Running head: ASSESSMENT 1

Assessment

Kayla Turley

EDU 1010

03/20/2017

Salt Lake Community College

ASSESSMENT 2

Assessment

Students go to school to learn new information that may help them in their lives. We as

educators spend our time planning, presenting, and assessing the lessons that teach our students

these new materials and new information that helps them meet the educational goals set for them

by state governments, the federal government, and our students parents. Have our students

learned the material we set out to teach them? Are they able to meet the standard that the lesson

is tied back to? As teachers, we have one tool we use that tell us whether or not we are

accomplishing our goals with the lessons we are teaching. We call this tool an assessment.

There are many types of assessments that teachers utilize in the classroom. The most

common one, that is linked to the word assessment, is a test or quiz. These are the types of

assessments that are usually given out to the entire class with the instructions to work

individually in a silent setting, these types of assessments come with a lot of negative stigma.

These types of assessments can be anxiety inducing for many students and do not always find an

accurate measurement of the information that the students know (Kauchak, & Eggen, 2017).

Another type of assessment that all teachers will give out during their teaching career is a

standardized test or a high-stakes test. A standardized test is an assessment that students take at

the end of every school year here in Utah (though this varies in other states) (Kauchak Et al,

2017). These tests are the same all over the state, every student in the same grade takes the same

test. This gives both federal and state governments information about how specific schools,

districts, and teachers are doing in their goal to teach their students specific standards.

In my future classroom, I will use less direct forms of assessment tools. I will use

interactive games, fun worksheets with bigger end goals, group projects and many other
ASSESSMENT 3

activities to assess the things that my students are absorbing during my lessons. I plan to use

group assessments a majority of the time in hopes that it can promote more learning of the

material for students who still have not caught on to the information I am teaching. I plan to put

very little pressure on testing. I plan to spend time in my class teaching my students the best way

to take a test.

According to the lecture on assessments, the match between learning objectives, learning

activities, and assessments must be clearly outlined. If you do not have these alignments it is

difficult to know what is being learned; students may be learning information that is not

important, or learning the desired information. You will not know what your students are

learning unless you provide them with an assessment.

In conclusion, there are many types of assessments in our school system today, not all of

them are tests. As long as the activity, worksheet, test, etc. gives you information about what

your students have learned thus far, it is an assessment. These are important to have in your

classroom because without them you cannot know whether your students have met the objective

you are teaching. They may be learning things that are irrelevant. Assessments are important in

education and finding an effective way to give assessments is a big piece in any classroom.
ASSESSMENT 4

References

Kauchak, D., & Eggen, P. (2017). Introduction to Teaching Becoming a Professional (6th ed.).

Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.