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.