Week One

After week one I learned a lot about the importance’s of assessments and various kinds. An assessment is the process of gathering and documenting ongoing information of a child’s knowledge, behaviors, skill level, or personality. As future teachers we will use these assessments in our own classrooms and should be knowledgeable on the different types there are. We assess for many reasons like monitoring students’ development and learning, to guide our planning and decision making, and to identify children who may benefit form special services. The cycle of assessment is easy to comprehend in the order of teach, gather and assess student work, interpret evidence and identify outcomes, reflect for change and plan for improvement. With formal assessment being more standardized and comparative of performance, although they can be less useful for day-to-day instruction. While informal assessments are more focused on individual performance of students, it shows their weaknesses and strengths. It can be used day to day which is useful for teachers planning and doesn’t require any grading criteria. After assessing our students, we can reflect on their student’s knowledge to see if our own teaching and strategies are successful or not. In my own classroom I plan to utilize all the key aspects of assessments by keeping communication open with the students’ caregivers for how they are outside and inside of classroom. Document their physical, social, and cognitive growth over periods of time. This can be done by observing them in their own induvial work, group work, and whole class participation. Watching how they develop over the course of the year through projects and portfolios would be one of my favorites.