Ashley Campbell

November 20, 2009

STANDARD 8 – Assessment
The competent teacher understands various formal and informal assessment strategies and uses
them to support the continuous development of all students.
My understanding of this standard is that a good teacher knows the value of assessment.

Students can be assessed different ways to see if they understand the activities they are going

over. The teacher also uses several forms of assessment to see if the objective for the lesson is

met. Students should be assessed throughout each lesson plan and evaluated several times a year.

Assessments are beneficial for both the teacher and the students. With the assessment laid out the

teacher will be able to establish what the objectives of the lesson plan are and how they will

define how each student understands and approaches the lesson itself. An informal assessment

can include walking around the classroom while students are working on the activity to make

sure they are on the right track. Another form of informal assessment can be when the teacher

and the students are having a discussion about the lesson that they may have just gone over. This

allows the teacher to see what the students understood in the lesson and what she or he may need

to work on a bit more. A formal assessment can include a rubric that has numbers included to

assess the students and everything is broken down including student understanding, student

participation and additional concepts that should be established by the students through the

lesson. In addition to a rubric, a formal assessment can be the traditional grading rubric where

everything is on a 10 point scale to 100%.

For this standard I chose to use several different assessments placed for one lesson plan

as an artifact. The lesson plan asks students to know the difference between synonyms, antonyms

and homophones. I have chosen to assess the students both informally and formally, through a

rubric, a grading scale, and a mini discussion with the students. This artifact best meets the needs
of the standard because it includes several ways that the students, doing this lesson plan, can be

assessed. Through the students development they will be able to continue this lesson while

gaining understanding to complete each activity included. For example the worksheets will be an

additional practiced that can assessed differently through a standard grading scale to make sure

the students are understanding the idea of homophones, synonyms and antonyms.

This standard can be applied to a diverse classroom because all students can be assessed

differently. An assessment takes into account students’ abilities and what they are able to

accomplish. Teachers are required to develop a lesson plan with objectives that can be assessed

fairly and logically. Having multiply expectations and assessments for students with different

abilities is essential. Assessments are typically used to establish grades for students. Teachers use

this to see how students are developing in their skills, what they need to work on and the things

that they have mastered at their grade level already. Diversity is key to a good learning

experience and a good teacher will be expected to know all of their students’ strong and weak

points. Knowing the students’ abilities will help them to develop the best appropriate

assessments.