PSL 2

Informal assessment vs Formal assessment

• Informal-an informal assessment includes your own judgement of situation. If gives you an idea of what a student does or does not know based on their words or by their actions. A way to use an informal assessment would be by asking questions about a lesson and continuing the conversation in order to explain the missing pieces. It is important to be able to notice the missing pieces before you continue to move on. Formal-would be the opposite of this and actually planning out a way to see if your students grasp the material. You could use a bell ringer at the start of class asking a simple question about the topic you just learned or even the topic coming up to see what they do or do not know.

Paper-Pencil assessment vs. Performance assessment 

• Paper-Pencil assessment would be given in the form of a test or a quiz in order to test the knowledge that has been gained or not gained from the lessons. This can show if there is a concept that some students do not understand or that the majority of the students do not understand. It is good for the students and for the teacher to reflect on the material and how it was presented. Performance assessment would be having the students take the material that they have learned and present it in their own way. You can use an open form for this like an oral report, a powerpoint, posters, videos ect. This gives students a way to not only express themselves but to still be learning and testing their knowledge without the traditional test. I think with history performance assessment would be good because sometimes people think that history gets boring and its just memorization, but being able to present information you get to be creative about a subject.

Standardized Test vs. Teacher-developed assessment

• Standardized test-is basically a test that is developed by a higher educational power that tests students abilities and assessments equally for all students. A way to use this in the classroom would be just to see where your students are compared to others in your class but like for me as a History teacher there is not usually a standardized test that covers history unless you are taking the AP exam. Teacher-developed assessment would be better in a history classroom or any classroom really because this shows you how your student is performing with the everyday tasks that you are teaching rather then robot questions designed for the masses. You can see how hard a student works, how they learn, what they understand, and what they don't. You can observe that and not see what percentage they are in comparison to others.

Criterion-referenced assessment vs. Norm-referenced assessment

• Criterion-refereced assessment would be showing mastery of a certain subject area. Papers or assignments or even tests on the specific material shows the mastery of a subject by their performance score. This is good because you need to test your students of the subjects at hand. The norm-referenced assessment shows how your students compare to other students, whether it is in the class or it is in other schools. This does not show what they understand but just how well they stack up against people in the same age category. 

Traditional assessment vs Authentic assessment

• Traditional assessment is basically like tests and quizzes to measure knowledge and thats good for any classroom but also authentic  assessment is using their skills with real life experiences. Writing a resume to build writing skills but also to develop their business skills and prepares them for real life experiences.