Teachers seek basic answers about seemingly simple questions: To what extent have students mastered the lesson, unit, or course objectives? Yet, formulating a plan to answer those questions involves a series of complex decisions.
In this section we introduce you to the purposes, types, terms, and principles of assessment. In the following section, you will learn about some basic assessment strategies.
In education, we assess for a variety of purposes. Here are some of the more important purposes of assessment:
Teachers choose from a variety of types of assessment.
Most teachers construct their own assessments–a challenging task.
Finally, every teacher operates from some set of principles that guide their assessment decisions. Years ago, I committed to paper the principles that guide my assessment decisions.
Dr. Vontz’s Principles of Assessment
Teachers, like other professionals, use a particular language to describe various aspects of their work. Some of the most common terms associated with assessment are defined below.
Let’s time travel again: What types of assessments do you recall in elementary, middle, and high school? College? What kinds did you like? What kinds did you find frustrating? What were some of the issues with assessments? Did you always try your best on every assessment? Some more than others? Why?
Back to the present…in your field experiences, notice the types of assessments your cooperating teachers use? To what levels of success?
Let’s examine some of the types of assessment that are available for you to use in your classroom:
Sometimes an activity or lesson does not merit assessment. Perhaps this is because it is connected to another activity that will be assessed, or perhaps it involves something that simply cannot be assessed.
At the very least, teachers are always watching and attempting to gauge the extent to which students understand, are engaged, and so on. While these observations will not be reflected in the grade book, they will help shape the instruction and assessments to follow.
Some assignments are not worthy of a critical assessment for quality, but some kind of value must be attached in order to get students to complete the work. Many teachers, therefore, assign credit/no credit status, and award a minimal number of points (e.g., five or ten) for the adequate completion of the assignment. It is usually necessary to provide some sort of standard for students to understand what is required to achieve “credit” (e.g., “show me you took the assignment seriously”).
The practice of having students assess their own work. Often this is done before the work is submitted for more formal assessment by the teacher.
Holistic scoring has received quite a bit of bad press of late, but it has long been the preferred method of scoring student writing. The instructor simply reads the work to be assessed, makes marginal comments as appropriate, writes a paragraph or so in support of the final grade, and then assigns a grade. Usually, this is a letter grade, as it is easier to rationalize how a paper can be a “B” as opposed to trying to explain what makes a paper an 86. This method is probably most appropriately used to score essay or short-answer portions of examinations.
Traditional tests or quizzes using questions with answers that are right and answers that are wrong.
Best applied to extended written work, speeches, projects, portfolios, and the like, this method involves creating a rubric based on the important qualities of the assignment. Each trait listed should include descriptors of various levels of performance so that products of different quality can be distinguished from one another. The six-trait, analytic scale is one example of this type of assessment.
Again best applied to extended works, this methods assesses student work on the basis of a single trait. For example, a poem might be scored on the basis of “voice,” or an employment application might be scored strictly on “mechanics.” This type of scoring helps to focus student attention on one quality, and it is effective for measuring the success of instruction in a particular area. Primary-trait scoring is not particularly useful in providing an overall assessment of student work.
A collection of student work, typically scored using a rubric. These collections can be cumulative (e.g., a writing folder containing all student work) or developmental (e.g., selected artifacts collected over time to show growth) or showcase (e.g., the students’ very best work). Typically a portfolio offers a balance of required and optional artifacts. The portfolio itself might be scored using an analytic scoring guide (rubric).
Formal tests developed by the government, commercial test makers, or local schools. These exams are used to compare students, teachers, schools, and states against one another; to assess the effectiveness of educational programs; and to plan curriculum and instruction to meet the needs of students. It is worth remembering that these tests provide another measure of the success of classroom activities.
Performance rubrics are commonly used across disciplines and subjects toclarify expectations and aid assessment. Like most things in teaching, there is an art to constructing a powerful rubric. Watch the brief introduction below.
Please consider the following excerpts from various essays regarding instrument item construction. We hope you find the short review helpful.
A review of the literature suggests that the strongest format is one where the multiple-choice items are prepared as direct questions. This is in contrast to incomplete statements, or clusters of answers such as a and b, b and c, etc.
