Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Philosophy of Assessment
Cassidy Hennigar
integral component of showcasing how goals and curriculum objectives are being achieved.
Teachers use assessment as an every day tool to retrieve multiple snapshots of their students
understanding of the content and their ability to apply their knowledge in their work.
Assessment is also routinely practiced as an effective way to indicate what the teacher needs to
assessment centers specifically around my students learning process and effectively using
A statement that Herbst and Davies (2016) say that is a strong depiction of assessment
includes “Reporting used to be an event that happened only at set times in a year. Now, in many
process that involves students, parents, and teachers.” (p. 60). This statement beautifully reflects
the notion that the meaning of assessment is continuously changing in the classroom to better
focus on the students learning process and not the end result or mark. This statement also
highlights my strong belief that in order for assessment to be successful, teachers need to include
the students and the parents throughout the learning process. I consider the relationship between
classroom. When this is accomplished, I will be able to create my lessons to reflect my students’
abilities and interests and set my students up for success during assessment.
I believe that when teachers involve students in creating the expectations in the classroom
and the expectations that the teacher will be looking for in assignments, activities, and projects,
students can showcase their true potential because they understand what they need to do and they
had a say in it. Davies (2011) expresses this very well when he says, “When participates are
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invited to be involved and when they choose what and how they are going to learn, the power of
their learning can be astonishing” (p. 106.). I also believe that including parents in my
assessment strategies is very important to maintain that relationship. With the differences in
assessment from when the parents were students to now, they need to understand your
philosophy. Davies (2011) discusses this in the following statement, “Let parents know that you
are continuing to assess all student work, although you may not be responding with a mark or
grade.” (P. 78). As an educator, I will use address this by contacting parents through letters and
through oral explanation at parent teacher interviews. I want my students and their parents to
know that through these assessment strategies, I am focusing on their child’s learning and their
progress.
My future classroom will be an environment that fosters the experience of both success
and failure as a means of learning and growing. My goal is for my classroom to be a place where
students are not afraid to ask questions, share their confusion, and make mistakes. Davies(2011)
discusses this when he says, “Unless students understand that mistakes are essential for learning,
they may not take the risks necessary for it to occur.” (p. 16). The anxiety associated with getting
the wrong answer, and therefore not participating and not reaching out for help when needed,
greatly hinders students learning. For this reason, I believe it is detrimental for teachers to
emphasize how failure is needed for learning to occur and to continuously model this positively
their learning. This essentially drives from my questioning of why does every student have to
create the same thing in the same way? My answer to this, is that they do not. I will give my
students a variety of options when assigning projects and allow them to express their learning in
Running head: PHILOSOPHY OF ASSESSMENT
a way that makes sense to them. My goal in this is to set every student up for success with a fair
means of assessment.
the learning process and to maintain the environment of assessing students to improve their
anecdotal notes, exit slips, portfolios, conferencing, and self-evaluation. When assigning
projects, I want to co-construct checklists with my students, so they are involved in the
expectations. This type of assessment will allow me to see if students understand while they are
doing it and I can see what the students have achieved and what needs work.
When assessing students work, I strongly believe that using descriptive feedback rather
than a mark, reinforces student learning. My individual feedback will allow students to reflect
on their work and enforce a sense of pride and wanting to constantly improve. I want my
feedback to always be framed in a positive and encouraging manner with highlighting the things
they did well and small things they can improve on. Descriptive feedback sets up the students for
success as it allows the students to continuously learn and improve their work. Students should
never be assessment based on one evaluation at one given time, the key to knowing what your
students are truly capable of is “By looking for patterns and trends over time, based on multiple
sources (triangulation) of reliable and valid evidence” (Herbst, S., & Davies, A. 2016, p. 63). I
believe that by allowing my students to have input in their learning, have the choice of
demonstrating their understanding in a way that makes sense to them, collecting data through
observations and using descriptive feedback, over time I will have a true understanding of each
References:
Davies, A. (2011). Making classroom assessment work (3rd ed.). Courtenay, BC:
Connect2learning.
Herbst, S., & Davies, A. (2016). Grading, Reporting, and Professional Judgment in Elementary