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Assessment For Learning:

Teachers will:

Gather information about where learners are in their learning, what they know and don’t know;

They help their students understand what and why, they are learning and what successful performance will look like;

They give feedback that helps learners ‘close the gap’ between where they are in their learning and where they need to get to;

They encourage learners to become more self-regulating and reflective.

Resource:

What does Assessment for Learning look like in the classroom? | OUP (oupeltglobalblog.com)

Assessment As Learning:

Learning journals or learning logs. Students can use them to reflect on their work.

A portfolio is a collection of student work that tells the story of the student’s effort, progress, or achievement. A portfolio is a purposeful collection of student work that tells the story of the student’s effort, progress, or achievement in a given area(s).

Strategies for student self-assessment (nsw.gov.au)

Assessment Of Learning:

There are six types of assessment that are in the Assessment Of Learning

Diagnostic assessment ( as Pre-assessments)

Formative assessment

Summative assessment

Norm-referenced assessment.

Criterion-referenced assessment.

Benchmark assessment

.6 Types Of Assessment Of Learning (teachthought.com)

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Rehab Nouh

Formative vs. Summative Assessments: What's the Difference?

Formative assessments are quizzes and tests that evaluate how someone is learning material throughout a course.

Summative assessments are quizzes and tests that evaluate how much someone has learned throughout a course.

In the classroom, that means formative assessments take place during a course, while summative assessments are the final evaluations at the course’s end.

Formative assessments are evaluations of someone’s learning progress in a classroom.

Common formative assessments include:

Quizzes

Games

Projects

Presentations

Group activities

Formative assessments are used on a regular basis and are more flexible than summative assignments. You can use in-class games, group presentations, and hands-on activities to evaluate student progress. This flexibility is perfect for keeping students engaged in your class. The tools the teachers decide to use all depend on the group of students they have, where they are, and where they need to be by the end of each term.

Examples for Formative Assessments:

Use dry erase boards and markers to show their answers to a question the teacher asked during class.

Solve a Math problem first thing in the morning while they are all getting ready to start their day.

Use the true or false questions to have an open discussion about something they just learned in class.

How Do You Track Formative Assessments?

By grading the assignment

By having the feel how well the students understand and perform and who needs the extra support.

By keeping track of data. How many questions the students have answered incorrectly during class or if they don’t understand the lessons.

Summative assessments are evaluations of what someone has learned throughout a course.

Common summative assessments include:

Tests

Final exams

Reports

Papers

End-of-class projects

Summative assessments almost always take place at the end of a course unless a teacher decides to break a course down. They’re often cumulative and used to evaluate a student’s long-term information retention. Students have to reflect seriously and critically to bring together the information from an entire course.

Summative assessments serve two purposes:

First, they evaluate what someone learned while they’ve been in your class.

Second, they evaluate how prepared someone is to go to the next academic level.

Summative Assessment Example:

Make the student choose a topic that resonated with them in class and report in-depth on it. This will show the student’s interest and help the teacher evaluate the student’s engagement.

Projects are a great way to show students reflect on what they learned throughout the course.

How Do You Track Summative Assessments?

Grades are the best way to evaluate a student’s success with summative assessments. Written exams or project-based assessments are ideal to see a student’s full scope of understanding in  your class after a making period.

Resources:

Formative vs. Summative Assessments: What's the Difference? (aeseducation.com)

https://www.aeseducation.com/blog/formative-vs.-summative-assessments-what-do-they-mean?hs_amp=true

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Sometimes as a teacher it is important to understand what your students are fully capable of. While sometimes we focus specifically on their knowledge of specific topics or skills, we need to realize that students are a combination of these proficiencies. The purpose of performance assessments is specifically for us to understand the full breadth of our student's skills, and ultimately gain a better understanding of how their varying proficiencies synergize.

The following are my preferred performance assessments:

1. Year Portfolio: I always like to have my students cover all of the topic we have seen throughout the year, however in a more compressed and creative way. Students are given the liberty to show to the class a summary of the topics we have seen throughout the year, but through a medium of the choice. These have included presentations, documentaries, social media posts, and so on.

2. Extended Essay: Being a teacher in an IB school, I have always enjoyed the concept of Extended Essays. Students have to fully research a topic of their choice and write a 4000 word academic essay. This allows them to have the liberty to pursue their interests while combining a variety of important skills, ranging from academic writing to presentation to research.

3. Debate: Students get to choose a topic of their choice and will represent one of the two sides. Then students would have to research and form arguments regarding the topic. Students will have to show a combination research skills, rhetoric and analysis in order to compose an effective argument.

Resources:
https://medium.com/inspired-ideas-prek-12/performance-assessment-what-is-it-and-why-use-it-1394712c5d3

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Pretend you are an elementary student, and your class is learning to interpret direction and distance on a map. Which would you rather do, take a test on map skills or plan and describe a safari across a map full of interesting places with exotic sights to see? Pretend you are a middle school language arts student, and your class is learning about imagery in poetry. Which assessment would show you understand imagery deeply, a test with questions like circle the similes or an opportunity to write a brief poem centered on a meaningful (to you) image? Pretend you are an anatomy student who wants to be a doctor some day. Which would feel closer to your dream, a paper-and-pencil anatomy test or a series of exercises using a human body simulator?

While a test is an efficient way to gather evidence about students' conceptual knowledge, a performance assessment is a better tool for gathering evidence about what students can do with their knowledge. Effective performance assessments allow students to apply knowledge to solve a problem or demonstrate a skill. In performance assessments, students demonstrate or construct something, and that work is assessed using observation and judgment, often using a tool like a rubric.

