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Clarke, Christy
EDUG 507
27 September 2016
Any student can tell you tests come with the territory of school but they create
unnecessary stress and sometimes take away from learning. However, without some form of
assessments, it is impossible to know where your students are at in relation to acquiring
knowledge and understanding content. Although they sound intimidating, assessments can be
any tool that can evaluate whether a student is progressing towards the learning goals. In my
classroom, I can support student learning through assessments by offering a choice between a
variety of performance and product assessments and utilizing self-assessment through rubrics.
First, I can support students through assessments by providing students with several
options of assessment and allowing them the choice of how they want to demonstrate their
knowledge. These can be performance-based assessments which are an alternative to teachermade tests, teachers can measure student learning by assessing products that students prepare
reflecting their learning or by assessing actual student performances designed to demonstrate
their learning or product assessments where students prepare a product reflecting their
learning (Burden and Byrd 2016, p. 292-293). Performance assessments can consist of oral
presentations, science lab demonstrations, athletic demonstrations, musical, dance, or dramatic
presentations, debates, or interviews; whereas product assessments can be portfolios, work
samples, projects, research papers, science lab reports, journals, models, or media products such
as computer presentations (Burden and Byrd 2016). By providing my students with 3-5 of these
to choose from, I can ensure that each student will be engaged as they display mastery of the
content. It will allow them to use their strengths in intelligences to show their knowledge which
will lower their anxiety and cultivate a more comfortable learning environment that will
ultimately help them to do their best work. Howard Gardner (1999) asserts that these

intelligences are potentials . . . that will or will not be activated, depending upon the values of a
particular culture, the opportunities available in that culture, and the personal decisions made by
individuals and/or their families, schoolteachers, and others (p.34). Gardner goes on to explain
the different areas in which we can exhibit these intelligences- mathematical, linguistic, spatial,
kinesthetic, musical, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalist. Using a variety of assessments
can activate these potentials and enable them to grow and expand. If a student exhibits a strong
musical intelligence and weak mathematical intelligence, I can allow the student to sing her
multiplication facts to me rather than rapidly writing them. TPE 5.1 states beginning teachers
apply knowledge of the purposes, characteristics, and appropriate uses of different types of
assessments (e.g., diagnostic, informal, formal, progress-monitoring, formative, summative, and
performance) to design and administer classroom assessments, including the use of scoring
rubrics (Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CTC), 2016). Through appropriate uses of
different types of assessments teachers can ensure that all students are being evaluated in a way
that promotes achievement of the objectives and supports individual students along the way. As
mentioned in the TPE, scoring rubrics play an important role for student success in the
assessment process.
Before assessing a student, it is important to set them up to be successful. This can be
done by providing the students with a rubric about how they are going to be graded and what you
expect from them so they can focus their knowledge and abilities towards what is most
important. I will work with students to create the rubric that accurately reflects the desired goals
and given objectives they need to achieve. By giving students rubrics beforehand, you are
allowing them to be accountable for their own learning, enabling them to be part of the creation
process takes the accountability one step further. Andrea Guillaume (2008), in K-12 Classroom

Teaching A Primer for New Professionals points out that when students self-assess they can
analyze their own progress, motivate their own learning and action, and renew themselves as
people (p. 190). If a student in my class is submitting sloppy and incomplete work, by engaging
him in the assessment process he has to evaluate his performance and whether his work is
meeting the objectives. This will help motivate him to perform better and provide him with a
better understanding of the significance of proficient work. Including students in creating the
system they will be graded on helps them to understand their learning goals at a deeper level and
encourages them to become active participants in their learning.
Assessments can be extremely stressful and even scary. The goals of them are not, but
because of traditional methods, students have developed anxiety when it comes to testing. By
providing students with choices when it comes to demonstrating their progress towards
objectives and giving students rubrics beforehand, teachers can work towards eliminating those
negative perceptions and experiences with assessments. Teaching and assessing should not be
about tricks and deception, whether you can catch students not doing the work they are supposed
to be, but about helping students grow in what they know, do not know, and how it relates to the
set standards.

References
Burden, P. R., & Byrd, D. M. (2016). Methods for effective teaching: Meeting the needs
of all students. Pearson Education.

Commission on Teacher Credentialing. (2016). Preliminary multiple subject and single

subject credential program standards. Retrieved from http://www.ctc.ca.gov/educatorprep/standards/PrelimMSstandard.pdf
Gardner, H. (1999). Intelligence reframed: Multiple intelligences for the 21st century.
New York, NY: Basic Books.
Guillaume, A. M., & Guillaume, A. M. (2008). K-12 classroom teaching: A primer for
new professionals. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Merrill/Prentice Hall.