MOVING TOWARD AUTHENTIC ASSESSMENT

MOVING TOWARD AUTHENTIC ASSESSMENT

1.      Alternative assessment consists of any method of finding out what a student knows or can do that is intended to show growth and inform instruction.

2.      Assessment is used for at least six purposes with ELL students:

A.    Screening and identification

B.     Placement

C.     Reclassification or exit

D.    Monitoring students progress

E.     Program evaluation

F.      Accountability

3.      Authentic assessment is to describe the multiple forms of assessment that reflect students learning, achievement, motivation and attitudes on instructionally-relevant classroom activities.

4.      There are some characteristics of performance assessment:

A.    Constructed response

B.     Higher-order thinking

C.     Authenticity

D.    Integrative

E.     Process and product

F.      Depth versus breadth

5.      There are some types of authentic assessments; oral interview, text retelling, writing samples, etc.

6.      The form of assessment used for both standardized testing and classroom assessment for as long as most educators can remember is the multiple-choice test.

7.      Alternative assessment is criterion-referenced and typically authentic because based on activities that represent classroom and real-life setting.

8.      Characteristics of student performance that should be considered in authentic assessment:

·         Constructed Response: The student constructs responses based on experiences he or she brings to the situation and new multiple resources are explored in order to create a product.

·         Higher-Order Thinking: Responses are made to open-ended questions that require skills in analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.

·         Authenticity: Tasks are meaningful, challenging, and engaging activities that mirror good instruction often relevant to a real-world context.

·         Integrative: Tasks call for a combination of skills that integrate language arts with other content across the curriculum with all skills and content open to assessment.

·         Process and Product: Procedures and strategies for deriving potential responses and exploring multiple solutions to complex problems are often assessed in addition to or in place of a final product or single-correct-response.

·         Depth in Place of Breadth: Performance assessments build over time with varied activities to reflect growth, maturity, and depth, leading to mastery of strategies and processes for solving problems.

9.      Six purposes of assessment to English Language Learning students:

ü  Screening and identification

ü  Placement

ü  Reclassification or exit

ü  Monitoring student progress

ü  Program evaluation

ü  Accountability

10.  Definition of Authentic Assessment

 Evaluation process that involves multiple forms of performance measurement reflecting the student’s learning, achievement, motivation, and attitudes on instructionally-relevant activities. Examples of authentic assessment techniques include performance assessment, portfolios, and self-assessment

§  Constructed Response: The student constructs responses based on experiences he or she brings to the situation and new multiple resources are explored in order to create a product.

§  Higher-Order Thinking: Responses are made to open-ended questions that require skills in analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.

§  Authenticity: Tasks are meaningful, challenging, and engaging activities that mirror good instruction often relevant to a real-world context.

§  Integrative: Tasks call for a combination of skills that integrate language arts with other content across the curriculum with all skills and content open to assessment.

§  Process and Product: Procedures and strategies for deriving potential responses and exploring multiple solutions to complex problems are often assessed in addition to or in place of a final product or single-correct-response.

§  Depth in Place of Breadth: Performance assessments build over time with varied activities to reflect growth, maturity, and depth, leading to mastery of strategies and processes for solving problems in specific areas with the assumption that these skills will transfer to solving other problems

11.  Designing Authentic Assessment

§  Approaches to Teaching and Learning

a.       Complex thinking and academic language skills are important components of today’s curriculum, assessment should reflect these emphases. And if students learn complex procedures most effectively when they have oppurtunities to apply the skills in meaning ways. Then assessments should be authentic reflections of these kinds of meaningful learning opportunities

§  Types of Authentic Assessment

o   Oral Interviews:

o   Story or Text Retelling: Student retells main ideas or selected details of text experienced through listening or reading.

o   Writing Samples:

o   Projects/Exhibitions

o   Experiments/Demonstrations: Student documents a series of experiments, illustrates a procedure, performs the necessary steps to complete a task, and documents the results of the actions.

o   Constructed-Response Items:

o    

§  Awareness of Authentic Assessments

The authentic assessment inventory for goal setting. Will assist in engaging others teachers in a dialogue about authentic assessment and in setting personal goals for staff development

§   Designing Authentic Assessments

o   Build a team

o   Determine the purposes of the authentic assessment

o   Spesific objectives

o   Conduct professional development on authentic assessment

o   Collect example

o   Develop the new one

§   Technical Quality of Authentic Assessments

àDemands for the technical quality of assessment focus on reliability and validity

§   Issues in Designing Authentic Assessment: inssues in designing authentic assessment involve the purpose of the assessment, the fairnes and grading

12.  Portfolio Assessment: Portfolio assessment is a systematic collection of work focused on providing evidence that the candidate has gained a progression of skills related to instructional objectives

13.  Characteristics of Portfolio Assessment:

·         Samples of student work. The sample can consist of writing samples, audio or videotapes, social studies report etc.

·         Student Self-Assessment. A portfolio is a unique opportunity for students to learn to monitor their own progress and take responsibility for meeting goals set jointly with the teacher.

·         Clear stated criteria. Students need to know how their work will be evaluated and by what standards their work will be judged. This will help students set goals and work toward them

14.  The Types of Portfolios:

·         Collections Portfolios. Showcase / Display Portfolios: Showcase portfolios are typically used to display a student’s best work to parents and school administrators. The purpose of a display portfolio is to demonstrate the highest level of achievement attained by the student.

15.  Assessment Portfolios: Assessment portfolios are focused reflections of specific learning goals that contains systematic collections of student work, students self assessment, and teacher assessment.

16.  Procedures to establish portfolio assessment:

1.      Setting the Purpose.

o   Matching contents to purpose. Setting criteria.

o   Getting students involved.

o   Organizing contents.

o   Making time for assessment

24.  Communicating portfolio results.

25.  Advantages:

·         Promote student control of learning and self assessment

·         Track student progress

·         Demonstrate individual growth

·         Respond to individual needs

·         Show process and product

·         Show final products

26.  Disadvantages:

·         Requiring extra time to plan an assessment system and conduct the assessment.

·         Gathering all of the necessary data and work samples can make portfolios difficult to manage.

·         Scoring portfolios involves the extensive use of subjective evaluation procedures such as rating scales and professional judgment, and this limits reliability.