The teacher understands and uses formal and informal assessment strategies to evaluate and ensure the continuous intellectual, social and physical development of the learner.
I always try to find creative ways to assess my students. As you can see in the evidence I've provided, I had both a formal and informal assessment of their vocabulary knowledge, and both assessments are rather fun. The students like the format of the quiz I gave them because it is not straight word, definition, part of speech, but rather it requires a little bit of creativity in the sections where they had to write their own sentence and show me they know what the word means by telling me three, for instance, ways to vex someone. I found that some of the examples from the vocabulary activity involving the ads (see Evidence) came up on the quizzes. I was glad that the informal assessment provided the students with a way to remember what the words meant because it was fun.
Outside of the evidence I included, I also like to use journal prompts in the classroom. Students' journals are graded for completion and for time on task during journal writing sessions, but they are not graded for content. Students can share their journal entries, and this sharing leads to helpful class discussion. Student participation is also assessed as a part of the informal journal time.
To show my methods of informal and formal assessment, I have included as evidence two scans of student work and a quiz that assessed the same skills as the student work.
The two pieces of student work are based on a Lord of the Flies vocabulary activity assignment I gave to the students in groups where I assigned each group a vocabulary word and asked them to make an ad and a commercial for a product which used that vocabulary word effectively. The two I've included are the "Ululator 3000" (based on the noun ululation, a loud wail or scream), and "The Vex buddy" (based on the verb vex, to pester and annoy). The Ululator 3000 was a device invented by students to make a loud sound to end awkward silences at parties. The Vex Buddy was a doll that costs a lot of money that has never ending power batteries (not removable once installed) that makes loud noises all the time and sings the same song over and over again and pokes its owner at every chance it gets. Both of these ads demonstrate the meaning of the words.
The following day, the students were assessed on their knowledge of the same words and their definitions. I've also included the quiz the students took to assess their vocabulary comprehension and memorization.
Author:
Jill Kingsland
Last modified:
6/19/2005 1:23 PM (EDT)
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