ipts8

Standard Eight | Assessment

**Formal Assessment** Formal assessment is a way for teachers to understand what the students learned and what they may still need help with. Giving an exam is always a way for teachers to judge how well they met each student's needs and how they, themselves, can improve for the next unit. Below I have included my first assessment during student teaching. I chose to give the students an authentic assessment in order to give them the opportunity to show how they learned versus how well they memorized the material. I quickly learned that many of the students were not used to having this type of assessment and struggled to demonstrate their knowledge. Nevertheless, the assessment was a success because students had to recall information and apply it to new situations and they learned how to express themselves.

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**Informal Assessment** Informal assessment is something that is necessary to do every day in order to gauge student understanding and involvement. When informally checking for student understanding, a teacher can simply ask clarification questions, provide a brief, and conversational, review of the previous day, and wrap up the day by asking students to write what the most important idea they learned during the lesson on a sticky note. I have used the above as well as a strategy I learned from one of my cooperating teachers called "stand up to sit down," which requires all the students to stand, provide information learned from the previous day(s), and then sit down until the entire class has participated. This is a great way to hear from all students and to gain insight as to what specific students remember most.

The artifact that I have included for informal assessment is a baseball review game that I created during my pre-student teaching experience with a U.S. history class. It was a great way for students to study and determine what areas they needed to study more or may need further help understanding. Not only was the game a review, but it offered some competition and a reward for studying and learning the material.

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