Chapter 10: Classroom

Assessment Strategies

© PROF. DR. GURNAM KAUR SIDHU

LEARNING OBJECTIVES
 At the end of this lesson you should be able to :
 Describe various forms of classroom assessment;
 Explain how student learning can be enhanced
through formative assessment;
 Define and apply 4 important characteristics of
assessment – reliability, standardization, validity
and practicality;
 Explain how to conduct informal assessments,
paper-pencil assessments and performance
assessments;
 Describe individual and group differences that have
implications for classroom practices
 GETTING STARTED
“From their earliest school
experience, students draw
life-shaping conclusions
about themselves as learners
on the basis of the
information provided to them
as a result of classroom
assessments.”

- Stiggins, Student-Involved
Classroom Assessment, Prentice Hall,
2001, p. 48
 CLEAR ASSESSMENT PURPOSE
Assessment is the process of observing a sample of a student’s
behavior and drawing inferences about the student’s knowledge and
abilities.

1. Classroom Assessment is:

 Learner centered (help students change their study habits or
develop their metacognitive thinking)
 Teacher directed (respects the autonomy, academic freedom, and
professional judgment of college faculty)
 Mutually beneficial (to both students and faculty)
 Formative (almost never graded and often anonymous)
 Context-specific (“You need the right tool to do the job right.”)
 Ongoing (“the communications loop connecting faculty to students”)
 Rooted in good teaching practice (make good teaching more
systematic, more flexible, and more effective)

Formative assessment –
Assessment that results from a
Assessment conducted
teacher's spontaneous, day-to-
before or during instruction
to facilitate instructional
planning and enhance
students’ learning
VS
Summative assessment –
Assessment conducted
after instruction to assess
students’ final achievement
Traditional assessment –
Assessment that focuses on
measuring basic knowledge
and skills in relative isolation
from activities typical of the
outside world
VS
Authentic assessment –
assessment of student’s
knowledge and skills in a
context similar to one that
might be found the outside
world
Informal assessment –
Paper-pencil assessment –
Assessment in which
students provide written
day observations of how a
responses to written items
student performs in class
VS
VS
Performance assessment –
Formal assessment -
Assessment in which
preplanned, systematic
students demonstrate their
attempt to ascertain what
knowledge and skills in a
students know and can do
nonwritten fashion
The Many Criterion-referenced
Forms of assessment –
assessment instrument
Assessment designed to determine
what students know and
can do relative to
Standardized assessment – test predetermined standards
developed by test construction or criteria
experts and published fr use in VS
many different schools and Norm-referenced
classroom assessment –
VS Assessment instrument
Teacher –developed assessment that indicates how
– Assessment tool developed by students perform relative
an individual teacher for use in a to a peer group
specific classroom
PURPOSE OF ASSESSMENT

Guiding instructional decision making

Determining what students have learned from instruction

Evaluating the quality of instruction

Diagnosing learning and performance problems

Promoting learning
 Balanced Assessment

Formative Summative
Formal and informal processes teachers and Provides evidence of achievement
students use to gather evidence to directly to certify student competence or
improve the learning of students assessed program effectiveness

Formative uses of
Assessment for Assessment summative data
learning for learning Use of summative evidence to
Use assessments to help Use classroom inform what comes next for
students assess and assessments to individuals or groups of students
adjust their own inform teacher’s
learning decisions

7
ENHANCING LEARNING THROUGH FORMATIVE ASSESSMENTS
AND OTHER ASSESSMENT PRACTICES

Rubric
- List of characteristics and components that a student’s
performance on assessment should ideally have; used
to guide scoring
Dynamic assessment
- Systematic examination of how easily and in what
ways a student can acquire new knowledge or skills,
usually within the context of instruction or scaffolding
Including students in the assessment process
- Students are more likely be intrinsically motivated if
they have some sense of autonomy and self-
determination about classroom activities.
 IMPORTANT QUALITIES OF
GOOD ASSESSMENT
 Remember RSVP
 Reliability
◦ The results of our assessments should be consistent
no matter when we give it.
 Standardization
◦ The assessment should have a similar format,
content, and procedure for all students
 Validity
◦ The assessment should measure what it is intended
to measure.
 Practicality
◦ The assessment and its procedures should be fairly
simple to use and take only a small amount of time to
administer and score.
 RELIABILITY
 Refer to the extent to which it yields consistent
information about the knowledge, skills or
characteristics being assessed.
 IMPORTANT QUALITIES OF GOOD ASSESSMENT
Qualities Definition Relevant Comments
questions to
consider

