"On assessment: measure what you value instead of only valuing what you can measure." - Andy Hargreaves
A S S E S S M E N T
THOUGHTFULLY USING FORMAL AND INFORMAL EVALUATION STRATEGIES
The use of formal and informal evaluation strategies ensures the best possible instructional delivery and learning opportunities for all students. For example, if a student learns best by utilizing visual components to understand a concept, providing these within a unit to grasp key concepts is necessary and vital. In the classroom, I have experimented with a variety of methods for measuring student progress and mastery, from gamified formal assessments to more straightforward summative assessments and have seen the benefits of a wide range of tools.
INFORMAL EVALUATION STRATEGIES
Informal evaluation strategies are more often utilized for formative assessments, and have included a daily check of essay progress to playing games that target specific state standards within a specific unit. Regardless of assessment formatting, each has a goal of measuring student progress and identifying areas of growth before a summative assessment, so specific students can receive intervention and differentiation measures that will help them succeed when a formal evaluation is finally presented.
One way I assess student progress is through the assignment of EdPuzzles within the course of a day of class. These activities are most commonly presented in video format, with questions posed about the content immediately as the content is presented. EdPuzzles have been conducted as a class and via independent work to gauge student progress and understanding of key concepts.
Other gameified informal evaluation strategies include the incorporation of activities within Blooket review games and Boddle. Blooket is a gameified platform that offers a variety of game setups, from building a successful cafe to attacking castle enemies. The success is all based around students' abilities to answer questions correctly; if they answer questions incorrectly, they are sent back to the beginning to review again. Their success directly correlates to their ability to level up within the game platforms and to unlock more levels. Blooket is most commonly used for vocabulary review, whereas Boddle's interface allows for direct practice with specific state standards. Boddle is also game-oriented, with students aiming to earn coins to grow their Boddle pets and using them for pet vs. pet matches and other available games. Similarly to Blooket, they cannot continue on to more perks and higher levels if they do not demonstrate an understanding of the key concepts highlighted in questions that interrupt their gameplay until they select the correct answers.
Each platform also provides a thorough reporting of student assessment data, quickly outlining areas of weakness for further differentiation and remediation where needed or possible. Students remain engaged in these informal assessments, as they are obviously motivating and are assessment methods that students will generally tolerate for longer periods of time.
Student progress with assigned IXL skills that directly correlate to state standards are another informal assessment method I have utilized, as they are rigorous and thorough with accurate and challenging content. Students are assigned a Smart
Score Goal that they must meet for assignment credit, and they must continue to answer questions regarding a specific skill until their Smart Score is met. This specific assessment method not only teaches perserverance, it causes students to slow down and take the time to comprehend what questions are being asked. Furthermore, IXL provides additional assistance with video tutorials and prior standards to review for students who are struggling.
Aside from informal assessments on digital platforms, my school and mentor teacher heavily utilize Scholastic's SCOPE Literary Magazine resources, as they align well with state standards and provide breadth and depth to each magazine issue published. In addition to engaging texts for students to read, SCOPE also assists students with building stamina around core skills required for sixth grade. For example, an informal assessment regarding the skills around narrative writing was assigned to students this semester. This explicit graphic organizer from SCOPE assisted students in understanding what a personal narrative requires, various topics to cover within their essays (such as people, places, and things that make them who they are), and how to effectively organize their thoughts in a streamlined manner.
Students were required to fill out the majority of this graphic organizer, which came in a six-page packet, and gauge whether the students had a grasp on how to write in detail (i.e., demonstrated "showing" and "focus") about themselves and the people and places in their lives that have impacted them as individuals.
Another SCOPE resource used as an informal assessment was the exploration of Making Inferences, a skill sheet provided with the accompanying text being read as a class. In The Monkey's Paw, students were measured on their ability to understand what the author wasn't saying in crucial plot points throughout the play. This was explicitly taught as a class, and students were given the final two questions to complete independently to assess understanding.
FORMAL EVALUATION STRATEGIES
Additional SCOPE assessments are used as formal evaluations after spending time in texts as a class to measure student understanding of specific standards being covered throughout the week's instruction.
For example, students read a personal narrative prior to writing their own, entitled Island Rodeo Queen. This narrative explored a character's conflicting feelings between where she lived in Arizona and her native Puerto Rico. This text was read aloud in class, students reread the text themselves, then were assessed with an open-text assessment to measure understanding.
Scholastic SCOPE's assessments are correlated with state standards, so understanding what standards still need to be covered is as simple as matching questions to the standards they focus on. In this assessment, questions 1, 3, and 5 all focused on MSCCR Standard RL.6.3, so reviewing student responses to these questions was a measure of students' understanding of plot structure and its evolution across a text.
Finally, formal/summative assessments are also provided for students in direct relation to the completed classwork and the current class text that is being focused on for the current week(s). Summative assessments, such as the Final Freak the Mighty test covered the entire scope of the story for comprehension and reviewed the students' understanding of comprehension questions reviewed within class. Students were assigned chapter question packets, and then the chapter questions were directly carried over to the final assessment. Skills reviewed in the summative assessment included understanding plot structure, making inferences, characterization, theme, and more which have consistently been reviewed and reiterated throughout the course of reading the novel.
Assessments like these are conducted within the school's main LMS and via LockDown Browser to replicate state testing circumstances.
