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Essay on Strategies to Use when Testing & Assessing Students Grades 6-12
Lecturing and other classroom activities are often seen as the enjoyable aspects of teaching, while evaluating student work and assigning grades are less appealing. However, constructing tests is a serious concern of instructors and an important part of most courses. Tests given during the course of instruction can help instructors and students keep track of the kind and amount of learning that is taking place. Tests given at the completion of instruction can provide important information about how much has been learned by the end of a unit, by mid-semester, or by the end of the term. Here, I will present different strategies for testing and assessing students of grades 6-12.
Portfolios
Portfolios are of all the work that students collect as a demonstration of how their work has progressed and developed over time. The student, over the length of the course, will have been involved with and probably completed several projects. In most cases, it is wise for teachers to set standards for portfolio contents in terms of number, quality, and size of projects to be included (Astin, 2001). Fine and performing arts classes are likely to include portfolios among the assessment tools used. Other instances where tangible products result from student efforts are also good places to use portfolios. For instance, a business class may collect a portfolio that includes a business plan, some presentations, and an implementation timeline as evidence of completion of course objectives.
Advantages: Assessment of portfolios encourages extended thinking and reasoning. Where privacy is an issue, the sharing of project contents may be strictly controlled. The student is completely responsible for decisions about what to include and is therefore led to considerations of quality in what will be submitted. Except for setting standards, teachers don’t have much to do with the construction of the portfolio and are free to guide learners toward completion of their portfolio projects...................