Reliability The extend to •How much are Reliability is

which an the students’ necessary
assessment scores affected by condition for
instrument or temporary validity and is
procedure yields conditions especially
consistent results unrelated to the important in
for each student characteristic summative
being measured assessments.
(test-pretest Less critical in
reliability?) short formative
assessment
Standardization The extend to Is everyone given Standardization is
which the same essential for
assessment instruction? legitimate and
instruments and equitable
procedures are comparisons
similar for all the among students
Characteristic Definition Relevant questions Comments
to consider
Validity The extend to which Do students’ scores Validity must be the
an assessment predict their later most central concern
instrument or success in a domain in all classroom
procedure measures (predict validity)? assessment.
what it is intended to Assessment result
measure and enables are meaningless
appropriate unless they’re closely
inferences to be aligned with
made instructional goals
and academic
curriculum

Practicality The extend to which How much class time Practicality should be
an assessment does the assessment a consideration only
instrument or take to administer? to the extend that
procedure is easy and validity isn’t seriously
inexpensive to use jeopardised.
 ASSESSING STUDENTS’ ACHIEVEMENT
BOTH INFORMALLY AND FORMALLY

 Informally observing students’

behaviours
 Using paper-pencil assessment
 Using performance assessment
 Additional consideration in formal
assessment
 Using digital technologies in classroom
assessment
INFORMAL ASSESSMENT
 Informal assessment occurs in our day-to-day
interactions with students.
 Advantages:
◦ It provides continuing feedback about the effectiveness of
instructional tasks and activities.
◦ It helps determine the appropriateness and success of our
formal assessments.
◦ It is easily adjusted.
◦ It provides valuable clues about social, emotional, and
motivational factors affecting classroom performance.
 Disadvantages:
◦ It is not very reliable or valid.
 We sometimes see the halo effect.
Paper-Pencil Assessment
 Paper-pencil assessment is often the first choice for
formal assessment because of its practicality.

 It may use recognition or recall tasks.

◦ Recognition: Multiple choice, true-false, matching
◦ Recall: Short-answer, essay, word problems

 It often only measures lower-level skills.

◦ However, they can be used to measure higher-level
skills, but these questions take more time to write.
◦ Essays are more often used to measure higher-level
skills.
General Guidelines for
Constructing Paper-Pencil
Assessments
 Define tasks clearly and unambiguously
 Decide whether students should have
access to reference materials
 Specify scoring criteria in advance
 Place easier and shorter items at the
beginning of the instrument
 Set parameters for students’ responses
Performance Assessment

 Performance assessment can be used

for measuring mastery of:
◦ Playing a musical instrument
◦ Performing a workplace routine
◦ Engaging in a debate

 Ideal for the assessment of complex

achievements
TAKING STUDENT DIVERSITY INTO ACCOUNT

Accommodating group differences

◦ Boys tend to talk more in class than girls do.
◦ Girls tend to work harder on classroom
assignment that boys do
◦ Students t risk for academic failure may
perceive academic subject matter to have little
relevance to their own lives
◦ Some students from low-income families lack
adequate nutrition and health care to perform
their best at school
 Accommodating students with special needs
Category Characteristics you might Suggested Strategies
observe

Students with specific Poor listening, reading and/or Make paper-pencil

cognitive or academic writing skills instruments easy to read and
difficulties respond to

Students with social or Inconsistent performance on Make modifications in

behavioural problems assignment due to off-task assessment procedures as
behaviour or lack of necessary
motivation

Students with general delays Slow learning and cognitive Be very explicit and concrete
in cognitive and social processing about what you’re asking
functioning students to do

Students with physical or Less developed language Use simple language

sensory challenges abilities

Students with advanced Tendency to hide giftedness Provide opportunities for

cognitive development to avoid ridicule by peers students to demonstrate their
achievement privately
THE “BIG PICTURE” OF ASSESSMENT

 Our assessments will indirectly affect

students’ learning and achievement.
 Our instruments and practices should
match our instructional goals and
objectives.
 Remember RSVP.
 Our scoring criteria should be as explicit as
possible.
 Students’ errors provide valuable
information about where their difficulties
lie.
 We should continually evaluate our
instruments.
 CHAPTER 11

