Alex Yarbrough

TED 467 Tuesday 7:00

March 17, 2015
Reading Reflection 2
What a Difference a Word Can Make
This was an interesting article, focusing on assessment strategies and how they
can either help or hinder out students education. The beginning of the article lays out
how the author is attempting to change our perception of how we use assessments,
specifically assessing for learning. By this, this author means that teachers should be
constantly observing their students to gauge their progression rather than solely assessing
their ability to regurgitate content in a final test. Next, the author breakdowns how to
assess our students so that we assessing their learning. First, teachers need to be clear on
the purpose of their assessment. Students will be more compliant if they feel that what
their teacher is doing is solely to help their students. Second, assessments need to have
clear targets. Assessments should be designed to gain a specific piece of knowledge that
helps the teacher hone in on how to teach their students. Third, assessments need to have
a sound design. Assessments should be easy to understand for the student being assessed.
Fourth, the results of assessments should be easy to understand. Lastly, assessments
should have a level of student involvement. An important aspect of constructivist
education is for students to be actively involved in their own education. This includes
students setting their own goals.
These are the things I learned from the article.

1. Assessments need to be designed with the student in mind. They need to be

interactive and stimulating for the student so that the student feels the assessment
has a purpose. The old system of packing knowledge in your head and then
releasing it onto one test is inefficient and does not give the student the
opportunity to use the knowledge in a meaningful way.
2. Students need to be taught how to set their own goals and methods for reaching
those goals. This can be accomplished by including the students in creating the
assessments.
3. Assessments should be for the student as well as the teacher. The typical
summative assessment does not give the teacher any information on how the
student is learning, nor does it tell the student how they can improve. Effective
assessments show the teacher and the student how their cognitive skills are
progressing and what strategies work for the student.
This is very relevant to teaching History because History has been possibly the
biggest offender of the old style. It was always lecture, test, paper, repeat. I will work
with my colleagues to create assessments that help me understand how the student is
progressing.
My only question to this article is this. How can we change the current of
assessments when we as teachers are still bound legally to the old system? The
purpose of the new Common Core standards are meant to get away from the old
system of testing, but the assessment it uses takes longer to test then the old
standardized testing.