Evaluating Learning Reading Reflection

Evaluating student learning can be challenging to teachers. I find it difficult to think about how to grade students that work hard, put effort into their, and genuinely try to improve when compared to the student that puts no effort in, but seems to pass with flying colors in classes.There are countless ways to evaluate students and the teacher must decide: Should students be given a test, assigned a project, present a presentation? It is the educators job to figure out what assignment or test and then what type will best evaluate student comprehension.

Although I'm only just beginning my teaching journey (with student teaching starting in January), I find myself struggling at just the thought of how I can evaluate students. I think a lot of it comes from the fact that I was the student who didn't have to study and just did well on tests in most classes. I want to encourage hard work with my students and not allow them to rest on their exceptional test taking skills. To accomplish this, I plan to implement evaluations of all types. I hope to assign projects, presentations, and tests that contain essays and short answers along with multiple choice. We know students learn in different ways and they will perform differently on various types of evaluations. To ensure there is variety in evaluation will give all students a chance to show what they have learned because there will be students like myself that excel at tests, but there will be others that will only excel at projects or presentations.

I found this weeks reading on evaluating exceptional learners particularly interesting (Jung & Guskey, 2010). Mostly, I found it important to keep in mind that you can grade students based on three different criteria: Product, Process, and Progress. It's an interesting concept to me and definitely something educators should keep in mind. Product is very typical in education because it will show a learners knowledge through a test, project, or other assessment focused on comprehension. Process criteria focuses on how students are going through their class and include grades on their behavior or their class participation. Lastly, progress emphasizes how they have developed and improved instead of their just their final comprehension level. I think that all three should be used to assess students depending on the situation. For instance: students will start at different levels in an ag mechanics lab so progress would best be used as the criteria to ensure that students improve, not just achieve a high level of comprehension.

This will be the second time I'm sharing an Edutopia video, but that just shows how much they really have to offer. This video will provoke some thought about how you assess students, whether they are elementary student or high school agriculture students!  They even talk about the importance of reflection (which #psuaged16 is practicing consistently through our learning process). The video reviews the five keys to assessing students which they have indicated as: goals and measures, formative, summative, performance, and student ownership. The video will give me great insight on developing important skills for students through assessments. I recommend checking out what Edutopia has on their site and youtube regarding any topics in education.


Reference: 

• Jung, L.A. & Guskey, T.R. (2010). Grading exceptional learners. Educational Leadership, 67(5). Retrieved from http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/feb10/vol67/num05/Grading-Exceptional-Learners.aspx