Performance assessment is especially useful for assessing students' achievement of complex learning standard (e.g., analyzing author's purpose), assessing their ability to apply concepts they learned to solve problems (e.g., using understanding of past presidential elections to predict what will happen in this presidential election), and assessing skills (e.g., using an electronic library card catalog). As a colleague once said, "The only way to know if they can swim is to put them in the pool." Some simple skills, though (e.g., kindergarten students making equal sets with colored counters) are also best assessed by observing student performance.

Performance tasks must be carefully designed so that the student responses really do give evidence of the knowledge and skills we are trying to assess. Performance criteria must be clear and help students focus on those things, particularly, so they can "show what they know." Performance tasks help show students what real work in a discipline looks like - what it means to be a writer, mathematician, historian, or scientist, for example. And when students understand the criteria for success with a learning task and apply those criteria as they work, research shows that their performance - and their achievement - increases.

Next time you are planning a unit, take a look at the learning goals you intend your students to achieve. Find one or more that lend themselves to performance assessment, and try it out!

For deeper insight into performance assessment, check out Dr. Brookhart's comprehensive webinar below:

SUSAN M. BROOKHART, Ph.D., is an independent educational consultant and author based in Helena, Montana. She also currently serves as an adjunct faculty member in the School of Education at Duquesne University. Dr. Brookhart was the 2007-2009 Editor of Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice, and is currently an Associate Editor of Applied Measurement in Education. She is author or co-author of seventeen books and over 70 articles and book chapters on classroom assessment, teacher professional development, and evaluation. Dr. Brookhart's research interests include the role of both formative and summative classroom assessment in student motivation and achievement, the connection between classroom assessment and large-scale assessment, and grading. Dr. Brookhart also works with schools, districts, regional educational service units, universities, and states doing professional development. Dr. Brookhart received her Ph.D. in Educational Research and Evaluation from The Ohio State University, after teaching in both elementary and middle schools.
You can view the McGraw-Hill Education Privacy Policy here: http://www.mheducation.com/privacy.html

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Performance Assessment: What Is It and Why Use It?

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Pretend you are an elementary student, and your class is learning to interpret direction and distance on a map. Which would you rather do, take a test on map skills or plan and describe a safari across a map full of interesting places with exotic sights to see?

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Sometimes when starting the school year with a new class, it is difficult to know what exactly is in your student's minds. Be it what their skills are or what topics were covered in previous years, as a teacher it is important to know your students' knowledge and be able to cater your lessons on that. This is the main purpose of diagnostic assessments; they are used as a method for the teacher to understand what are the strengths and weaknesses of students for any given topic.

The following are my preferred diagnostic assessments at the start of the school year:

1. Summer Essay: As I teach students in an international school, it is important for me to ascertain the language proficiency of all students since some of them will be at a high level while others might not have a good grasp of the language. As such, I assign them a short essay where they explain what they did during the summer as a way of breaking the ice, getting them into a writing mindset and giving me enough to understand their level and plan accordingly.

2. Previous Year Presentation: Being a Social Studies teacher as well, it becomes a bit more difficult to run a diagnostic. My preferred method is to have students make a short powerpoint presentation of their favorite topic of the year before. This allows me to see what time periods they covered, what the students found engaging as well as what the teacher emphasized during their lessons.

3. Edulastic: When it comes to knowledge retention, I like to utilize multiple choice quizzes as a way of identifying whether students have the necessary base knowledge for starting the course. This platform provides the perfect avenue for identifying these as well as helping me keep track of everything.

Resources:
https://edulastic.com/

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Teachers and admins love Edulastic because it makes

Formatives

Distance Learning

Interims

Benchmarks

Diagnostics

Remediation

Math practice

Science assessment

Distance Learning

Data analysis

Progress monitoring

State test prep

Tracking growth

easy.
Assess at school. Reinforce at home.

Use all of your data to track learning and growth.

Quickly identify learning gaps with diagnostic and formative assessments

Give students differentiated assignments to remediate, reinforce or challenge

Monitor progress towards standards mastery to ensure students stay on track

Engaging technology-enhanced assessments for benchmarks, the classroom, or distance learning

Easily administer district common or classroom formative assessments using high-quality item banks, diagnostic or curriculum-aligned assessments, create your own questions or mix and match.

80,000+ standards-aligned questions from trusted sources

Try one of our 10K free pre-built assessments

Keep students learning at home when school is closed or limited.

Create self-paced lessons by embedding video, links and articles. Check for understanding with quiz questions and watch student engagement soar.

Propel each student with personalized, data-driven recommendations

Fill learning gaps with practice for struggling students and challenge advanced students to move ahead.

Bring all of your key performance data together in one place - from engagement with online learning to discipline to diagnostics to state test scores - along with your classroom assessments and district benchmarks for a holistic view of each student, or of the whole district.

Integrates seamlessly with the technology you already use

Easy sign on through Google, MS365 or Clever. Sync class rosters and share assignments in Google Classroom or your LMS system and push grades back to your gradebook.

" We love the relationship we have with the people behind Edulastic. It's really easy to get in touch. We get the answers we need in a timely fashion, and it seems really clear that the team cares about whether or not their product is working for us. "

Easy enough to learn on your own, but you don't have to

From basic how-tos to advanced assessment creation, we've got you covered with online training, how-to videos and articles, and self-paced courses for all levels and roles.

See how Edulastic can make a difference at your school

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Edulastic: Interactive Formative Assessment for classroom or distant learning

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Online assessment tools with technology-enhanced items, help students learn and measure growth all in one easy system in the classroom and at home.