My unit of study is World War II. The assessments I have created are designed to gauge the students’ prior knowledge, what knowledge they are having trouble picking up, and how much they have learned over the unit as a whole. I have a pre-assessment, several formative assessments throughout the unit, and a post-assessment at the end of the unit. 

 

The pre-assessment is designed to see what the students already know. I need to know what information needs to be addressed in more detail or addressed from the very beginning. This pre-assessment addresses the learning goals of identifying world leaders, defining vocabulary terms, and putting events of WWII in order. Based on the results of this pre-assessment, I will know which students will need more help and which will need more challenging material moving forward.

 

My formative assessments are designed to measure the knowledge students have gained as well as make them analyze the material they have learned. Each formative assessment has a practical aspect (matching leaders to countries, putting events in order) a section where they define key vocabulary terms, and a short answer questions where students must synthesize material. This will help me measure how students are applying the information they are learning as well as see the factual information they have gained. Also, I will use internet resources to have end-of-class polls or quizzes to gauge student involvement and what they have learned.

 

The post-assessment will be an exam at the end of the unit. It will consist of multiple choice and matching questions, as well as an extra credit essay opportunity. This will show what knowledge students have collected over the unit and how well they can synthesize information in order to give opinions as well as compare and contrasts ideals.

 

These assessment use different forms to measure student learning. The definitions are short-answer, allowing students to write as much or as little of the definition as they like. The matching questions measure factual learning. Students are given choices, and must either match them or put them in order, the same holds true for the multiple choice questions on the post-assessment. The short answer questions on the formative assessments allow students to begin to work out their ideas and start synthesizing information in a small dose, which they will then apply to the essay on the post-assessment which will measure how they expand from the small idea on their formative assessments to a larger application of those ideas.

 

These authentically measure student learning by allowing them various assessment methods to measure different ways they apply knowledge. The assessments appropriately measure student learning by showing the progression from what they did or did not know form the beginning of the unit, to all the information they have learned at the unit’s end. Students will have a formative assessment every class. During classes, I will keep notes of informal assessments, such as polling and student responses to class discussions and in-class questioning.

The adaptations I have made are geared towards making sure students understand what is expected of them and how to reach the objectives. This unit, on World War II, has some terms the students may not be familiar with, especially the German terms. Any terms the students are unfamiliar with will be gone over in class. We will also go over each homework assignment in class so the students can see where they made mistakes and how to get on the right track. ELL students will be allowed to take their test with the school interpreter to ensure that what is being measured is their knowledge, and that they are not hindered by not understanding the questions. Students with learning disabilities will be allowed to take the test with the school special education department to comply with their IEPs.

 

The assessments make sure students are learning the relevant information in order to meet both my lesson objectives as well as the state academic standards. To make sure my goals/objectives lined up with the assessments, I started with the former. I needed to have a clear vision of where the students would end up in order to plot how they would get there. Once I had my objectives and goals set, I designed assessments to measure these goals/objectives. Some parts of the assessments ask for simple, factual information. Other sections ask students to formulate opinions and synthesize information. And other require simple definition of terms. Each of these allow students the roadmap to achieving the objectives of each lesson.

 

Analyzing the assessments will be fairly simple. Most of the assessments have answers that are either correct or incorrect. These are easily analyzed based on the answer key. For the short answer questions, there will be several possible answers. The students’ answers will be measured against these possible answers to score the student’s results. These scores will then be compared across the students to see if there are commonalities among missed answers to determine if reteaching is needed, as well as to measure student improvement. The goal is for the students to have higher scores on the formative assessments than the pre-assessment, and from the post assessment to the formative assessment. Answer keys will be used to grade the assignments as well as a rubric to grade the extra credit essay.

 

One formative assessment that will be used to measure student progress will be daily homework assignments. Students will complete their homework before the lesson is taught. These homework assignments will contain aspects of the pre-assessment, which will allow me to compare what they knew to what they have learned. A second formative assessment will be class discussions. These will allow me to find the students who are having difficulties either understanding the material or synthesizing it to form opinions and conclusions. Collecting evidence from these formative assessments is invaluable in measuring both student understanding and to measure how well I am conveying information to the students. If every student is having the same problems, that means the problem is on my end, not on theirs. It also shows what concepts students are having issues with, which allows me to target reteaching or to know what students need help with and to schedule a time to assist them with those concepts.