Teaching Through The Arts

This is an excerpt on defining authentic assessment from eduplace.com : Authentic assessment refers to assessment tasks that resemble reading and writing in the real world and in school (Hiebert, Valencia & Afflerbach, 1994; Wiggins, 1993). Its aim is to assess many different kinds of literacy abilities in contexts that closely resemble actual situations in which those abilities are used. For example, authentic assessments ask students to read real texts, to write for authentic purposes about meaningful topics, and to participate in authentic literacy tasks such as discussing books, keeping journals, writing letters, and revising a piece of writing until it works for the reader. Both the material and the assessment tasks look as natural as possible. Furthermore, authentic assessment values the thinking behind work, the process, as much as the finished product (Pearson & Valencia, 1987; Wiggins, 1989; Wolf, 1989). (A comment from Jeff: this last sentence really resonates with ...

It may be important to define some terms as we continue to discuss assessments. The following definitions are from the article Formative and Summative Assessments in the Classroom by Catherine Garrison and Michael Ehringhaus. Summative Assessments are given periodically to determine at a particular point in time what students know and do not know. Many associate summative assessments only with standardized tests such as state assessments, but they are also used at and are an important part of district and classroom programs. Summative assessment at the district/classroom level is an accountability measure that is generally used as part of the grading process. Formative Assessment is part of the instructional process. When incorporated into classroom practice, it provides the information needed to adjust teaching and learning while they are happening. In this sense, formative assessment informs both teachers and students about student understanding at a point when timely adjustments ca...

The line "Versatile teachers encourage many forms of expression" taken directly from the Massachusetts Learning Standards should lead many of us to examine our teaching practices. Are we, in fact, allowing our students to express themselves in many different ways? By extension, are we using various forms of assessment that tie into the multiple intelligences? Or is it always the same? Quiz. Test. Quiz. Test with an occasional paper thrown in? Are we gearing our assessments just to those students who do well linguistically and mathematical/spatially? What about those students whose intelligences are stronger in other areas? Does it mean they haven't mastered the concepts if they do poorly on a test? Can't they show their mastery in other ways? The answer is yes, and it is our responsibility as educators to use multiple forms of assessment, so we can authentically assess our student's progress.