Informal Classroom Assessment Strategies for Teachers


Book Description

Offers a variety of informal assessment techniques to support standardized tests as well as a functional assessment model to follow in assessing behaviors.




Classroom Assessment Techniques


Book Description

This revised and greatly expanded edition of the 1988 handbook offers teachers at all levels how-to advise on classroom assessment, including: What classroom assessment entails and how it works. How to plan, implement, and analyze assessment projects. Twelve case studies that detail the real-life classroom experiences of teachers carrying out successful classroom assessment projects. Fifty classroom assessment techniques Step-by-step procedures for administering the techniques Practical advice on how to analyze your data Order your copy today.




Formative Assessment & Standards-Based Grading


Book Description

Learn everything you need to know to implement an integrated system of assessment and grading. The author details the specific benefits of formative assessment and explains how to design and interpret three different types of formative assessments, how to track student progress, and how to assign meaningful grades. Detailed examples bring each concept to life, and chapter exercises reinforce the content.




Strategy Instruction for Middle and Secondary Students with Mild Disabilities


Book Description

Teach your students learning strategies that will last a lifetime! Beyond facts and figures, special educators must teach their students how to learn: a skill that will sustain them for a lifetime. Offering an innovative organization, this book explains strategies within context and features: The most effective ways to teach vocabulary, reading, written language, math, and science Instructional strategies known to improve study skills, textbook skills, and self-regulation Informal assessments for each content or skill Case studies that link assessment results, IEP goals, and learning strategies Ready-to-use forms, think-alouds, and application activities




The Unintended Consequences of High-Stakes Testing


Book Description

To better understand how high-stakes accountability has influenced teaching and learning, this book takes an in-depth look at the myriad consequences that high-stakes tests hold for students, teachers, administrators, and the public. By focusing on these tests and spending large amounts of time on test preparation and driving teachers to teach low-level, rote memorization, schools are essentially wiping out non-tested subjects such as science, social studies, physical education, and the arts. Although testing is promoted as a strategy for improving education for all, research shows that testing has differential effects on students with special needs, minority students, students living in poverty, and those for whom English is a second language. The Unintended Consequences of High Stakes Testing unpacks the assumptions and philosophical foundations on which testing policies are based. The authors' arguments are grounded in extensive interviews and research. Through an examination of research, these authors show that high-stakes testing promotes students' dependence on extrinsic motivation at the cost of intrinsic motivation and the associated love of learning—which has tangible impacts on their education and lives. Features: -Examines how high stakes testing from the perspectives of teachers, students, and adminstrators. -Considers how testing impacts the curriculum including tested subjects such as reading, writing, and mathematics as well as non-tested subjects such as science, social studies, physical education, and the arts. -Documents how teachers and administrators engage in test preparation and discusses ethical and unethical test preparation practices. -Reviews the evolution of testing through history and how it mpacts the curriculum. -Examines the differential effects of testing on students with special needs, minority students, students living in poverty, and those for whom English is a second language.




Assessment in the Classroom


Book Description

The goal of all classrooms is to maximize the learning of all students; therefore, correctly assessing what students have learned is an integral part of good instruction. By keeping the goal of good, strong assessment in mind, a teacher can clearly see his or her desired outcomes for a lesson, activity, or unit. It is critical to take into account a student's level of knowledge, understanding, beliefs, skills, dispositions, and learning styles when planning for good classroom instruction and assessment. Carolyn Callahan, a leader in the field of gifted education, guides teachers toward answering these questions about their students and planning for quality classroom assessment. In addition, the book provides an overview of the most common and successful assessment methods, including formal and informal assessments, student self-assessments, and preassessment strategies for planning instruction. This is one of the books in Prufrock Press' popular Practical Strategies Series in Gifted Education. This series offers a unique collection of tightly focused books that provide a concise, practical introduction to important topics concerning the education of gifted children. The guides offer a perfect beginner's introduction to key information about gifted and talented education.