SUMMARIZING STUDENTS’
ACHIEVEMENT AND ABILITIES
 Summarizing the Results of a
Single Assessment
Criterion- Norm-
Raw Scores Referenced Referenced
Scores Scores
• Based solely • What students • Comparing a
on the number have achieved student’s
or percentage in relation in performance
of points relation to on an
earned or specific assessment
items instructional with the
answered objectives or performance of
correctly content area others
standards
Norm-Referenced Scores

Standard
scores

Grade-
equivalent
Percentile
and age-
ranks
equivalent
scores
Using criterion-referenced vs. norm-
referenced scores in the classroom

 Criterion-referenced scores focus

attention on mastery goals and should
enhance students’ self-efficacy for
learning classroom subject matter.
 Raw scores don’t tell us much about
what students have and haven’t learned.
 Norm-referenced scores is appropriate if
we truly know how students have
performed relative to one another.
 DETERMINING
FINAL CLASS GRADES

Use many
Base grades on assessments to
Base grades on
determine grades,
achievement hard data but don’t count
everything

Assign criterion- Accompany grades

Identify a
referenced grades with qualitative
reasonable grading
unless there is a information about
system and stick to
compelling reason students’
it.
to do otherwise performance
Considering – or not considering- other
factors in grading

Considering improvement

Considering effort

Giving extra credit

Addressing lateness and missing work

 USING PORTFOLIOS

 Types and purposes of portfolios:

Working portfolio

Developmental portfolio

Best-work portfolio
 BENEFITS AND LIMITATIONS OF
PORTFOLIOS

• Capture the wide-ranging, complex nature of

students’ achievement
• Can show growth over time
• Can demonstrate students’ performance in real-
world, authentic activities
• Provide practice in self-monitoring and self-
evaluation
• Give students a sense of accomplishment and
self-efficacy
HELPING STUDENTS CONSTRUCT
PORTFOLIOS

Planning

Presentation Collection

Projection Selection

Reflection
 STANDARDIZED TESTS

 Types of standardized tests:

General
scholastic
Achievement
aptitude and
tests
intelligence
tests

Specific
aptitude School readiness
and ability tests
tests
 GUIDELINES FOR CHOOSING AND USING
STANDARDIZED TESTS

Choose a test with high validity for your

particular purpose and high reliability for
students similar to your own

Make sure the test’s norm group is

relevant to your own population

Take students’ ages and

developmental levels into account

Make sure students are adequately

prepared to take the test

When administering the test, follow the

directions closely and report any unusual
circumstances
 HIGH-STAKES TESTING AND
ACCOUNTABILITY

Problems with high-stakes testing:

 The tests don’t always reflect important
instructional goals
 Teachers spend a great deal of time teaching to
the tests
 Teachers and schools may focus much of their
attention on helping some students while
shortchanging others
 Different criteria lead to different conclusions
about which students and schools are performing
at high levels
 Too much emphasis is placed on punishing low-
performing schools
 PRODUCTIVE STEPS FORWARD IN
HIGH-STAKES TESTING

Identify and assess those things most

important for students to know and do

Advocate for a focus on academic

improvement rather than on age-group
averages

Educate the public about what standardized

test can and cannot do for us

Consider alternatives to traditional

standardized tests

Advocate for the use of multiple measures in

any high-stakes decisions
TAKING STUDENT DIVERSITY INTO ACCOUNT

 Cultural bias in test content

◦ The term includes biases related to gender
and socioeconomic status as well as to
culture and ethnicity
◦ It is a culturally biased assessment
instrument if it offends a particular group

 Cultural and ethnic differences

◦ Traditional group-administered standardized
tests put students from some cultural and
ethnic backgrounds at a disadvantage
 Language differences and English
language learners-examples of practices:
◦ Translate a test into a student’s native language
◦ Let students use a dictionary/ appropriate
reference tool
◦ Use alternative assessment methods to
document achievement

 Accommodating students with special

needs
◦ Modify the presentation format of the
assessment
◦ Modify the timing
◦ Modify the response format
COMMUNICATING ASSESSMENT RESULTS TO
STUDENTS AND PARENTS

 Guidelines to follow:
It is sufficient to
Make sure you describe to describe
understand the the test and student’s
results yourself performance in
broad, general terms

Emphasize scores
that are least likely to
be ministered
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
 What are some of the guidelines that
one has to keep in mind when
communicating assessment results to
students and parents