peer assessment, Reg made a comment that really resonated with me. He mentioned that he uses self-assessment quite often but not so much to see where the students are struggling, but to see where they are succeeding. He essentially says that he focuses more on what the students are passionate about because in school we often focus on the students’ weaknesses, but that does not mean they should not focus on what they are excelling at. He makes a great statement about pairing similar students with each other when doing peer assessment and being very careful about making sure to not let a student become very affected by what others think of them and their work. This statement is a very common one throughout the interviewed teachers as it is very prominent they are making an effort to teach and use peer assessment, but not in a way that will be detrimental to one’s self-esteem or jog their confidence in their work. I thought it was enticing to hear about the self-assessment view from Jill as she mentions that it really makes the student take a step back and critically view their own contributions to their work regarding effort, time spent, and if the work provides the answer. I think that this approach to self-assessment is very common amongst all of the educators as it is a very good way to get students to really realize what the work is they’re producing and what the quality of it is.

Entry #4 Assessment in the K-12 Classroom

*My apologies if names are misspelt*

Even though I was aware that a large majority of schools use online reporting platforms, I found it incredibly surprising that a lot of schools are now using those platforms in lieu of physical report cards. I really liked Shawn from Campbell Collegiate’s input on the reporting process. Her comment about how students need that constant feedback in order for the teachers to get them to reach the learning goals they want them to reach. This is a really important statement to remember as a pre-teacher. It keeps us as educators accountable to a certain extent for the success of their students. I commend Campbell for having the reporting process as they do with keeping marks constantly updated throughout the semester. I believe this process would definitely help lower the stress of students and provide them with more opportunity to keep up with their grades or improve them as needed as they go. I find this would also aid in avoiding the scramble to find missing assignments or the panic of wondering if they are going to pass or fail the course. It is interesting to see the common opinion amongst these educators in the opinion that there is no point to report cards because marks are online. I think that it is incredibly beneficial to have the ability to check marks online for students and parents or guardians to be able to track their educational progress as they go along in the class, especially because this avoids the parents or guardians not being left in the dark if a paper copy does not make it to them. Keeping the marks updated and posted in a timely manner seems to be very important with the ongoing gradebook and reasonably so.

I found the formative assessment video to be my favourite. I am very interested in learning about formative assessment further and think it is a very valuable strategy for students and teachers, but have always wondered how this strategy can work in secondary education when you can potentially be seeing 60+ students a day. Danae from Campbell Collegiate provided me with a new perspective on formative assessment regarding the use of graphic organizers and pre-planning methods for students. She mentions that she enters these in on her grading platform to mark as completed, even if they are not worth “marks” just to bring some accountability to the pre-planning. She mentions that many of her students view this as extra work, but she lets them know that this formative piece is something that will help them with the summative assessment later in the assignment. Adding these small formative pieces into the gradebook as a 1 or a 0 seems to make students want to complete them so they do not see a 0 on their account. This is something I would really like to implement into my own classroom in the future. A common theme that most of these educators bring up is performing a regular check in with the students to build trust over the process. Alongside building trust is being open and honest with them about the process that is incredibly important to grasping a full understanding of what they need to complete. These videos and interview questions are a resource that I found incredibly valuable to forming my own philosophy around how I want to use formative assessment in my own classroom. It also provides myself as a future educator with a lot of comfort knowing that there are many teachers out there that are willing to help people who are new to the profession with their years of experience by sharing their methods they find work best for the time, these videos really showed to me an inside view to the teaching community.

Entry #5: Assessment Interview

You are scheduled to sit down with a hiring panel for a teaching position. One of the questions you will be asked is, something to the effect of, 1) describe what you understand about assessment and 2) how you use assessment. Reflecting on all of your learning over the course of the semester, prepare an answer to these questions (planning either to answer them together or separately). Think about the course readings, but also policy documents we have engaged with in the course. What might a hiring panel be looking for? What terminology/concepts should you be touching upon?

My approach to assessment will never be set in stone because it is similar to everything in the education community, always adjusting and evolving to today’s research and upcoming techniques. However, my understanding of assessment is the process that we as educators take to deeper understand our students’ academic standing and what we need to work with them on to get them where they need to be. Assessment comes in many different forms, but I believe that it all comes down to critically analyzing the students’ progress from the beginning of the class to the end, making our judgments based on the grading criteria or rubrics we have established for the assignments surrounding the Saskatchewan curriculum’s outcomes and indicators. Assessment is a very crucial tool to our students’ success throughout their education, to determine if they are proceeding through the grade system at the appropriate age level. It is also the tool we use to determine what areas of their learning need more focus or guidance. Aside from using assessment to primarily grade in a summative form, we can use the strategy of formative assessment to connect and build relationships with students to gauge an understanding of how they are receiving the concepts and lessons we are teaching them, or how they are feeling about the tasks we are asking them to complete. Building relationships with the students builds a sense of community, where students feel like they are valued and have a place they can safely and effectively learn. I will be primarily using formative assessment in my classroom through a sequence of different opportunities. Opportunities such as, doing weekly check-ins through entrance or exit slips, online google forms, graphic organizers for sorting out thoughts prior to the assignment, alongside these I plan on providing ongoing feedback throughout class work periods. When using summative assessment, I would ideally like to design my major assignments to allow students to express their learning through their most confident outlet. I personally feel that when the student is given a choice of how they would like to complete their work whether it is through a written piece, or a visual project, they are more likely to incorporate their own original creative ideas and thoughts into it. When completing ECS in University, I read a valuable text by Tomlinson, C. & Moon, T. (2013). Assessment and student success in a differentiated classroom, that left me with the resonating thought surrounding how there are three steps to curriculum delivery “First, it should have clear goals for what students should know, understand, and be able to do as the result of any segment of learning. Second, it should result in student understanding of important content (versus largely rote memory of content). Third, it should engage students in the process of learning.” (Tomlinson & Moon 2013, pg. 6) The previous quote stuck with me throughout my learning journey to become a teacher, as I believe that by following these three steps will provide students with a adequate basis for to guide their learning down the path for success, whilst giving educators a checklist to follow when planning their delivery of the material. Proper delivery will give the right foundation for an equitable assessment among all students.

I believe that a hiring panel will look for many attributes within their candidate. They will look into their transcripts to view their past educational histories, their focus studies in post-secondary, and their understanding of teaching terms and understanding of the Saskatchewan curriculum. I hope they look at the potential that the candidate holds, and their enthusiasm for teaching the next generation.

References

Tomlinson, C. & Moon, T. (2013). Assessment and student success in a differentiated classroom. ASCD: Alexandria: VA. (1-26) Accessed July 24th, 2021