by Karisa Tashjian
Listening to teachers talk about what they love about teaching rarely
is the word “assessment” heard. It is often a topic that is seen
as an after-thought, chore, or simply an administrative requirement. However,
assessment does not have to be a time and labor intensive endeavor.
The purpose of assessment
is to gain information about how well a student is learning. In turn, it informs
the teacher about how to tailor his/her teaching to meet the students’ needs.
Beyond the CASAS, no other assessments are required by RIFLI. Yet, it
is important to have assessment be ongoing in the language, children’s, and computer classrooms.
The CASAS test is a formal
assessment tool. Teachers use test results to inform classroom practice,
but the results also are used for funding accountability. Like all standardized tests, the test is time and resource intensive. Teaching actually stops when the CASAS is administered
With informal classroom assessment,
it is difficult to separate teaching from the assessment. Informal assessment
demonstrates what students can do. One of the best ways that a teacher can create
a useful informal assessment tool is to plan backwards. In other words, teachers
should look at the expected learner outcome from a lesson and develop an assessment that will measure whether that outcome
has been met. It is important to think about what evidence is needed to demonstrate
that a learner has met an objective. Planning for assessment should be done at
the beginning along with planning for learning activities, materials, etc. Once
a goal has been identified the next step is to determine how it can be measured.
The following assessment
strategies are examples of classroom-based assessment. Most of the examples are embedded assessment (that is, the assessment
is part of instruction and informs the teacher how to adjust instruction during the teaching process). Teachers should choose tools based on their teaching styles, student needs, and lesson objectives. Examples of many of the assessment tools listed below are available at the Alaska
Department of Education & Early Development’s website: http://www.educ.state.ak.us/tls/frameworks/content.htm
