Assessments

Ever since Daniel Schneider brought up the issue of assessing students in this blog post and subsequent posts, it's been big news in the Blogotwittersphere. This is definitely an interesting topic. I have only created one quiz so far while student teaching, and while I do formative (informal) assessments along the way, I don't have much experience with creating summative assessments (those are like quizzes and tests, anything that sums up what students have learned in a formal way). I just wrote my first test for my Algebra II class which they will take next week and we will see how that goes.

The thing is that summative assessments are super important! They send a strong message to students about what you think is important and what you value. You may have been doing cool projects all along, and then on the test you expect students to do procedural type problems. That would be a confusing message. I really have no clue how to align what I value in learning math with my assessments. In fact, I'm still struggling to communicate on a day-to-day basis in class what I want students to learn. There are many aspects of math I want to spend more time on -- non-traditional things that I think will pull in some students who up to this point have hated math and think they're terrible at it. Exploration and discovery-type things. However, I am finding there is a huge time crunch -- too much material to get through in too little time. I've had the discussion with one of my CT's about how the state is pushing down so much more information on students than in the past and there's no way to cover in all -- except in a speedy and sloppy fashion. I could go on here, but I'd like to get back to the question of assessments.

Having to write a test for the Algebra II class is really making me reflect on how I have taught the chapter, and how well I have taught it. There are many many things I would like to improve. It's too late to get into more of this, I just wanted to write down some quick thoughts, which maybe I can expand on later.