B1+FIAE+Chapter+4


 * 1) Click on edit this page.
 * 2) Use the down arrow on your keyboard to get the cursor underneath the horizontal bar.
 * 3) Type your name, highlight your name and then select Heading 3 at the top.
 * 4) Copy and paste your reflection underneath your name.
 * 5) Insert a horizontal bar under your reflection.
 * 6) Click save

Abstract
Chapter 4 described three important types of assessment: portfolios, rubrics, and self-assessment. Each of these has its own place in the classroom, and they can often be used in conjunction with one another. The chapter said that portfolios can vary from simple folders of collected works over a period of time, all the way to complex analyses of growth over a long time frame. [|Portfolios] give students a chance to reflect on their improvement and view their own development and understanding. Rubrics were described as a popular, yet often underestimated in terms of difficulty, form of assessing student learning. Rubrics can be used to assess nearly anything, and the authors encourage focusing on guiding questions while designing rubrics such as “does the rubric account for everything we want to assess?”, “what are the benefits to us as teachers of this topic to create the rubric for our students?”, and “what are the benefits to students when they create their own rubric and the criteria against which their products will be assessed?” The authors also focused on the differences between holistic and analytic rubrics. The chapter said that student [|self-assessment] is a good way to get students in a differentiated classroom to think about their own personal goals and understandings. The author suggests ideas such as self-checking rubrics, checklists, writing prompts, and reading notations as ways to get students to self-assess and reflect upon their learning.

Synthesis
The majority of the class seemed to agree that portfolios, self-assessment, and [|rubrics] were three types of assessment that could easily be used together and be of use in their classrooms. The class seemed to differ on which forms of assessment they personally preferred or thought would work best in their classrooms; for example, the majority of the class members with a concentration in math said that they felt that rubrics would work best in most of what they will teach. People who saw themselves as visual learners said that they liked the idea of portfolios as a compilation of works which allow a sense of accomplishment. The class agreed that self-assessment was a great way to give students control over their learning and also their success in the class itself. Mel pointed out that all three forms of assessment ensure that students have a clear idea of what is expected of them and are therefore better able to perform to the best of their abilities. Several class mates pointed out that student-made rubrics seem like a good idea because students are then able to see what it is that they want to get out of the lesson and the assessment and do not feel as though they are being given arbitrary goals to meet. Through these three types of assessment, the class as a whole agreed that students are better able to take control of their learning and understand and meet expectations that are given to them or that they have produced themselves.

Kellie Sanborn

Paul Santamore
toc The fourth chapter of FIAE provides three important types of assessment. The first of these three types is the portfolio. Portfolios provide students with an essential compilation of their work. With a portfolio, a student can continuously reflect and look back at what they have done and use those previous assignments to gauge their improvement throughout the year. Portfolios are a perfect teammate for another of the three assessments, student self-assessment. When a student is able to assess their own work, they improve greatly as a learner. Through inspection and critical thought, a student always has the ability to become better, because they know best how to improve their own learning and intellectual abilities. Lastly, rubrics can be used in both of the above mentioned assessment types, because they provide guidelines and objectives for the students to look at throughout their inspection of their materials. All three of these techniques will be beneficial to me as an educator because they all blend together perfectly to create the ultimate assessment. I will try to combine all of these three assessments, because at the forefront of my ideas will be the student. If the student is truly working hard and improving each and every class, I will be happy. Grading to me is a horribly difficult task because it is a very surface procedure. Anybody can grade a student’s multiple-choice test, but can everyone grade a paper or a cumulative short answer test? When I teach I will be fair, but I will always push my students to improve each class and by the end of the year I will have used all three of these assessment types to improve each and every one of my learners.

