On page 505 in our book, Ormrod shows us the five categories that assessments can fall under. The various forms that educational assessments can take are as follow: informal vs. formal, paper pencil vs. performance, traditional vs. authentic, standardized vs. teacher developed, and criterion-referenced vs. norm-referenced.
Informal assessments are spontaneous, unsystematic, day-to-day observations of how students perform in class. For example, if a child in your class asks you why it snows in the winter but not in the summer. Them saying this shows you as a teacher that they don't understand the seasons and the weather patterns very well. As a teacher, you can then focus on making sure that your students are all clear on what types of weather and temperature patterns are seen during the different seasons. Formal assessments on the other hand are preplanned, systematic, data gathering ways to see what your students know and what they can do. An example of a formal assessment would be giving you students a math test in order of operations. There will be a particular time set aside for the assessment, students can study or "prepare" for it ahead of time, and it is intended to yield information about particular instructional goals or content area standards.
Paper pencil assessments are assessments that involve the students giving written responses to written items. For example, a writing assessment. Students are given a written prompt and they must give a written response to that prompt. This helps you as a teacher see where your students are in terms of their writing skills and it helps you determine if they can portray their ideas in a written form. Performance assessments are assessments in which students show their knowledge and skills in a way that is not written. For example, an oral presentation in a speech class or identifying rocks in a geology course. If I wanted to assess my students' public speaking skills, performance assessments would work great!
Traditional assessments focus on measuring basic knowledge and skills separate from real world tasks. Spelling tests as an example of a traditional assessments. Authentic assessments assess the ability to apply learning to real world tasks. These assessments are based on non-written performance and closely integrated with instruction. Examples of an authentic assessment are baking a cake, or parallel parking a car. If you wanted to teach students how to bake a cake, they would have to purchase the supplies, measure the ingredients out, and then determine how to mix ingredients as well as bake the cake. Classes such as Home Ec. are great for authentic assessments.
Standardized tests are developed by experts for use in many schools. These types of tests are more broad. Examples include the TCAP test, Gateway tests. ACT/SAT type tests, and standardized writing assessments. These types of tests can be helpful in assessing students' general achievement and ability levels. Teacher-developed assessments are assessments that are developed by teachers for their own classrooms. Vocabulary tests are an example of this. Teachers use these types of assessments to make sure that their students can apply what they have been learning. They are tailored towards their students, and they can really help teachers to see what topics they should spend more time on and which topics their students are excelling in.
Criterion-referenced assessments indicate mastery or non-mastery of specific topics. For example if a spelling test was composed of 25 spelling words, a score of 25 would be a perfect score, a score of 20 would mean that the student got 20 words correct, and so on. In doing this, the teacher would know precisely which words each student does and does not know how to spell. I think this is great because teachers are able to see their students progress and see which words or types of words in this case they may need to spend some more time on. Norm-referenced assessments compare students' performance to that of their peers. For example, a 9th grade nationwide math test yielding percentile ranks that indicate how well each student has performed in comparison with other 9th graders around the country. There are some problems with this tactic. Such scores as these don't tell us specifically what students have or have not learned in math. What they will actually tell us is how well each student stacks up against students in their same age or grade level.
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