Nine Types of Assessments

Reference: 1. Venn, J. J. (2000). Assessing students with special needs (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill. 2. Authentic assessment. (2017, June 11). Retrieved June 27, 2017, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authentic_assessment 3. Dumit, N. Y. (2012). "Diagnostic/ Formative/ Summative Assessment. Retreived on June 27, 2017 from: http://aub.edu.lb/ctl/Documents/CLO%20summer%202012/Diagnostic%20formative%20summative%20asst.pdf 4. Hilliard, P. P. (2015, December 07). Performance-Based Assessment: Reviewing the Basics. Retrieved June 27, 2017, from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/performance-based-assessment-reviewing-basics-patricia-hilliard 5. High-stakes testing. (2017, June 24). Retrieved June 27, 2017, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-stakes_testing 6. Peer assessment. (2017, June 25). Retrieved June 27, 2017, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer_assessment
Poonam Mata - M6U1A1 - Nine Types of Assessment Mind Map
Diagnostic (3)
1. Definition: It is a form of pre-assessment that allows teachers find out students knowledge, skills, strengths and weaknesses before the lesson.
2. Purpose: Teachers use it to find out what students already know and what areas they have difficulties in to help guide lesson and curriculum planning.
3. Leaning - It is an assessment FOR learning, as it is used to determine what the students already know and what to teach next.
4. Advantage: It helps the teacher design differentiated centers for the students who are ahead and those that are behind.
5. Disadvantage: The teacher may make an incorrect inference
6. Example: -worksheet -surveys -short acitivities
Formative (3)
1. Definition: A range of formal and informal assessments to determine if the students are attaining the learning objectives set at the beginning of the lesson/ unit.
2. Purpose: It is used to determine if the students' learning is on track with the objectives of the lesson.
  1. Students on track with objectives?
    1. Yes - Move on to next lesson
    2. No - Re-teach
3. Learning - It is an assessment FOR learning, as it is used to determine if the students are on track with objectives and whether or not to modify teaching or re-teaching the lesson.
4. Advantage: - Teachers are able to adjust instruction as needed. - Students receive immediate feedback. - Teachers have to do less reteaching at the end because many of the problems with mastery are addressed before final tests.
5. Disadvantages: - It can waste valuable learning time, if not done correctly -Students may not take it seriously as it is usually not worth much.
6. Examples: -Exit Ticket - Do-Now -Think-Pair-Share - Thumbs up/ thumbs down - Group Discussions
Summative (3)
1. Definition: An assessment given to students at the end of an instructional unit to evaluate student learning by comparing it to some benchmark or standard.
2. Purpose: To evaluate student's learning. These are high stake , meaning they have high point value . It is also used to evaluate the teacher's instruction capability. If most students fail a summative assessment, it means that the teacher was not doing a good job with the formative assessment to gauge the student learning.
3. Learning: It is an assessment OF learning, as it occurs at the end of an instruction period and it goal is to determine if the students really learned all the standards that they were supposed to learn.
4. Advantage: -Provides motivation for the students to study hard -Helps create a good learning environment -Positive results give added confidence to the students -Consistent low results signal to the teacher about developing lesson plans geared towards their learning or referral for intervention
5. Disadvantage: - Do not reflect student learning, as the students, as the students are pressured to demonstrate the most amount of knowledge in short amount of time. -Some teachers really focus on 'teach to test' in order for their own evaluation not be affected.
6. Example: -End of the unit test -PARC -MAP -NWEA
Performance-based (4)
1. Performance-based assessments are tasks that students perform to show their understanding of the concepts learnt. It requires student to use high level thinking.
2. The purpose of the test is to measure student learning compared by some benchmarks or standards. Students can perform much more than any standardized can measure.
3. Learning: Performance-based learning is assessment both OF learning and FOR learning. It is OF learning; because as the students are doing the project for days and weeks, the teacher is able to monitor their learning and gauge his/ her lessons. It is also FOR learning as the final product is graded according to the expectation or ruberic or the project.
4. Advantages: -Student-centered learning -Motivates learning as the learning has a final goal or a problem that needs to be solved. -Students are very engaged and are actively learning -Teacher takes the role of a mentor and thus can focus on the students that really need one-on-one attention. -Promotes student communication and collaboraion skills and creativity.
5. Disadvantage: -Must be designed very carefully. - Time consuming for teacher and students - Grading is subjective -
6. Elementary Level Examples: -Students come up with solutions to clean up the local stream. - Building fast moving toy-vehicles. - Making an igloo with gallon-sized milk containers to promote polar ice melting awareness in students.
