ASSESSMENT AND EVALUATION PRACTICUM
The following is a summary of key components and resources that will be explored in the ASSESSMENT AND EVALUATION sessions at York. The first step should be to review Growing Success: Assessment, Evaluation and Reporting in Ontario's schools, Kindergarten to Grade 12 (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2010) with your TC and encourage the TC to become familiar with the intent and the language of the document.
1. ASSESSMENT
Make sure that your TC understands that assessment is a continuous process of gathering information about student learning and performance from a variety of sources over time. As part of assessment, teachers provide students with descriptive feedback that guides their efforts towards improvement. Assessment addresses the questions: What do I want students to know? How do I know what they have learned?
The purpose of assessment is to improve student learning by:
- identifying student strengths and learning needs;
- targeting instruction to meet the needs of an individual student or group of students;
- monitoring student progress and performance;
- providing ongoing feedback;
- monitoring program effectiveness/inform instruction, and;
- providing data for evaluation, reporting and instructional decisions.
Explore a range of assessment strategies and tools with your candidate including things such as observation, logs, journals, checklists, conferences, interviews, portfolios and reflections
For candidates in their second placement you can talk with them about how you incorporate self-assessment and peer assessment in your program. You can also talk about how you involve your students in the assessment/evaluation process.
Refer to the assessment planning chart and assessment/evaluation tool kit to support your dialogues with your TC.
2. EVALUATION
Reinforce the concept of evaluation which involves integrating all the information gathered on a student to develop an overall profile which forms the basis for making decisions. The key question in evaluation is WHAT DOES ALL THIS DATA TELL US ABOUT THE LEARNER?
Evaluation involves measuring the assessment data against criteria in order to make judgments about the student’s achievement and the assigning of a value to represent that quality. Evaluation focuses on the students' achievement of the overall expectations
Refer your candidate to the achievement charts in the curriculum documents. The achievement charts summarize the achievement levels and identifies four categories of knowledge and skills. The achievement chart is a standard province-wide guide to be used by teachers. It enables teachers to make judgments about student work that are based on clear performance standards and on a body of evidence collected over time.
The characteristics given in the achievement chart for level 3 represent the" provincial standard" for achievement of the expectations in a given course/grade/subject. Parents of students achieving at level 3 can be confident that their children will be prepared for work in the next grade or subsequent courses. Level 1 identifies achievement that falls much below the provincial standard, while still reflecting a passing grade. Level 2 identifies achievement that approaches the standard. Level 4 identifies achievement that surpasses the standard. It should be noted that achievement at level 4 does not mean that the student has achieved expectations beyond those specified for a particular course/grade. It indicates that the student has achieved all or almost all of the expectations for that course/grade, and that he or she demonstrates the ability to use the specified knowledge and skills in more sophisticated ways than a student at level 3.
Refer your student to the exemplar documents created by the Ministry of Education. These exemplars show characteristics of student work at each of the 4 levels of achievement. The exemplars promote consistency and demonstrate the use of clear criteria applied to student work.
Review how you use rating scales and rubrics with your TC.
3. REPORTING
For students working in their final practicum placement, you can explain how you use your professional judgment to assess and evaluate both what students learn and how well they learn. Share the assessment/evaluation policies and procedures that have been established in your school and/or board. Talk about the process for developing report cards and conducting parent interviews.
