Testing season is upon us, and this year everyone – students, parents, administrators, and teachers – is especially anxious because in most states there will be new, more rigorous tests. So what’s a teacher to do? Give students volumes of practice tests? Cram more content into the school day? Wear out your students with studying? Not according to the research.
Informal formative assessment practices can assist daily, to solicit input and provide feedback to students. These practices can be used to adjust instruction in a timely fashion in order to best meet the needs of students in your classroom.
Games can be powerful vehicles to support learning, but their success in education hinges on getting the assessment part right. FSU Professor Valerie Shute explored how games can use stealth assessment to measure and support the learning of critical 21st century competencies. She discussed what stealth assessment is, why it is important, and how to develop and accomplish it.
How do you craft assessments that will give you the information you need to intervene with students exactly where they are? And how do you interpret those assessments once you have the results?
Formative assessment is a powerful tool for improving teaching and increasing student learning. edWeb.net community, Implementing Common Core Standards in Math, is holding a four-part Formative Assessment Webinar Series that explores strategies for strengthening the role of formative assessment in mathematics instruction.
This edWeb.net TechTools for the Classroom webinar walked attendees through how to use an online quizzing platform and discussed why using testing software can save teachers time and work.
Differentiation is a necessary response to the changing demography of schools, to our deepening understanding of how students learn, and to the changing demands of society and the world at large. But the greatest obstacles to differentiation are outdated beliefs about “fairness”. As long as fairness is equated with sameness, teachers, students and parents will perceive variations in teaching and assessment as being unfair.
Assessments play a large part in the learning of students and our understanding as teachers. And while summative assessments are important, the true understanding of learning comes from the formative kind.
Formative assessment is a powerful tool for improving teaching and increasing student learning. edWeb.net community, Implementing Common Core Standards in Math, is holding a four-part Formative Assessment Webinar Series that will explore strategies for strengthening the role of formative assessment in mathematics instruction.