High Stake (5)
1. High stake assessments are tests that have very important consequences for students' future. Getting a high score on a SAT test can earn a high scholarship to a high schooler or entrance into a prestigious college. Failing or getting low score on a professional test, such as Praxis, can prevent students enrolled in teacher preparation program to get teacher certification.
2. The purpose of the high stake assessments are to allow selective students to enter into academically highly demanding institutions.
3. Learning: High stake assessments are assessments OF learning, as these tests are taken at the end of high school or end of colleges.
4. Advantages: - It improves test taking skills - Results are available to everyone - Generally, the tests focus on Math and Language skills
5. Disadvantages: - Can cause anxiety for the students who have trouble with test taking skills. - Does engage students in creativity, communication, collaboration. - Some students cannot learn with style of instruction - Failing a final exam or a board exam may cause for them to repeat a grade or class or take extra classes.
6. Elementary level Example: -NWEA test taken by 2-8 students in the Fall, Winter & Spring of each school year - MAP tests - M-STEP (Michigan state) - Grades 3-8
Portfolio(1)
1. A portfolio assessment is a systematic collection of student work that shows student activities, accomplishment and achievements in one or more subject.
2. The purpose of of the portfolio assessment is to help students collect material that demonstrates their talents, writing capability and their school achievements.
3. Learning: Portfolio is an assessment of both FOR learning and OF learning. It is FOR learning, since the task involves collection of work over time, the teacher can check student learning as student completes each step. In addition, it is an assessment OF learning as student work is collected to show his/her learning met the standard objectives.
4. Advantages: - Measures student performance based on sample of work - Promotes self-evaluation, reflections and critical thinking for student. - Gives students opportunity to be extensively involved in their own learning process. - Provides opportunities for teachers and students to discuss learning goals and progress towards the goals.
5. Disadvantages: -Extra time is required to plan for assessment system and to conduct the assessment -It maybe bulky and difficult to manage gathering all the necessary data and work samples. - Grading portfolios requires subjective evaluation procedures. - Conferencing individually with students may interfere with instructional activities.
6. Elementary Level Example: -Reading - a list of books a student intends to read and check of what they were able to read and their summary of literary items. - Arts and craft work along with writing and math sample to show it to parents on parent-teacher conferences.
Authentic (2)
1. Authentic assessment measures student "intellectual accomplishments that are worthwhile, significant, and meaningful,"instead of giving students standardized multiple choice test. -Can be devised by the teacher or student collaborations
2. The purpose of authentic assessment is to have students show their competency in a more "authentic" setting.
3. Learning: Authentic is an assessment of both FOR learning and OF learning. It is FOR learning since the teacher can check for students' learning as the students prepare for the final assessment. In addition, it is an assessment OF learning as student as the finalized version is graded as a standardized test.
4. Advantages: - Learning happens gradually in a process - Teaching and learning is improved with practice
5. Disadvantages: - Grading of the test is subjective, as opposed to the objective grading done by computer. - The assessment maybe developed informally.
6. Elementary Level Example: 1. Students write a report and do oral presentations on a topic: - Grade students with a rubric or rating scale - Can be scored on content or language component 2. Role play/ simulation -Students read a book and do perform a play based on the book.
Peer Assessment (6)
1. Peer assessment is a process by which students grade other students' assignments or tests based on rubric provided by the teacher.
2. The purpose of peer assessment is to help improve students' understanding of course materials and their metacognitive skills. Additionally, peer assessment saves teacher time in grading student work.
3. Learning: Peer assessment is used FOR learning, as the students grade their peers work; they also learning what mistakes they can avoid themselves or how to improve their own learning skills.
4. Advantages: - It saves teachers grading time. - Helps student learn from others mistakes or great work.
5. Disadvantage: - The teacher does need to double check the students' work to be certain about the grade.
6. Examples: - Other students grading a worksheet or a quiz or Math worksheet using an answer sheet or rubric provided by the teacher.
Self - Assessment (6)
1. Self-Assessment is when students evaluate themselves using set criteria provided by the teacher.
2. The purpose of self-assessment is to allow students to reflect on their own progress towards their goal.
3. Learning: Self-assessment is an evaluation FOR learning, as the students check how much they have learned and whether or not they are meeting their goals.
4. Advantages: - Encourages students to involved for their own learning and to take responsibility on their progress - Allows students to develop their judgement. - Lets students to reflect on their role and their development compares to their peers.
5. Disadvantages: - Teacher needs to spend extra effort to guide students in the process of self-evaluation - Students underestimate or over-estimate themselves in the process of self-evaluation. - Teacher needs to have another evaluation in place as well.
6. Examples: - Students get to write about self-reflection on a lesson about how they feel about sacrificing a luxury for the sake of making a sound environmental decision.