Leigh Welch
This chapter focuses on three major aspects of assessment, Rubrics, Portfolios, and Self Assessment. The first assessment type that was discussed was a portfolio; these are basically the epitome of assessments that focus on “photo album” instead of “snapshot”. Taking a compilation of student’s works and assessing that progress that is made is a bigger and more accurate picture of the student’s mastery of the material. Portfolios can even be used in math courses, which was very surprising to me. The second form of assessment that is brought forward in this chapter is rubrics. Rubrics are one of the most common forms of assessment and the most common form that can have “errors”. Rubrics are ever-changing; you have to revise them over and over again until you get it right. “There is no such thing as a perfect rubric!” The last part of this chapter focused on self-assessment and how that form of assessment is beneficial for students and teachers. Self-assessments give the teacher a chance to see how the student feels they did. I had a teacher in high school that gave us a self-reflection after almost every assignment we completed. I felt like I was being heard in the class and that I was completely in control of my grade. I also like the rubrics part of this chapter, it made me feel better about the anxiety that comes when I think I have to create a rubric to grade students with. I like knowing that not everyone gets it right the first time they do it might not even be right by the fifth time, but that that is okay. A group of students helping to create a rubric sounds both helpful and effective in getting the students to get involved.

Bianca Stoutamyer
The three types of assessments mentioned in chapter 4, portfolios, rubrics and self-assessments are all the most obvious ways of assessing students outside of tests and exams. The advice on rubrics was probably the most helpful for me because I have never had to write a rubric before and the advice given allows me to know what I am doing. The only thing I would use rubrics on would be group projects and individual projects assessing labs and mastery of other knowledge I would most likely use the portfolio assessment and grade it at the end of every quarter. Knowing how I plan to assess my students now and actually using the assessments that way in the future will probably change when I have my first classes. What I have learned from my time in the classroom is that depending on the students in the class the way that you assess the students for projects from year to year will differ. I have never been a huge fan of self-assessment as a student but I can see its uses now that I am a becoming a teacher. Knowing how the student feels they did is important in the classroom and outside of it. So even though I have never particularly cared for self-assessments I will use them to communicate with my students about what they think about not only themselves but also about my teaching. Knowing when to use each of these three assessments is going to be difficult for me to decide, depending on the classes that I am teaching and the students in the said classes my choice of assessments will change.

Carinne Haigis
In this chapter, the author focused on the different types of assessing and how these different methods can be useful to both students and teachers. According to Wormeli, the three important types of assessing are portfolios, rubrics, and self-assessments. It was interesting for me to note that nowhere in this chapter did Wormeli describe the standard end of the unit exam as an important way to gather information about what students have learned. Portfolios are useful because it allows both the student and the teacher to see how the student has progressed over time. A portfolio would be a great tool to use in an English classroom because a student would have a collection of their writing and be able to reflect as to have they have grown as a writer over the course of a year. Rubrics are another crucial tool because they let the students know precisely what is expected of them. Before reading this chapter, however, I had never realized exactly how difficult and complex creating a rubric can be. A rubric ought to be vague enough to allow students to be creative, but narrow enough for the teacher to properly assess whether or not the student has demonstrated mastery of the necessary material. Self-Reflection is the third important type of assessment. It is critical for students and for teachers because, as Wormeli describes, “it provides invaluable feedback and helps students and their teachers set individual goals” (Armstrong 51). Self-reflection helps students to better understand exactly where they are in the learning process and what they could possibly do differently to improve.

Allison Reynolds
This chapter discussed different types of assessment and how they can be used. The book discussed portfolios (which I have barely used as a student), rubrics, and self-assessment. Assessment is something that is new for me to think about as a student teacher. I have never really though how to assess myself or something else. It has always been, for me, that the teacher gave the assignment and how they wanted it and that is how you do it. The idea of a portfolio is great, even if it isn’t being graded. Just having a place for students to put their long-term projects somewhere to reflect on is nice. So many students throw things away and in math, almost everything is a step to the next lesson. A student should really keep everything in order to learn. I don’t know how I would use portfolios in a math class yet, but it definitely gives me something to think about. For a math class, I think the rubric style would work much better. This chapter shows how much clarity needs to be in a rubric and how helpful they are. It should show exactly what needs to be done for each section and what should be taken away from the lesson. Out of all the hints that I liked about the rubric, my favorite was test-driving it with the students. It is nice to know that it is ok if a rubric is not fool proof. I think that this chapter should also consider having students help create the rubric. The teacher should have a guideline of what should be needed in the project, but students’ voices should be heard in what should matter with points and if anything should be added or taken away. The final assessment tool was self-assessment. I have always loved self-assessment because I find students are often harder on themselves as I would be. They look at their work afterwards and really think about what they did to deserve a certain grade. It also gives me the chance to see what they already know and what they think they need to work on. I am looking forward to using these three methods in my class.

