Assessment

This reflection has taken me a little while to write, and I wasn't exactly sure why.  I have come to the realization that it is because assessment is something very personal to me and I have long advocated for a more balanced form of assessment that did not privilege one form of evidence over another instead of giving them equal weight.

On a personal note, I am not a great writer. It's not because I was unable to formulate the thoughts or because I couldn't make interesting points, but because it was hard for me to get everything straight in my brain.  It was very frustrating for me to know the material but not get credit (or at least not get enough credit) for the things I knew because I wasn't able to fluff  my way through a ten-page paper. It was very disheartening.

That said, my past experiences with assessment make me very excited that there is triangulation of evidence in place. Now I can give equal credit to the things I hear my students say, and know that I have a document that I can point to in order to support my assessment and evaluation decisions.

Something that Ve said during this class was about professional judgement.  He said that Marbook's job is to record marks but it is his job to use his professional judgement to give a final mark.  That was something that resonated with me and made sense to me because of its simplicity.  I don't have a class of my own, but I think I would feel like I had to give whatever mark my recording system spewed out based on the information that I had input.  Now I know that as long as I have the evidence to back up my decision, I can give my students the marks they deserve based on my professional judgement.

On a different note, I find it interesting that so many of us who went to different teachers' colleges were lead to believe that assessment for learning and assessment as learning were just diagnostic and formative assessment renamed.  I am thankful that Ve made that chart for us and explained it in a way that was easy for me to understand and that made sense. 

One question I have is if assessments, or at least how they are presented, are different based on who the audience is. The chart below is from the Peel District School Board's Growing Success Monograph Series: Evidence of Learning: Conversations, Grade 1-12.  It has a space that indicates a place to check the intended audience.  This leads me to believe that the assessment might be different based on the intended audience. Thoughts?