Assessment Collection

Proof Points…

Assessment exerts a powerful and ever-increasing influence on our standards-based educational system. There is a growing body of information to demonstrate that students enjoy greater success in classrooms where assessment data is regularly employed to inform instructional decision-making. A well-designed and comprehensive assessment plan is an integral and key component of effective instruction. Because of this, the assessment resources in STEMresources.com while recognizing the impact of state-accountability systems, emphasize practices that teachers can employ in the own classroom settings.

The Assessment Collection relies on the principle that the regular, frequent, and strategic use of assessment opportunities can help teachers better accomplish the broad educational goal of student learning. The collection offers ideas for assessing students before, during, and upon completion of every learning experience.

The Way it Works…

The Assessment Collection is divided into sections that offer multiple strategies for pre-assessing student understanding and for monitoring (formative assessment) and evaluating (summative assessment) student performance. Each section includes a concept map that clearly outlines the potential applications for the materials found in each assessment category.

For the purposes of convenience, different assessment approaches have been grouped according to their most-likely classroom application. Teachers who have used these assessment approaches indicate that there is no hard and fast line among the different sets of assessment tools. The methods can and should be used interchangeably to accomplish a variety of assessment goals.

References

Brown, A.L. (1994). The advancement of learning. Educational Researcher, 23, 4-12.
Thier, M. (2002). The new science literacy. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.