In looking at the information in the NCTM and Stylianou readings for this week I gained a lot of good incite about assessments. Overall, the NCTM reading summarized different ways of assessing student work including more formal tests and quizzes, as well as informal documentation of observations. What I liked most about this article is that it gave me brief listings of when an informal or formal means of assessment might be useful, as well as ways those methods of assessment can be improved to maximize the benefits of the student. It’s no secret that tests and quizzes aren’t student’s most popular choice of assessment, but that comes as part of the requirements of being a teacher. I really like the suggestion to have students explain their answers in multiple choice or true or false tests so that teachers can have a better idea of what a student knows, rather than what they don’t know.
In Stylianou’s article, the importance of allowing students to explain their answers was also brought up. The article pointed out that, “Students’ explanations reveal aspects of students’ mathematical understanding and misunderstanding hat are invisible when only the final answer is reported.” This quote made me think immediately of students who are referred to special education because of their low test scores. So often teachers who refer that student might think he/she is incapable of doing the work or isn’t smart enough to follow the general education curriculum, when in reality it may just be a misunderstanding with the wording of a problem. If we allow students to explain their thinking we as teachers are being given an incite into the minds of the students so we know where misunderstandings exist and how we can help clear them up. “Silver, Kilpatrick, and Schlesinger (1995) commented that by sharing their thoughts and solutions, students not only learn from one another but can also help one another refine their views and improve their own understanding.” As teachers, we can use student explanations to help other students since we are able to see the type of prior knowledge that we could build from to make connections to a new topic.
The type of assessments I have been used to in my own schooling are usually formal tests or quizzes at the end of a unit. In third grade, my teacher often gave us what she called, “Practice Tests,” at the end of every unit. We would each take a paper and pencil test but we didn’t put our names on the top. Then, the teacher would collect the tests and pass them out randomly to other students. We would each have to grade our peers tests and explain why we thought wrong answers were wrong, or why we thought right answers were right. We put on our name on those tests and my teacher would read our responses to better understand topics that needed to be covered in more detail before the real test. I had always disliked this as a student because it was so time consuming, but now as a teacher I can see how beneficial this type of assessment was for all of us as students.
