Curriculum

Tools to Assess Curriculum

Reported by:

Mary Grace Dizon

Lorena Mendoza

Marra Eugenio

Joy delos Reyes

Syndie Jose

Klasika Espiritu

What are Assessment Strategies?

                Assessment strategies are the structures through which student knowledge and skills are assessed. These are:

1.     Paper -and- Pencil testing

2.     Performance based strategy

3.     Observational

4.     Personal communication

5.     Oral

6.     Reflective

7.     Combination of strategies

PAPER-AND-PENCIL STRATEGY

·         Essay

a.     Definition

The essay:

-       Writing used to assess student understanding and/or how well students can analyze and synthesize information;

-       Paper-and-pencil assessment where a student constructs a response to a question, topic, or brief statement;

-       Provides the student with opportunity to communicate his/her reasoning in a a written response.

b.     Purpose

The essay is used to:

-       Assess the student’s ability to communicate ideas in writing;

-       Measure understanding and mastery of complex information.

c.     Characteristics

The essay:

-       Measure student’s ability (e.g., in making comparisons, applying principles to new situations, organizing application, drawing inferences, being persuasive, integrating knowledge and applications, summarizing information);

-       Assess knowledge, reasoning, organization and communication skills;

-       Directly measures the performance specified by the expectations;

-       Includes a scoring which specifies attributes for a quality answers (e.g. conciseness, factual knowledge, connection between argument and supporting facts) and indicates the value associated with each of the attributes;

-       Affords the student a chance to construct his/her own answers, demonstrating creativity and/or originality.

d.     Teacher’s Role

The teacher:

-       Uses professional judgment to develop the problem, question, or statement and scoring of the final product.

e.     Consideration

The essay:

-       Issued to assess separately the student’s ability to communicate ideas, write proficiently and comprehend context;

-       Less time-consuming to construct compared to objective item testing, but can require considerable time to evaluate;

-       is not an effective means of assessing a student’s entire domain of content knowledge, or assessing more than one or two reasoning skills at one time.

·         Select Response

a.     Definition

The select response:

-       is a paper-and-pencil assessment in which the students is to identify the one correct answer;

-       is commonly used procedure for gathering formal evidence about student learning, specifically in memory, recall and comprehension.

b.     Purpose

The select response is to:

-       Test student learning of student/content knowledge (facts, concepts, principles or generalizations, procedures);

-       Assess prerequisite knowledge (e.g. when communicating in a second language, students can be assessed on vocabulary prior to a conversation in that language).

c.     Characteristics

The select response:

-       Can be administered to large numbers of students at the same time;

-       Can be scored very quickly;

-       is stated in clear, simple language.

d.     Teacher’s Role

The teacher:

-       Identifies the format (e.g. multiple choice, true/false);

-       Selects the content to be covered;

-       Designs the question.

e.     Consideration

The select response:

-       is always influenced by the student’s ability to read and understand the items:

-       can utilize computer and optical scanning technology to save time development, item storage and retrieval, test printing and optical scan scoring;

-       Can make it more difficult to determine how the students arrived at an answer with true/false and multiple choices.

THE PERFORMANCE-BASED STRATEGY

The Performance Task

A.     Definition

The performance task:

·         Is an assessment which requires students to demonstrate a skill or proficiency by asking them to create, produce, or perform;

·         May be an observation of the student or group of students performing specific task to demonstrate skills and/or knowledge through open-ended, “hands-on” activities.

B.     Purpose

The performance task is used to:

·         Provide an efficient means of assessment where the skills cannot be demonstrated with a pencil-and-paper test;

·         Enable learners to demonstrate abilities, skills, attitudes, and behaviors;

·         Provide information about a learner’s ability to organize, draw on prior knowledge and experience, improvise, choose from a range of strategies, represent learning, and make decisions to complete a task;

·         Test skills in affective, cognition, psychomotor,  and perceptual domains.

C.    Characteristics

The performance task:

·         Can be diagnostic, formative of summative assessment;

·         Uses ongoing feedback;

·         Allows most learners to participate successfully in varying degrees;

·         Provide opportunities for learners to work individually, as well as in small groups;

·         Focuses on the process as well as the product;

·         Provides contexts that have relevance to the students (MY ENHANCE MOTIVATION S students work on “real tasks; tasks are meaningful, “real world” applications);

·         Provides the most realistic assessment of job-related competencies;

·         Includes tasks such as painting, speeches, musical presentations, research papers, investigations, athletic performance, projects, exhibitions, and other product that require students to construct a unique response to  task.

D.    Teacher’s Role

The teacher:

·         Observes the student or group of students performing a specific task;

·         Shares with the student the responsibility of developing and organizing the performance task, and setting assessment criteria;

·         Assign a level of proficiency based on performance.

E.     Consideration

The performance task:

·         Provides an excellent  way to assess reasoning skills

·         Must have clearly defined criteria for assessment

The Exhibition / Demonstration

A.     Definition

The exhibition/demonstration:

·         Is a performance in which a student demonstrate individual achievement through application of specific skills and knowledge;

·         Is used to access progress in tasks that require students to be actively engaged in n activity (e.g. performing n experiment)

B.     Purpose
The exhibition/demonstration is used to:

·         Allow students to show achievement of a skill or knowledge by requiring the student to demonstrate that skill or knowledge in use.

C.    Characteristics

The exhibition/demonstration:

·         Is either an actual situation or a simulation (emphasis in a simulation is upon mastery of the fundamentals of the knowledge/skill);

·         Is often used in Arts;

·         Is accompanied by a list performance attributes as well as the assessment criteria, which should be determine prior to the demonstration ;

·         Is frequently organized in assessment stations where the stations are used toy test a variety of skills (e.g., basketball circuit-jump shot, set shot, dribble round pylons).

D.    Teacher’s Roles
The teachers:

·         Assesses how well a student’s performs a practice, behavior or skill.

F.     Considerations

The exhibition /Demonstration:

·         May be interdisciplinary;

·         May require students initiative and creativity;

·         May be a competition between individual students or groups;

·         May be collaborative project  that students work on over time;

·         Should be constructed and administered in a manner which is equivalent for all students (e.g., all candidates in a music demonstration play the same piano).

(Source: Teacher Companions curriculum Unit Planner April 16, 2001.)