Module 2 - Making the Most of Assessments to Inform Instructions Article Reflection

I thought this article about assessing students’ performances was informative. As teachers, we are continuously assessing our students via informal and formal assessments. We need to know our students’ strengths and weaknesses as well as how to improve our instructions so as we meet every child’s need in our classrooms. I agree that there is too much attention on testing and I fear that sometimes I am not collecting data correctly or even using it effectively. My class size increased from 20 to 31 students in the past two years of teaching and collecting/analyzing data scares me this year because of the amount of students and their individual needs and weaknesses has a wide range. I enjoyed reading that Popham and others still agree that formative assessments help with large student gains when used appropriately. I buy sticky notes by the bulk because my students and I use them constantly. My students use them to record their thinking while reading. Also, I use them to record data, their thinking, reminders, etc. However, I am searching for a new method to collect data because I have so many sticky notes and have not found an efficient way of arranging them in a data notebook. I agree with Risko when she explained the design of multimodal assessments. I recently completed a literature review on the “Internet Generation” which included what the students’ elementary teachers are currently teaching. These students need the use of technology throughout their education which means teachers need to utilize and understand technology, also. Overall, the goal for collecting data is to identify our students’ learning conditions and tailor our instructions to meet their needs, so we can promote their highest level of thinking while learning new information.