Differentiated/ Personalized Assessment

Differentiated assessment is an ongoing method through which teachers gather information to identify how their students learn by observing their strengths and weaknesses. Each student learns in different ways this is known as the different learning styles such as audio, visual, and kinesthetic. Students also learn at different paces some individuals are very fast learners and others are slower. Other students vary in knowledge and skills that they possess, even how they connect to their previous knowledge. Therefore, differentiated assessment is needed because no one form of assessment works (Chapman & King, 2005)

 

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This picture is a perfect example of why differentiated assessment is needed within the educational system. Without it our educational system can alienate children who don’t learn as fast or learn in different ways than the norm.

            There are also multiple factors when thinking about differentiation assessment within the classroom. They include knowing the learner, assessing the learner, adjustable assignments, questioning strategies, and curriculum approaches. This five factors all enable the teacher to have a more beneficial differentiated assessment for their students. It does not just change they way they assess, but also the strategies they use to teach. All of these factors allow the teacher to provide the best learning environments for their students by allowing them to reach their full educational potential. Differentiated assessment fosters student’s motivation within the classroom because they are producing work that they are passionate about and actually care for. No body enjoys or takes pride in work that they don’t enjoy so by giving them options that play to their strengths it allows them to. The teacher provides students with instruction, but adjusts it to better suit the learning needs of the students. It is ultimately the teachers responsibility to provide this varied instruction to the students to aid in their learning, but also allow them to take accountability for their own learning (Drake, Reid & Kolohon, 2014).

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A personal experience that I had within the classroom with differentiated assessment was actually just last year in university. It was a small class about 20 of us and we had to do a presentation on our lives. The teacher gave us multiple options with how we could present. It could be a poem, a painting, a power point presentation, a scrapbook, or even a song that you wrote. This gave everyone in the class an opportunity to play to their strengths and achieve the best that they possibly could through a way that they were most successful at. By providing us with these different forms of assessment is made everyone feel comfortable and gave them more motivation to do the assignment because they actually enjoyed doing it. The people who were musical wrote a song and performed it, they were in their own element allowing them to enjoy and get marked on something they actually excel at instead of writing essays or doing exams.

In saying this, one of the major issues that comes to mind when looking at differentiated assessment is how as a teacher to implement it within a big classroom. This makes classes in university very hard for teachers to implement differentiated assessment. It would take to long and be way too hard for the teachers to go through every single persons assignments. This can also raise a problem with how consistent the teachers marking is too. From marking an essay to marking a painting or even a power point presentation can be drastically different because they are all different in their own way (Varsavsky, & Rayner, 2013).

            One idea that I had thinking about differentiated assessment is that it is one small part in making a school experience for all children differentiated. Differentiated assessment is only a small portion of it. By making the content, the classroom, and instructional strategies that the teachers use all play a huge role in making schooling differentiated to suit all students needs. Differentiated assessment is yet just one of the many ways a teacher can achieve this for their students providing them with an environment to help foster them to reach their full educational potential.

References

Chapman, C., & King, R. (2005). Differentiated assessment strategies: One tool     doesn't fit all. Corwin Press.

Drake, S., Kolohon, W., & Reid, J. (2014). Interweaving curriculum and      classroom assessment: Engaging the 21st century learner. Don Mills, Ontario: Oxford University Press.

Varsavsky, C., & Rayner, G. (2013). Strategies that challenge: exploring the use of             differentiated assessment to challenge high-achieving students in large            enrolment undergraduate cohorts. Assessment & Evaluation In Higher       Education, 38(7), 789-802. doi:10.1080/02602938.2012.714739

Assessment FOR Learning

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Assessment FOR learning is an absolutely essential component of a student’s education. Assessment for learning’s main priority is to promote the learning of the students and guide teaching (Black, 1986). Assessment for learning has a base of a continuous feedback loop between the teacher and the students. The students use this feedback from the teacher to fine-tune their learning strategies and increase their performance on the task (Drake, Reid & Kolohon, 2014). I remember back in grade 11 for the first two months of English class our teacher would hand back all of our assignments and standardized tests already marked with feedback on them, so that we may correct our mistakes. After we fixed our mistakes she would recollect the assignments or quizzes and mark them again. This was an excellent tool for the rest of the students in the class and I because it allowed us to see what we were continually doing wrong on the assignments. We could also see what our strengths and weaknesses were to improve on in the future. It was able to provide us with what we knew we needed to work on to go seek help from the teacher. When students have transparent learning goals to aim for, it enables them to take responsibility in their own learning and it gives them a sense of responsibility over their own learning/ education (Berry, 2008). 