Mel Christensen
Portfolios, rubrics, and student self assessment are all dynamic tools that teachers can use for grading. The commonality with all of these tools is that they ensure that students have a clear understanding of how they are going to be graded and are given the opportunity to reflect on the quality of their work with the grading standards in mind. These methods of grading enforce student responsibility and the understanding that students determine their grade based on their effort and initiative; grades are not randomly determined by the teacher. Portfolios are a great way for students to visually see progress in their work and physically evaluate what work they are proud and want to use to demonstrate their understanding. Students should be able to not only complete assignments, but also to explain what they learned from the assignment and how that assignment demonstrates their learning. Student designed rubrics or rubrics that have been evaluated and edited with student input are valuable because the students are participating in setting goals and expectations for themselves. Rubrics designed by teachers are good tools for grading as well, but students are often not attentive to wordy grading sheets. Engaging students in reviewing or helping to design their grading criteria focuses the students on their expectations and gives the teacher a sense of what the students feel is within their reach to accomplish. Holistic rubrics seem somewhat vague in the sense that it is not as clear to students how their grade will be determined. Analytic rubrics present students with clear criteria for what determines a grade.

Kellie Sanborn
This chapter was very to-the-point in its suggestions. I wish that he would have elaborated a lot more on portfolios. I agree that they are very important, so I don’t understand why he only worked off from one source and only gave a page of information on them. I think that they could be an extremely helpful tool in assessing a range of works, especially in a writing or literature centered classroom.

Rubrics are something that I don’t know if I would see as a type of assessment so much as a standard of assessment. I do think that they are definitely important, but they can be used with just about anything, including self-assessment and portfolios. I remember a teacher of mine naively attempting to have the class create our own rubric because he had learned about students creating their own in a grad class that he was taking; it went over like a sack of bricks. I agree that having students create their own rubrics is extremely helpful in understanding what is important in the assessment, but I wish the book had elaborated on how to go about doing that so that. My mentor teacher used a lot of rubrics for assessing papers, comic strips, letters, and other forms of writing, and I thoroughly enjoyed seeing him design them. Rather than using the boring and basic “Meets Standard”, “Exceeds Standard”, etc., he would rank the pieces using things that actually related to what the students were doing. For example, when the class was writing open letters, they were ranked on a scale ranging from “Return to Sender” to “First Class.”

Chris Whitney
Chapter four of Fair Isn’t Always Equal talks about the three important ways to assess students. The first one, a portfolio is a great way to assess student work over a period of time. It can be nicely related to the photograph analogy in the Multiple Intelligences book. Having a portfolio (like a album in the analogy ) will show a lot about how the student has progressed in their learning over the course of a semester or year. Having students keep a portfolio also helps to establish organization and responsibility for completing assignments. It also connects to another way to assess students by having students self assess themselves. By using a portfolio, students can easily compare how the started off the year compared to where they are at the end. Students reflecting on their own work is very important as it helps the student better understand themselves as a student and it also lets the teacher see this same information so that the student and teacher are on the same page. A third type of assessment is having a rubric. A rubric is a easier, less time consuming way to assess students. Once a rubric is complete students can use it to organize whatever project they are doing to that rubric and have a better chance to succeed.

