Ideas and information about assessment:
A quick assessment for use in the first week of school
Ray
“Formative assessment is all about ongoing feedback on student ability and mastery. If done well, it shows us how the students are learning so we can adjust our teaching, and it shows students what to work on to achieve mastery or get close to it. In formative assessment homework is used to show students where they are at that moment and what they need to work on to move towards mastery while it shows us where to focus our teaching. However, if we give marks for homework and include those in their final mark, we punish the ones who worked hardest to get towards mastery – the ones who struggled to start with and then slowly got there through hard work, while the ones for whom things come easy can float through with little effort and get rewarded with excellent marks. A recipe for mediocrity?
We need to remember that some students do not need homework, since they get it anyway, some cannot do homework due to life circumstances, and in other cases we cannot be sure if our homework mark was given to the student or the parent “helping”.
Our final goal is student mastery of curriculum which then is reflected as a mark in their report cards. If we assign marks for homework completion and quality and include them in their report cards then we measure something we are not supposed to measure. ”
Fred Schaub
From the BC Math Listserve, Aug 28/09
I found this poem on the wall of a classroom at RL Clemitson Elem. Just thought I’d pass it along – I like how it explains the reasoning behind each of the rubric points. ~ Ann-Marie Hunter
RUBRIC POEM
FOUR POINT RUBRIC POEM.doc