I read an article in the Educational Leadership magazine called “Assessment Through the Student’s Eyes”. This article discussed how students should have a part in the assessment process and that assessment should not be used to “sort the winners and the losers” but learn from and pin point the areas of difficulty to determine the how to make all students winners. I thought the article was very enlightening. I thought the idea of students taking part in the evaluation process is so important. I would think it would allow for greater understanding of what is required of them which will also give students a sense of comfort. I was recently asked the question for my end of year evaluation, “what is one area you would like to improve in?” I mentioned that I would like to improve in implementing quality assessments that cover the broad range of content standards to be used in the limited time given as an elementary specialty teacher. I now would like to add to that by creating and implementing assessments that include the students in the evaluation process. I just wonder if this is practical in my situation as an elementary physical education teacher.
I once took a course in advanced motor learning for physical education and the professor asked how many of you actually assess learning. I was surprised to see that not one person raised their hand. These teachers were teaching all year long without evaluating the performance of students or their ability to impact learning. Their response was that time was an issue. I document students learning in everything that I teach, but I find it very difficult to accomplish what I would like to by the end of each unit. This is usually due to the fact that evaluation (especially more advanced and effective assessments including student evaluation) takes time away from teaching, practice, and demonstrations which are essential to learning physical skills. In addition, the time and environment that is expected to be given per week is not regularly given to the teacher and students especially when student are being pulled in many different directions.
I think I do a pretty good job of accomplishing what I need to and still go above and beyond by teaching and assessing learning content in preparation for the next year, but it is still a great challenge due to the actual time given. At times I feel like learning is rushed and I want to give students more practice, but there isn’t enough time to adequately learn the acquisition of skills throughout the year. Lately it seems like more and more is expected of teachers and students, yet time and financial assistance is not given. Just recently our district re-wrote our contract increasing the amount of class sections for specials which will limit our preparation time, as well as, our ability to prepare environment and equipment for different grade levels in between classes or rearrange class periods due to special events that occur each month. I know that time will not change and I have to make the best of what is given. I am however, thinking of ways to evaluate learning more efficiently by creating more user friendly assessment strategies which will hopefully allow time for implementing the articles recommendation by including the students in this evaluation process.
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2 comments:
I think that what you said about the students participating in the creation of the assessments is really interesting. Kids are much more interested in doing well when they have something invested. This is kind of the same idea as when you meet your kids on the first day of school and they create the classroom rules. They try much harder to follow them when they were the ones who created them.
Interesting that you see a lot of teachers not assessing their students. One of my old professor's had a saying that, "assessment drives learning". I think that this is absolutely true, especially nowadays, where most students don't care about anything unless they know that they are going to responsible for knowing the material at a later time. We need to hold these kids more accountable, and the only way to do so is to assess them as often as possible.
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