Ch. 3 Principles of Successful Assessment in the Differentiated Classroom

I absolutely agree with the statement, “Students come in biased on how to see the world of …for five to eighteen years via school and living their lives,” by Wormeli on page 20, it is our job to expand their knowledge and change their point of views. We may have students that hate blacks and then hear about Rosa Parks or think Jews are lame and then hear of Eli Wiesel and Anne Frank. We open their minds and teach in other ways than just a vacuum. It is not our job to suck knowledge in their brains. We must be sure that they actually know what we teach. Assessing is viewed in two different ways (1) essential and enduring knowledge (EEK) and (2) know, understand and able to do (KUD). Know is what the students retain. Understand is the concepts, relationships, and connections a student can take as a result of the unit; this targets the student’s interests and real-life situations. Do is the specific skills we intend our students to be able to demonstrate. We must keep these aspects in mind when we perform pre-assessment, formative assessment and summative assessment. Assessment is never something that comes just at the end, as many of my high school teachers did their task in seeing how well knowledge was retained. Instead, assessment has a beginning, middle and an end and it must target everyone in the class. I feel that I may get frustrated when it comes to assessing because it is never straight forward and it may take a long time to get each student to reach the same level of skill and knowledge. We must use assessments as a pivotal instructional tool by having rubrics, choices and a couple standard-based tests. Students need to learn how to do for themselves instead of just taking our knowledge and storing it in their memory banks. As the proverb says, “If you give a man a fish, he can eat for a day, but, if you teach a man to fish, he can eat for a lifetime,” we must teach our students to fish and they can be knowledgeable forever.