Bethany Wilson

Professor Wright
EDUC 327
11/17/2014
Field Experience 2014: Assessment Inventory
Assessing is a way of teachers knowing how well students are understanding content or
how they need to improve. During my field experience at Sheridan Elementary, my mentor
teachers used several techniques in assessing students to ensure the effectiveness of her teaching
as well as to enhance learning. Three different visits to the school allowed me to observe just
how she utilized assessments in the classroom.
The first visit I assessed was when the mentor teacher utilized the pre-assessment
method. Pre-assessment plays a critical role in your ability to differentiate instruction. You
administer pre-assessments before you being the instruction in a curricular unit in order to gain
an understanding of what your students know, understand, and are able to do. Without preassessment, you do not know the preparedness of your students for new learning, the specific
learning differences amongst your students, or where to begin devising new curriculum goals. It
is a way to determine what students know about a topic before it is taught. Ms. Holman, my
mentor teacher used pre-assessment method for a lesson she was teaching about identifying
characters. She facilitated this by having the students complete a KWL chart. On a sheet of
notebook paper, she had the students write down things they already knew about characters in a
story and what they would like to learn. After instruction, the students would have to fill out the
What did they learn column to show what theyve learned and what else needed more

elaboration. Pre-assessment is important to enhance learning effectiveness. It is a guide to

teachers in helping them target exactly what needs to be taught during instruction.
Another day where another lesson was taught was where the teacher utilized the
formative assessment method. Formative Assessment is assessment FOR learning. Formative
assessment is part of the instructional process. When incorporated into classroom practice, it
provides the information needed to adjust teaching and learning while they are happening. It
relies on constant feedback. Learning is enhanced when feedback is given based on product,
process, and progress. By involving students with feedback and formative assessments, it allows
students to be a part of the learning environment and to develop self-assessment strategies that
will help with their own metacognition. The lesson I observed was one on identifying nouns and
verbs. After the teacher modeled the instruction, she gave an assessment to test their skills of
what they learned so far. They gave them a small quiz with five sentences, and they had to circle
the nouns and verbs in each sentence. If she saw that the class mastered that part of the
instruction, she moved on but if they were having a difficult time understanding, she spent more
time teaching and explaining.
The last lesson I observed dealt with using summative assessment. Summative
assessment (or summative evaluation) refers to the assessment of participants, and summarizes
their development at a particular time. In contrast to formative assessment, the focus is on the
outcome of a program. Summative assessment is characterized as assessment of learning and is
contrasted with formative assessment, which is assessment for learning. Summative assessment
is used for testing knowledge on instruction collectively. My mentor teacher used summative
assessment to test her students on an entire book they read. Unlike, formative assessment,
summative assessment is used after instruction to test what students know about it as a whole.