            When teachers use feedback to regulate their teaching strategies, it allows them to support each student’s individual learning needs within their classroom. This assessment becomes formative assessment when the evidence is used to modify the teaching work to meet learning needs (Black, 1986). This information is vital to the students because it can aid and enhance their learning process helping them to reach their full educational potential. Teachers are able to see where their class stands as a whole or even where individuals in their class stand in relation to their knowledge of the content they are teaching or are not teaching. If the majority of the students are not doing well in a certain area then myself as the teacher might not be doing a good job or here could have been confusion while teaching the lesson on that certain aspect. Also by giving assignments and standardized tests back with continuous feedback on them, students are able to get a feel of what the teacher expects from them by reading the feedback given. This can help ultimately when teachers start to mark their assignments because then they are able to see how they mark. It allows for more transparent teaching.
            

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Assessment for learning does not just occur within a school setting between a teacher and a student, but rather it can occur anywhere. I have had rugby coaches that will put us in groups during practice to watch each other as we go through different skills. After our teammate would perform the skill we would critique them. By giving our teammate this feedback they were able to focus on the certain aspect of the skill that they were having a problem with ad fix it. This was a very effective way to help out our teammates skill levels because for each coach we had there was fifteen of us. It allowed us to advance our game play with coaching each other, by giving descriptive feedback in practice it directly transferred over to game play. This goes to show that assessment for learning does not just happen within the classroom and between students and teachers, but it can take place anywhere and between almost anyone.

References

Berry, R. (2008). Assessment for learning (Vol. 1). Hong Kong University Press.

Black, H. (1986). Assessment for learning. Assessing educational achievement, 7-18.

Drake, S., Kolohon, W., & Reid, J. (2014). Interweaving curriculum and classroom assessment:                     Engaging the 21st century learner. Don Mills, Ontario: Oxford University Press.

Assessment OF Learning

Assessment Of learning is extremely essential when looking at a student’s education.  The purpose of assessment of learning is to report on the students’ achievements within the classroom and record them (Harlen, 2007) . This information is vital to the students because it can aid and enhance their learning process helping them to reach their full educational potential. Students can use this information from the assessment of learning aspect to see what was wrong and analyze it, so that they can do a better job on their future assignments or standardized tests. I remember back in grade 11 for the first two months of English class our teacher would hand back all of our assignments and standardized tests already marked with feedback on them, so that we may correct our mistakes. After we fixed our mistakes she would recollect the assignments or quizzes and mark them again. This was an excellent tool for the rest of the students in the class and I because it allowed us to see what we were continually doing wrong on the assignments. We could also see what our strengths and weaknesses were to improve on in the future. It was also able to provide us with what we knew we needed to work on to go seek help from the teacher.

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Another key factor having to do with assessment of learning is that students are able to see how consistent the teachers are with their marking and evaluating.  By getting assignments and tests back from teachers with feedback on them or not students are able to get a feel for how the teacher marks. It is also important because it can be used a record for the parents of the students. If a parent ever has any question as to why their son or daughter is not doing well in school then you can back it up by using the summative assessments that have been recorded throughout the year. This is a very effective way to trace the progression of each student and see who is struggling and who is excelling within the   different subjects.

This can be also be very important to not just students and parents, but also the teacher themselves. Teachers are able to see where their class stands as a whole or even where individuals in their class stand in relation to their knowledge of the content they are teaching or are not teaching. If the majority of the students are not doing well in a certain area then myself as the teacher might not be doing a good job or here could have been confusion while teaching the lesson on that certain aspect. Assessment of learning does require that teachers are consistent within their teaching. The less consistent they are the more problems will arise due to discrepancies between the students assignments, tests, or projects.

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Assessment of learning needs to take into account multiple perspectives of the process where learning occurs within individuals (James, 2006). This can be different for each individual student and should be paid attention to closely.  As the curriculum continually changes to take on a more constructivist teaching approach to accommodate the needs of different learning styles, the purpose of assessment is shifting from measuring the achievement of the students to enhancing learning instead (Drake, Reid & Kolohon, 2014). The numeric values are starting to fade away and the focus on promoting the learning of the students is becoming the main factor.

References

Drake, S., Kolohon, W., & Reid, J. (2014). Interweaving curriculum and classroom                      assessment: Engaging the 21st century learner. Don Mills, Ontario: Oxford University Press.

Harlen, W. (2007). Assessment of learning. Sage.

James, M. (2006). Assessment, teaching and theories of learning. Assessment and learning, 47-60.