Lucy Jacobs (IU) offers suggestions for writing multiple-choice items that measure the higher thinking skills. Not all of these will be applicable for concepts such as the social contract, constitutionalism, or rights, but they may stimulate your thinking:
ORIGINAL
IMPROVED
ORIGINAL
IMPROVED
ORIGINAL
IMPROVED
ORIGINAL
IMPROVED
We will first describe some basic rules for the construction of multiple-choice stems, because they are typically, though not necessarily, written before the options.
1. Before writing the stem, identify the one point to be tested by that item. In general, the stem should not pose more than one problem, although the solution to that problem may require more than one step.
2. Construct the stem to be either an incomplete statement or a direct question, avoiding stereotyped phraseology, as rote responses are usually based on verbal stereotypes. For example, the following stems (with answers in parentheses) illustrate undesirable phraseology:
What is the biological theory of recapitulation? (Ontogeny repeats phylogeny)
Who was the chief spokesman for the “American System”? (Henry Clay)
Correctly answering these questions likely depends less on understanding than on recognizing familiar phraseology.
3. Avoid including nonfunctional words that do not contribute to the basis for choosing among the options. Often an introductory statement is included to enhance the appropriateness or significance of an item but does not affect the meaning of the problem in the item. Generally, such superfluous phrases should be excluded. For example, consider:
The American flag has three colors. One of them is (1) red (2) green (3) black
One of the colors of the American flag is (1) red (2) green (3) black
In particular, irrelevant material should not be used to make the answer less obvious. This tends to place too much importance on reading comprehension as a determiner of the correct option.
4. Include as much information in the stem and as little in the options as possible. For example, if the point of an item were to associate a term with its definition, the preferred format would be to present the definition in the stem and several terms as options, rather than to present the term in the stem and several definitions as options.
5. Restrict the use of negatives in the stem. Negatives in the stem usually require that the answer be a false statement. Because students are likely in the habit of searching for true statements, this may introduce an unwanted bias.
6. Avoid irrelevant clues to the correct option. Grammatical construction, for example, may lead students to reject options, which are grammatically incorrect as the stem is stated. Perhaps more common and subtle, though, is the problem of common elements in the stem and in the answer. Consider the following item:
Following the construction of the item stem, the likely more difficult task of generating options presents itself. The rules we list below are not likely to simplify this task as much as they are intended to guide our creative efforts.
Excerpted (with permission) from an essay by Jerard Kehoe Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.
One third of all teachers leave the profession in the first three years, and nearly half of teachers leave after five years. These statistics are alarming. Of course, a variety of factors contribute to a person’s decision to leave teaching. One of the most common reasons former teachers provide, however, is problems with classroom management and student discipline. Every day, teachers make scores (a fancy word for 20) of decisions that will impact student learning, behavior, and the environment they are creating with their students. This chapter aims to provide you with some initial insights that will grow with additional experience and practice.
Like other aspects of a teacher’s job, classroom management is complex. There is no script to follow, and many of the most important classroom management decisions arise in the context of actually teaching—there isn’t time to carefully and critically reflect. You cannot ask the students for a timeout so you can consult a textbook, a colleague, or a principal about what to do or say. Being a successful classroom manager requires practical wisdom—doing the right things, for good reasons, in the best ways. This section is an introduction to ideas that you will spend a career refining.
The goal of classroom management is to create, with your students, a safe, healthy, and positive learning environment. Every classroom has a climate, a culture, a “feeling tone.” How would you like your students to describe your classroom? Most teachers would hope their students would say things like: focused, engaged, challenging, fun.
Much of what constitutes effective classroom management happens before the school year or semester ever begins. Effective classroom managers are proactive; they tend to think of solutions to problems before they happen. Here are a few general classroom management considerations teachers should resolve before they ever meet their students.
What rules will govern your classroom? Who will create them? How will they be communicated to students? What happens if a rule is broken? As you might imagine, answers to these questions vary widely among teachers. Based on our experience, we offer a few tips about creating rules:
• Keep them simple and general.
• Avoid attempting to create a rule for every way a student might misbehave.
• Provide clear examples ad non-examples Example: Respect me, respect yourself, and respect each other.
