How do Teachers assess and evaluate?
Assessments and Evaluations of learning are a critical component for teachers to have in their classrooms. Not only is this tool for teachers to evidence learning in their classroom for reporting, but it is a way to gauge if your students truly accomplished the objectives set forth in your lessons.
These assessments are given in two ways. One way is formative assessments, which are "temperature checks" throughout the lesson and learning process to gauge your students progress in learning. Another method is summative assessments, which are completed with a pre- and post-assessments before and after a lesson, unit, or course.
These two methods are to be used with every lesson, unit and course your teach consistently. One cannot fully replace the other, because they serve very different tasks.
How can I assess students in a laboratory?
Tests can be hard to implement for laboratory/shop work in agriculture. One of our readings had great examples of various methods of mapping out concepts learned that foster student creativity while assessing their learning.
Brace Map Concept Map
Flow Chart Student Portfolio
Maintaining Clarity in Assessments:
As you well know, a critical part of assessments and evaluations is clarity. This comes in the form of rubrics. Ideally, the rubric would be given with the instructions for the assignment and would have the following characteristics:
- A list of criteria for the assessment
- A point value for each criteria for students to identify key components of the assignment
- Enough freedom to foster student autonomy or creativity
- A matrix which correlates students' actions to a specific point value.
FEEDBACK WANTED:
How can teachers incorporate peer-review ans self-graded assessments into our evaluation process without introducing social bias?
Lisa, you do a good job addressing the tough question of how to assess students in a lab/hands-on type subject such as ag. I urge you to look into rubrics as another assessment tool to use for this type of situation. You can find more information about them in Stoughton reading. They are also great tools for peer-review and self-graded assessments, as they require students to follow a pre-established and objective set of criteria.
ReplyDeleteHi Lisa -- you have done some good work here in evaluation. I concur with Tiffany on the use of rubrics. Integration of rubrics in evaluation, if properly written/developed help avoid bias and provide clarity to the evaluation system and valuable information to the student and to anyone interested r involved in review of the system and results of the process objectives. Looking forward to seeing you in a couple of weeks in Indianapolis!
ReplyDeleteI'm excited to meet up with you as well!
DeleteHi Lisa,
ReplyDeleteI too agree with Tiffany and Kevin regarding the use of rubrics in peer evaluation. In regards to your examples of evaluation in a laboratory setting, I like using concept maps as a pre-test to determine what students already know about a topic, then as we progressed through the unit the students could fill it in, and have a nice study guide.
I love this idea, a concept map often times helps me with gauging where students are. It definitely seems a bit informal as a summative assessment tool.
DeleteLisa, I agree with all about the use of rubrics. They have time and time again proven to be a very fair, unbiased, objective means of assessing...especially in mechanical/laboratory settings. Another option for peer assessment to avoid bias is to simply remove personal identifiers from papers, projects, etc., creating as much "blind" assessment as possible.
ReplyDeleteI'll have to investigate if schooology has the option for blind assessments! I known Dr. Curry has used them in my classes before and they work nicely!
DeleteI have not found that feature on Schoology, but it also does not promote a lot of student sharing. You could ask students to submit and repost the documents as numbered files. Students do not need to put their name on their work because Schoology submits to their name automatically. This would require a fair amount of prep work for you so may not be something to use too frequently.
DeleteAwesome job! I really like how you included all of the examples of assessments! From my own blog and yours, I'm gathering that rubrics are always the answer!! :)
ReplyDeleteI agree!
DeleteWhen I have students self-evaluate, they need to give a written explanation for their choice for each item on the rubric.
ReplyDeleteWhen peer grading, I'll often partner students and give them two assignments to review. I pick the partners for this and they have to work collaboratively, agree on the grade, and give written feedback. I find this makes them a little more accountable to grade the work itself and not the name on it.