Aligning Assessment to Skills & Learning Content
Tips for evaluating learning through formal assessments
Assessment on my mind
At this point in the school term all teachers should have some measure of how to carry out formal assessment on their minds. This may be related to the forthcoming exams or formal continuous assessment tests. The problem we have is that many teachers do not actually measure all they taught through their assessments. Assessments are often are made in a hurry and some teachers actually construct assessments that aim for students to pass their exams or tests. They are not really interested in seeing how well they understood content or are able to use the skills they learned. They just want the good pass rates to cover their inadequacies. I hope you do not do the same.
It becomes more problematic when schools are using grading and reporting styles that their teachers know very little about; creating reports that describe student abilities and achievements. Where teachers are generally creating descriptions from reconstructed comments, this can be very misleading as I have personally seen.
Why are we assessing?
We are supposed to assess what we taught to do if students not only understood it but can independently demonstrate their learning including the skills. knowledge and attitudes learned. We are usually also checking their levels to find out averages and trends within the learning groups, for example is there significant improvement or are performances below expectations? We can also assess to see if learners are meeting minimum standards, not just those set for our school but in some cases, standards set by government at local or national levels. We are also assessing our students to get feedback which will help them learn better, or show us gaps we can close. Learners and parents also want feedback to see how students are doing.
Issues
The problem with creating student assessment is when we are not doing it correctly or/and when we disregard evaluating learners’ ability to demonstrate achievement of the learning objectives from the curriculum or scheme of work. Research shows that many student assessments evaluate less than half of the learning objectives designed for the subject. If the information that we are getting through assessment is inadequate, how are we to detect gaps or help our learners?
Another issue is the teaching method used. How effective is it, and how aligned is it to the the ability of learners to achieve the required learning objectives? If the teaching method is inappropriate, then learning objectives are not achieved, and by extension, assessments goals are overlooked in preference for maintaining the status quo - passing in such a way to fool senior management and parents. Can we then with a clear conscience say that we are carrying out real evaluations that test all concepts and skills taught?
What can we do?
We can review assessment from the perspective of informal classroom encounters, by identifying the questions students ask, the answers they give to our own questions, tasks and activities performed by students, and the depth of learning achieved which is demonstrated by the quality of work done by our students.
We do need to examine a few samples of student work to see how well they are doing and use this feedback to check the quality of learning experience we are creating for them. This way, we can still adjust our teaching methods to increase the quality of learning and student performance.
We can also start by taking last term’s assessments or better still the formal assessments we are soon going to administer, and compare them with the learning objectives from each topic or lesson taught. For example, we can check the following:
Does this formal assessment evidence all topics taught so far?
Do they reflect the learning objectives for those topics?
Do they test the depth of knowledge the student should have?
Are 25% of questions from your actual questions or examples, or answers to student questions in class?
Are questions types or tasks given representative of the skills being evaluated?
Have all assessment questions/tasks been taught in class?
Do students have a record of every topic/content included in the assessment in their text books, online activities or classwork?
If your answer to these questions are yes then we can say your assessments are robust and fair.
Tips for gathering assessment questions or tasks
Review all objectives drawn from the curriculum or scheme of work and make sure they are integrated into the lesson plan.
Create a list of questions formed from learning objectives and add to your lesson plan. For example, if there are three objectives, construct 6 questions/tasks, some of which you will ask or use in the actual lesson.
Write down the questions students ask you in class, this will give you an idea of student needs and levels and you can also test them in formal assessment tests or exams.
Write down any related questions that comes to your mind when teaching the lesson.
Record all questions/tasks used in the lesson
Create a question bank for every subject you teach by adding your weekly questions, student questions and any other questions that come to mind while teaching.
Compare these with questions from a previous year.
Add any other questions from the previous year.
Carrying out informal assessments in class
Informal assessments in class will help you to identify and close learning gaps. These can be quizzes, teachers or learners questions, short activities from books, online media, games, etc.
Keep a record of all quizzes, questions, tasks etc., used in class, as they will come in handy during formal assessment.
Support weaker learners in the class as they work or answer
Encourage learners to do some extra practice to close learning gaps.
Focus on methods used by learners to answer or complete tasks, so that you can identify difficulties or teach better techniques.
Ask stronger learners to teach weaker learners
Ask weaker learners to teach someone else, if they succeed to an extent (we learn best by teaching)
Aligning teaching methods
Compare methods used to teach a topic with student response or performance in informal assessments.
Take note of methods which students enjoy the most or methods that show a quality response and use them more often.
Get feedback from learners about the different teaching methods you use, after the lesson.
Review learners’ classwork to see if their performance or quality of response to assessment is better with certain teaching methods or the reverse.
Make any necessary adjustments.
Create formal assessments that align with learning objectives
If you have been keeping a bank of questions and tasks given in each lesson, setting up a formal assessment should not be difficult.
Identify the number of questions needed in the formal assessment
Identify 75% unused questions from your question bank or modify those already used in class
Identify 25% of questions or tasks used in class
Develop your assessment paper from the above (75% and 25%)
Use only questions and tasks from topics that have been taught in class
Create a marking scheme for the assessment
Indicate in each section of the assessment, what marks students will get from each section of the assessment - this motivates students to try or complete the assessment.
Follow other expectations given by government or your school in the assessment.
It’s not too late to start well
I wish you all the best in your forthcoming assessments. It’s not too late to start a question bank based on learning objectives in your teaching subjects. If you don’t have one, you can create a reasonable assessment by dividing the paper into sections and by matching them with the different topics in the scheme of work. Then use the learning objectives from each topic to carefully frame assessment questions or tasks. You can also add to these questions adapted from a text book or classwork - but remember to create a fair balance of questions that cover everything that has been learned.