Learning how to assess students on their learning and understanding appears daunting, but knowing the basic terminology provided me with a better awareness of how to give assessments. An assessment is an evaluation for both the students and the teacher to reflect on the classroom’s position in the vertical alignment timescale. For formative assessments, teachers can provide timely feedback and can reflect on the student’s comprehension of their instruction. Teachers need to include a variety of formative assessments throughout the year, as students learn in different ways and can more accurately reflect their grasp on a concept through diverse forms of assessment. It is also a form of pedagogy, implementing these varying methods, and allows the teacher to adjust their instruction, and students can self-assess, moving forward. Some examples are exit slips, discussion boards, a reader/writer’s notebook, Kahoot, whiteboards, a simple show of hands, KWL charts, and teacher’s notes. Summative assessments, however, are the “higher stakes” assessment at the end of a unit or the end of the year. Summative often comes with a benchmark or standardized concepts for the assessment. These are particularly important when teachers use backward planning to get students to interpret the big ideas and essential questions. These ultimately relate directly to the Priority Standards assigned to the unit of study. Students gain knowledge of how they are doing when a rubric is properly set up without the use of vague language for them to succeed. 

This artifact broadens my knowledge of the forms and implementation of assessments in the classroom. While reflecting on my time as a student, I had no idea how much thought and effort went into planning assessments within a curriculum. In the future, I would like to partake in backward planning, as it gives a clear end point where the students have met the priority standards by the time of the summative assessment. With formative assessments, I can see how practical they are for teachers and students to self-assess on learning and instruction. What one teaches is not always what the students learn, so having a feedback form like continuous formative assessments reflects where each student and the collective classroom lies. I would also like to include many different assessment forms, as Howard Garndner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences displays how children learn and consume knowledge.