Carrie Lee's Portfolio
InTASC* Standard 6:
Assessment
SUMMARY OF CONTENTS
EVIDENCE SUPPORTING STATEMENT
- Publication Date: October 31, 2021
- Language: English
“The teacher understands and uses multiple methods of assessment to engage learners in their own growth, to monitor learner progress, and to guide the teacher’s and learner’s decision making,” (CCSO, 2013)
The InTASC assessment standard is about being familiar with a variety of approaches to assess students’ abilities, progress and to tailor activities to encourage growth and engagement in the process (CCSO, 2013).
The InTASC assessment standard is about being familiar with what the goal or standard is to be achieved and methods to measure the developmental progress that has been made towards that objective. This knowledge allows for accurate measurement of what is actually being targeted while offering a variety of choices.
In English language arts everything is built on the prior knowledge (Common Core State Standards Initiative, 2010). It is an subject of constant multifaceted expansion of information. Assessment therefore can get tricky, and can be easy for summative assessment especially, to limit choices to make easier grading.
Assessment in a subject area like English can also feel intrusive and grading can be taken in a personal way. In designing a summative assessment for a unit on literary analysis of symbolism in a creative response unit I offered developmentally appropriate freedom of choice in the creative response unit ideas list, allowing students to create and receive validation for that effort to aid in “building essential confidence and self-esteem in adolescence” (Ormrod, et. al., 2019). This particular assessment was initiated during remote learning, taught over Zoom and in Canvas. The lead up of Canvas discussions, and instruction primarily given over Canvas for the details of the assessment lead to workshop like class time, multiple analysis discussions, and the first partner project opportunity for the creative elements. I frequently will use live formative assessments during the lesson, as I did in the case of Deep thoughts lesson plan. This serves to keep the students engaged in the learning and allows for more students to respond. This universal design for learning approach gives consideration to a range of ability levels of knowledge, allows for a variety of input and question types, and provides peer scaffolding for even the shiest student with the anonymous presentation of responses (Chardin & Novak 2020). This is only possible thanks to the one-to-one devices provided to students in my school district.
The best example of assessment with a wide variety of choices for method of demonstrating mastery is my creative response unit to teach the students how to apply their understanding of figurative language to analyze the symbolism in a unique stream of consciousness type story called “What I Have Been Doing Lately,” by Jamaica Kincaid (1983). Particularly challenging for the students during the quarantine closure as learning was fully remote, taking place only in Canvas and Zoom. The outcome artifacts (artifact 1), commentary on the unit assessment, and the slides used to illustrate the modeling of the process (artifact 2) serve to demonstrate the comprehensive nature of my ability to accommodate and assess student growth.
Similarly, in my formative assessment lesson using PearDeck, I engage the students throughout the lesson using a variety of prompts and a range of choice options for students to demonstrate their understanding and see the responses of classmates. You can view the coordinating lesson plan and justification as well as outcomes as I utilize these techniques in strategies resource project. PearDeck especially enabled the predictable student engagement and formal results in a virtual environment (artifact 3) from the PearDeck interactive slides. This tool also allows analysis of patterns in student understanding in the moment that could be easily corrected as they occur if needed, this is pattern is demonstrated in slides 6, 7, and 11 respectively.
Both the Summative Assessment and formative assessment are the best representations of the past year of experience, because they represent my own ideas that worked in practice the best, and provided some of the most impactful experiences for my students.
