Moving into my three-week block where I will be teaching every day in a high school classroom. I am excited but there are some concerns I have regarding assessment when I get into the classroom. The most concerning thoughts and questions that come to my mind when thinking about assessment are: how do I make sure an assessment is fair to all types of learners and for those less skilled in this type of assessment, how do I make my assessments transparent but at the same time challenging enough for students, and is there ever too much formative assessment? I want to create my classroom as a space where assessment is not scary or doesn’t mean anything. I want to know how to engage students with a want to learn rather than just a sense that they only need to try when it ‘matters’.

Why am I concerned?

These are concerns in going into my three-week block because I am unsure of the best ways to go about assessment when there is an atmosphere of “is this for marks” in classrooms today, not only in high schools. I know that is much how the students in my high school classes were. We wouldn’t do something if it was just ‘for practice’. We didn’t actually try unless we knew it was going to affect the grades our parents saw on powerschool. Some of the students would do the classwork because they were told to but there were others who knew it wouldn’t affect their grades if they didn’t do anything, the only way it would affect them is they wouldn’t have the practice behind them before the summative assessment. At that point in our lives at the time we couldn’t see that far into the future and the connection between the practice and the test of our skills.

I am excited to get into the classroom and pick the brain of my co-op teacher in my three-week block as well as in my internship. I want to ask as many questions as I possibly can and get the most out of the experience. Questions I want to ask my co-op teacher are: 1) How do you formatively assess and how often do you do it? Are you required to have lots of formative assessments? 2) What are your favorite types of assessment and why? 3) How do you work around the atmosphere for students only doing work that is ‘for marks’? these questions are important to me because I have not had a lot of explanation about assessment in my other university classes. Gaining knowledge from an in-service teacher would change my current practice as a pre-service teacher and my future practice when I get into the profession.

Seeing Assessment Differently

After seeing presentations of different ways of assessing learning during class today, some of my concerns seemed to be less worrisome. There were a lot of different types of assessment presented that pushed how I see assessment in a different direction. Integrating 21^st century literacies into assessments gives the students and the teacher more options for assessment. One of the presentations really resonated with me because they had woven science and music together using a Makey Makey toy to take about music as well as what conducts electricity. This type of cross-curricular activity makes learning more fun and gives students a memorable experience to link to the knowledge they gained. I am looking at assessment differently in this sense because linking two subjects together can make for better learning in both areas as well as creating fun in the classroom.

Looking Forward

Looking even more forward into my internship in the fall, I am seeing assessment differently in how I want to set up my class when it starts in September. Creating assessment with other subjects and cross-curricular connections in mind, I can see more options and more fun ways to assess students learning.  

All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.

Walt Disney