Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Thinking like an Assessor

Assessment is such a big part of the educational process today and so many times teachers often can challenge with ways to implement it. I know as a physical educator I have struggled with this problem before. I think UBD comes up with three good questions to think about in assessment. What kinds of evidence do we need? As a teacher it's always important to know what you're looking for in your own teaching, and what do you want to get from the students in the activities you teach. What specific characteristics in student responses, products, or performances should we examine? What exactly do you need to look at in order to find out if the students understood what was being taught to them. This can often lead to problems for teachers because they can be examining the wrong information. It's important to know exactly what should be looked at and why you are looking at it. Does the proposed evidence enable us to infer a student's knowledge, skill, or understanding? This is probably the most important question because it's asking if the evidence aligns with the goals. Is what you were trying to complete through your goals answered by the evidence that you have found. If your evidence is telling you something completely different than what the actual goals were looking for than you have to question why this happened.

2 comments:

The Nature Boy said...

Being that you are a phys. ed teacher, I'm wondering what types of assessments you use in your classroom/gym? What kind of evidence would you look for?

MattB said...

We grade our students on three criteria - Effort, Skill, and Participation. Effort is exactly what it is. Does the student come to class and take part in all the activities. Do they work hard at what they're doing or just do what they need to get by. Skill deals with the mechanics of the activity being taught. For instance if we're in a tennis unit the student's skill grade will be taken from their ability to perform different types of shots and serve. It also deals with if there is improvement in those skills from the start of the activity through the end. Participation is the easiest to grade because it deals with if the student comes to class everyday, and if they're changed into proper physical education attire.