What will be your policy for late work, going to the bathroom, food or drink in class, tardies, plagiarism, cell phones, academic honesty, or forgetting materials? Effective teachers have carefully considered and answered these questions before class ever begins.
Example: 10% is deducted from late assignments for every day an assignment is late, up to a maximum of five school days, at which time the assignment becomes a zero.
Incentives and consequences are often a part of a teacher’s classroom management program. Although students should be motivated in other ways, what might be some appropriate rewards or punishments in your class?
Example: At the end of the semester, I will add 2% extra credit to your overall grade. I will deduct .5% for every time you 1) use the bathroom, 2) come to class unprepared, 3) come late to class, 4) leave trash in your desk.
The classroom is a dynamic place. What procedures will you use to accomplish routine tasks? Read Harry Wong, Rosemary Wong, Karen Rogers, and Amanda Brooks’s Managing Your Classroom for Success. Consider what procedures you will use for:
• Entering the classroom
• Quiet work time
• Calling on students
• Asking for help
• Turning in papers
• Leaving your seat
• Leaving the room
• Time when work is complete
• Visitors in the classroom
• Lunch (if applicable)
• Grading, tests, extra credit
Compare their tips to those created by Tom Vontz years ago. How are these tips alike, and how are they different?
Vontz’s Tips for Classroom Management
First and foremost, classroom management is not synonymous with discipline, though people often lump them together in the same educational discussions. Indeed, they are related, but we need to understand that the link is cause and effect. Good classroom management means less discipline is required. And less discipline means fewer headaches for you, the classroom teacher, and fewer issues for your administrators to deal with, as well.
As you visit classrooms, or remember your own classroom experiences as a student, what types of behavior issues have you observed? Could some classroom management strategies have eliminated…or, at least, reduced…some of the issues?
As you gain experience in the classroom, you’ll also become much better at foreseeing what types of behavior issues could appear, based on the type of activity they’re participating in, possibilities of where discussions might lead, and even environmental issues such as a snowstorm headed to your area or the excitement of spring break approaching. All of these require a savviness in the classroom so you can be prepared for all the possibilities.
And with your growing experiences in classroom management, you will have a sense of missteps you might be able to avoid. As one administrator told me early on in my first year of teaching, “You’ll know where that train is headed before it even leaves the station.”
So, in addition to general advice, what tricks work for teachers? Watch the popular video on Classroom Management “Hacks” below.
Specific problems often require specific solutions.
And, finally, always consider the following:
• Set the tone of your classroom early on.
• Keep rules simple.
• Good classroom management means much less need for discipline and much more time for learning.
• Never respond when you’re angry.
• Never touch a student, especially if you’re angry.
• Always remember that the student in front of you is someone’s child and is deserving of respect.
Unfortunately, we, and that includes students and teachers, never respond as well as we would like in all classroom situations. To use one of my daughter’s theater references, each day you “End Scene.” Every day is a new day, where you need to give your students and yourself a clean slate, even after a difficult situation. People—young and old alike—make mistakes; allow yourself and your students to move on with an opportunity for a new, successful day.
Cindy is a very mature 12-year-old sixth-grade student. She is intelligent, and good grades come easily to her. She is the youngest child in the family and is still referred to as the baby. If Cindy does not get her way at school, she sulks and has been known to blurt out obscenities. Her parents are very religious and would not condone such behavior. They feel that some mistake must have been made, since Cindy told them she hasn’t done anything wrong.
Shawna is in third grade. She is 9 years old, very pretty, extremely conscientious, and works hard on any assignments. Shawna is an overachiever. On recent group achievement tests, Shawna’s scores were average. Her parents were outraged and insisted she be tested again. Subsequent tests revealed the same results. The parents began putting pressure on Shawna to work harder.
A young teacher is worried about the exuberant affection a junior boy shows toward her. He occasionally puts his arm around her or slaps her on the back when he sees her. The student comes from a large family where much affection is shown, so the teacher feels hesitant about telling the boy how she feels.
A group of students frequently talk quietly during instruction. You have asked them to be quiet and warned them not to talk when you are talking, yet they continue. You decide your best option is to split them up. When you ask the first student to change seats, Steve refuses and asks why you are picking on him.