Standard Seven: Assessment
The competent teacher understands and uses appropriate formative and summative assessments for determining student needs, monitoring student progress, measuring student growth, and evaluating student outcomes. The teacher makes decisions driven by data about curricular and instructional effectiveness and adjusts practices to meet the needs of each student.
Artifacts & Reflection
Both artifacts pertain to Standard Seven: Assessment. These artifacts are appropriate because they both incorporate formative and summative assessments for determining student understanding. Both artifacts can collect data which will drive reteaching or moving forward based on results.
The first artifact is a Writing a Short Quiz. This applies to Knowledge Indicator C: understands measurement theory and assessment-related issues, such as validity, reliability, bias, and appropriate and accurate scoring AND Performance Indicator R: uses assessment strategies and devices that are nondiscriminatory, and take into consideration the impact of disabilities, methods of communication, cultural background, and primary language on measuring knowledge and performance of students.
This artifact is appropriate because it consists of several formative assessments to gauge student understanding about the Vietnam War and activism. There are three multiple choice questions and two short answers that demonstrates two ways to assess learning. I have also established performance criteria through a rubric for the short answers and a point scale to assess mastery of both skill and understanding of content in the multiple choice questions. This is also an appropriate artifact because I reflect and rationalize my quiz questions through administrative techniques, measurement theory accommodations for students with disabilities, ways to critique performance, and how I will give feedback to guide students as well as how to assess my own teaching techniques and assessment writing.
This artifact demonstrates growth because I have engaged in a deep self-assessment of why and how I will use this data to drive instruction. Prior to this exercise, I was unaware of how much thought and purpose must be put into even small assessments to make sure that the assessment is fair, valid, and reliable. This artifact exercise also made me aware of how my own natural biases may come through when question writing, and that I need to check and re-write questions that are not accessible for all students.
The second artifact is an Assessment of the Black Freedom Movement Unit. This applies to Performance Indicator K: appropriately uses a variety of formal and informal assessments to evaluate the understanding, progress, and performance of an individual student and the class as a whole AND Performance Indicator R: uses assessment strategies and devices that are nondiscriminatory, and take into consideration the impact of disabilities, methods of communication, cultural background, and primary language on measuring knowledge and performance of students.
This artifact is appropriate because because it monitors the students’ formative and summative progress throughout the Black Freedom Movement Unit (Indicator K). The first assessment, an essay will take place half way through the unit. The teacher will identify the students’ understanding of the content and skills taught in the first half of the unit. If the students do not understand, the scores, articulated by a rubric, will reflect that struggle, and then the teacher can adjust the rest of the lessons in the unit before the final assessment to insure understanding of the material. Also, the instructions are clear, unambiguous and appropriate for the high school history class. A rubric for each assessment will be handed out with the instructional sheet so the students know exactly what the teacher expects for each point value. For those students that have an IEP or are ELL, the sentences are free of jargon and heavy vocabulary. Both assessments have take-home or class- time built in, so additional time for questions will be available for slower or struggling students (Indicator R). Lastly, the variation of assessment types will meet the needs of both strong writers and creative students. The ability to express their opinions and use support from class materials assesses higher level thinking while making the content relevant to the students. Both assessments will measure the growth of the student across the unit.
This artifacts demonstrates my growth as a teacher because it is a reflective artifact. The creation of this assessments also made me think about my purpose for writing assessments and who may need additional assistance or modification. The rubric and performance criteria scale will aide my data driven classroom in order to prove student growth over the course of the unit. With this data, I will continue to adjust my lesson differentiation and assessments to meet the needs of each student, and to insure growth from beginning of the unit until the end.