Classroom Assessment and the National Science Education Standards


Book Description

The National Science Education Standards address not only what students should learn about science but also how their learning should be assessed. How do we know what they know? This accompanying volume to the Standards focuses on a key kind of assessment: the evaluation that occurs regularly in the classroom, by the teacher and his or her students as interacting participants. As students conduct experiments, for example, the teacher circulates around the room and asks individuals about their findings, using the feedback to adjust lessons plans and take other actions to boost learning. Focusing on the teacher as the primary player in assessment, the book offers assessment guidelines and explores how they can be adapted to the individual classroom. It features examples, definitions, illustrative vignettes, and practical suggestions to help teachers obtain the greatest benefit from this daily evaluation and tailoring process. The volume discusses how classroom assessment differs from conventional testing and grading-and how it fits into the larger, comprehensive assessment system.




Modern Classroom Assessment


Book Description

Modern Classroom Assessment offers an applied, student-centered guide to the major research-based approaches to assessment in today’s modern classroom. Rather than simply list basic assessment formats with a few examples, as many textbooks do, award-winning professor and scholar Bruce Frey’s book fully explores all five key approaches for teacher-designed assessment—Traditional Paper-and-Pencil, Performance-Based Assessment, Formative Assessment, Universal Test Design, and Authentic Assessment —while making abstract concepts and guidelines clear with hundreds of real-world illustrations and examples of what actual teachers do. Offering a variety of engaging learning tools and realistic stories from the classroom, this text will give any reader a strong foundation for designing modern assessments in their own classrooms.




Inquiry and the National Science Education Standards


Book Description

Humans, especially children, are naturally curious. Yet, people often balk at the thought of learning scienceâ€"the "eyes glazed over" syndrome. Teachers may find teaching science a major challenge in an era when science ranges from the hardly imaginable quark to the distant, blazing quasar. Inquiry and the National Science Education Standards is the book that educators have been waiting forâ€"a practical guide to teaching inquiry and teaching through inquiry, as recommended by the National Science Education Standards. This will be an important resource for educators who must help school boards, parents, and teachers understand "why we can't teach the way we used to." "Inquiry" refers to the diverse ways in which scientists study the natural world and in which students grasp science knowledge and the methods by which that knowledge is produced. This book explains and illustrates how inquiry helps students learn science content, master how to do science, and understand the nature of science. This book explores the dimensions of teaching and learning science as inquiry for K-12 students across a range of science topics. Detailed examples help clarify when teachers should use the inquiry-based approach and how much structure, guidance, and coaching they should provide. The book dispels myths that may have discouraged educators from the inquiry-based approach and illuminates the subtle interplay between concepts, processes, and science as it is experienced in the classroom. Inquiry and the National Science Education Standards shows how to bring the standards to life, with features such as classroom vignettes exploring different kinds of inquiries for elementary, middle, and high school and Frequently Asked Questions for teachers, responding to common concerns such as obtaining teaching supplies. Turning to assessment, the committee discusses why assessment is important, looks at existing schemes and formats, and addresses how to involve students in assessing their own learning achievements. In addition, this book discusses administrative assistance, communication with parents, appropriate teacher evaluation, and other avenues to promoting and supporting this new teaching paradigm.




Knowing What Students Know


Book Description

Education is a hot topic. From the stage of presidential debates to tonight's dinner table, it is an issue that most Americans are deeply concerned about. While there are many strategies for improving the educational process, we need a way to find out what works and what doesn't work as well. Educational assessment seeks to determine just how well students are learning and is an integral part of our quest for improved education. The nation is pinning greater expectations on educational assessment than ever before. We look to these assessment tools when documenting whether students and institutions are truly meeting education goals. But we must stop and ask a crucial question: What kind of assessment is most effective? At a time when traditional testing is subject to increasing criticism, research suggests that new, exciting approaches to assessment may be on the horizon. Advances in the sciences of how people learn and how to measure such learning offer the hope of developing new kinds of assessments-assessments that help students succeed in school by making as clear as possible the nature of their accomplishments and the progress of their learning. Knowing What Students Know essentially explains how expanding knowledge in the scientific fields of human learning and educational measurement can form the foundations of an improved approach to assessment. These advances suggest ways that the targets of assessment-what students know and how well they know it-as well as the methods used to make inferences about student learning can be made more valid and instructionally useful. Principles for designing and using these new kinds of assessments are presented, and examples are used to illustrate the principles. Implications for policy, practice, and research are also explored. With the promise of a productive research-based approach to assessment of student learning, Knowing What Students Know will be important to education administrators, assessment designers, teachers and teacher educators, and education advocates.