Self-Assessment (PDF Attached):
Dialogue paper – Self Reflection Sheet (Jozelle)
Dialogue Questions
- What are your thoughts about assessment? What does it mean to assess students?
- Could you tell me some assessment strategies you did in the classroom? And could you tell me how do you know that it is the appropriate assessment to use?
- (Connected to Question 2) If you were to do this lesson again, what would you do differently? Would you assess differently?
- Do you find it difficult to assess or come up with an assessment sometimes? Think about the classroom dynamics, class sizes, time, and so on.
- Do you feel restricted when attempting to try a new assessment strategy? If so, why? How did you overcome this restriction?
- What is one thing you wished you knew about assessments before you became a teacher?
- What advice could you give to pre-service teachers who are just learning about assessments?
- What are your thoughts about grades? It seems like grades shaped our whole schooling. We always try our hardest to get As, but what do grades are for exactly? Does it actually showcase our learning or student’s learning?
First Person (is a Filipino teacher and is teaching in the Philippines, I decided to interview them to inquire how their perception of assessment and evaluation may differ from Canadian schooling):
Assessment is an important tool for us to evaluate the knowledge, skills, and understanding of our students. It makes us identify their strengths and weaknesses and through this, we can cater or personalize our teaching strategies to meet their needs.
I would say Authentic Assessment. Months ago, I handled first grade students who struggle in reading. During our class, I let them perform one by one to recite a short poem in front of the class to assess whether they are learning or not.
Reading is a skill, therefore they need to actually perform it in a real-world context. Moreover, a poem consists of short phrases that they can practice or they can demonstrate if they are already able to read simple words from our lessons.
I believe assessment shouldn’t only be in a one-way. Teachers like us should personalize our teaching strategies for them to learn. I would go for a gamified type of assessment where they would actually enjoy and have a peer-to-peer collaboration.
Personally, I rarely find difficulty assessing or coming up with assessment strategies. In my experience, our teachers utilized a lot of assessment strategies for us to demonstrate our learning. I believe it’s crucial for us, teachers, to give choices for our students on how they would like to demonstrate what they have learned. Also, teachers shouldn’t only rely on formative assessment because this only leads to memorization, not actually grasping the key ideas of the lesson. Our professors always encourage us to do project-based outputs or product-oriented outputs. It is quite tiring but I believe that it demonstrates creativity and freedom for the learners.
For me, grades are not just a number but it shows your effort to obtain that numerical value. Grades are the numerical value of your teachers’ judgement on how you performed during the semester. However, grades do not define your success in life. Yes, I believe having high grades/marks will help you go to your dream school, or aim for something big, scholarships, and so on but grade is not only enough. In real life where you are now living outside the school, grades aren’t important. The most important thing is “how” you can do it. What are the things you are capable of? What did you learn and to what extent you can perform that? And our grades are not direct evidence to prove that we can. It’s our knowledge that we can align to our skills, and that is not something grade can testify.
Personally, having exams and quizzes is not a bad thing. It is a formative assessment where teachers should know and be able to prepare it to monitor their students’ progress whether they are learning or not.