Assessing is Key

Assessment is an integral part in education. It MUST be done and done correctly in order for teaching to be effective. Formative assessment can be seem as being more important than summative assessment. I did not realize this until I read one of the articles that drew my attention to do. I do know now I should focus a bit more on formative assessment rather than summative assessment.

The idea of an electronic portfolio is interesting. "An electronic portfolio provides an environment where students can: collect their work in a digital archive; select specific pieces of work (hyperlink to artifacts) to highlight specific achievements; reflect on the learning demonstrated in the portfolio, in either text or multimedia form; set goals for future learning (or direction) to improve; and celebrate achievement through sharing this work with an audience, whether real or virtual. When used in formative, classroom-based assessment, teachers (and peers) can review the portfolio document, and provide formative feedback to students on where they could improve."


At times when I create a lesson plan, I get the formative, summative and diagnostic assessment mixed up. I found the information on the A Conceptual Framework for Classroom Assessment website extremely helpful. Here is what really helped me dicpher between the three:
Diagnostic Assessment – Pre-Assessment (Finding Out). The teacher uses different tools to find out the prior knowledge of the students on the concept, which is connected with the upcoming theme or topic: KWL charts, brainstorming, graphing, inventories, checklists, observation, self-evaluation, questioning, etc. can be very helpful for this. Formative vs. Summative Assessments. The idea of providing feedback that helps people improve is often called formative assessment (e.g., see Stiggins, etc. NEA series). This is different from diagnostic or summative assessment, which usually occurs in the form of tests that attempt to "summarize" what has been learned in the end of the lesson or Unit instruction.