Ashton Carmichael
This chapter, titled “Three Important Types of Assessment,” ironically enough discusses three important types of assessment. The first type, portfolios, gives a brief description of how portfolios could be useful and how they could be used collectively throughout a students school career. Wormeli gives us examples of different ways the portfolio could be used for assessment, such as a way to give the students a chance to explain why an artifact would go in. He explains their benefits in communicating with parents at home. The Author tells us that they have the potential to be helpful in assessing students growth periodically instead of just unit by unit. The second type of assessment the author writes about is rubrics. The author goes into great detail when explaining this type of assessment. He tells us the importance of creating a well written rubric and goes on to explain the two types of rubrics: analytic and holistic. Analytic seems to be the most beneficial because it allows the teacher to give more feedback and stimulate growth. The third type of assessment the author talks about is the student self assessment. I like the idea of self-assessment. I could have students reflect on the lessons in a journal at the end of class, or have them take a quick survey at the end indicating whether or not they agree with certain concepts. Overall, I think the chapter was a great resource for learning about ways to assess students and there effectiveness.

Kaite Bukauskas
This chapter reviews some of the types of tools a teacher can use in his or her assessment of students. The text breaks assessment down into three major categories- portfolios, rubrics, and student self-assessment. A portfolio is a place in which a teacher can collect a student’s work in one place so that it can be examined over time by both the teacher and the student. This can be beneficial to the student because it is a way for an individual to easily reflect back on his or her progress. This type of assessment works well in all content areas. A rubric is a clear way to communicate assessment between the teacher and student. It focuses learning by laying out the exact guidelines to explain student achievement standards for each level of grades possibly awarded to the work. Student self-assessment can take place in the form of a journal or log written by the student. This form of assessment can be beneficial because it acts as a starting point for teachers and students to work together on setting specific individual goals and to identify areas in which they student has progressed in his or her studies. In the field experience I most often witnessed my mentor teacher using the assessment forms of portfolios and rubrics. The students seemed to prefer the use of a rubric because upon first receiving an assignment it gave them a clear explanation of what was expected of them in order to achieve the grade they desired. When receiving work back that they had submitted, students had a clear understanding of why they received the grade they did, and what they could work on to improve their next assignment or project.

Jason B
This chapter gives three basic types of assessment: portfolios, rubrics, and self-assessments. In my classroom, I think rubrics will be the most useful tool when grading a student’s project. When rubrics are used correctly and to the maximum performance, they can provide the student with a list of what will be expected of them in order to well or get a good grade. At the same time, rubrics can provide the teacher with a simple grading method. Self-assessment is another method of grading. This method could tell the teacher what the student thinks of his or her own work. This is the students chance to tell the teacher, “I worked really hard on this project, and I deserve a good grade!” Some teachers like to use a combination of rubrics and self-assessments. These teachers would use the rubric as a judgment tool, and then they would factor in what the students think of his or her own work. Portfolios are useful because they are composed of a compilation of the students work put into one place. This allows the students to look back at their work throughout the class to see things such as improvement in their own learning and work. I do not believe that portfolios should be graded because they seem to be composed of material that has already been graded. If I was to grade a portfolio, I would grade it based on completeness, or whether or not the student put all of their work into this portfolio.

Megan Hoffman
The title of this chapter is “Three Important Types of Assessment” and that is exactly what it discusses. The first types of assessment discussed are portfolios which are a form of summative assessment but the criteria are collected over time which not only displays content mastery but growth over a period of time. The second type is a rubric assessment, which is a great tool to give students the exact assessment criteria. It helps the teacher be fair to all students and when the students are doing the task, they know exactly what is expected. The third type that the chapter discusses is student self-assessment, which is allowing students to self-evaluate their own performance and know where they can improve. Self-assessment takes many forms and can be either summative or formative, depending on if it is graded or not. Because I am a visual learner, my favorite type is portfolio style assessment. As a pre-service teacher, I get to experience this firsthand when developing my own standards portfolio for certification. There is just something about seeing all the work collected in one place that gives a sense of accomplishment to me as a student and I am sure does the same for other students. There are also so many ways to do a portfolio; it doesn’t have to be just a folder in a drawer. Students can display their work in a creative way like a scrapbook or a poster and when they step back and look at what they have done, they get that sense of how much they have grown and learned.