The Importance of Everyday Assessment
Sun, Oct 05, 2014 12:34 PM
Everyday Assessments
The Importance of Everyday Assessments
By J. Myron Atkin and Janet E. Coffey
In this article the authors believe that there are positive results from doing daily classroom assessments, and that science gets overlooked in this subject area. It gets overlooked because of the accountability that educators have to deal with by showing some form of measurement for a grade or for the public.
Everyday assessments do not have to be just in the form of tests or quizzes, but can also be by student conversations, observations, lab investigations, projects, explanations or the questions that the students are asking. Students need to get immediate feedback from the assessments but when we give them a worksheet, it takes time to get that back to them. I feel too often that we are pressured to have a certain amount of grades for each student to show the parents how their children are doing in a subject area. There needs to be more focus on how students are learning and not so much on what is their grade.
After reading all the information on all the different ways we can assess our students, I feel that classrooms would be more inviting if they could investigate, question and participate actively instead of worksheets, therefore, the students would be facilitating their own learning. The most difficult part is to have a philosophy and an understanding with students to know what your expectations are and what their learning goals are.