The Assessment / Evaluation of Students

 Hi everyone! 👋 I hope you are doing well!😊

This week, I'd like to talk about a fundamental factor in teaching, - 'the assessment or evaluation of students'. 

Firstly, assessment is very important, as it provides feedback to the teachers about their teaching and the students about their learning. It's crucial for teachers to know if they are teaching the right way or  whether or not students are learning what they are supposed to be learning and gaining something from it and if there is a way to teach the subject better, or promote better learning. Also, students need to see their results and receive feedback on what they could do better to ameliorate their learning process or notice their mistakes and correct them on their own.

Secondly, there are many ways that teachers use to assess students in the classroom. Usually, the teacher assesses students’ performance during all class activities, mostly through the activation of students during classroom hours, by asking and answering questions, doing class-work and home-work exercises, through tests, projects and the student’s portfolio, where all student's work is collected. 

Here are some of my own suggestions to assess student's learning in the physical and online classroom:

1.Every day the teacher checks student’s homework to see if they have done it or not. Those who have done the homework are evaluated with a ‘plus’, whereas those who haven’t with a ‘minus’. 

2.Sometimes, the English teacher might use a mixture of evaluation forms in order to grade that student with a ‘10’ grade, such as:                                                                                                                           

• The student reads aloud his/her homework to the class and then translates it: one sentence in English, one sentence in Albanian.;                                                                                                                           

• The teacher asks students about the previous lesson: ‘What was it about?; Translate the new words/phrases learned in the previous lesson from English into Albanian or from Albanian to English.’ 

• When asking about grammar, in particular about the past simple tense, the teacher may ask questions such as: ‘How do we form the past simple tense?; For what do we use it?; Give examples.; Why you have chosen this verb tense and not the other tense?; How can we distinguish or understand that this is the correct verb tense?’, etc.

3.Another way of evaluation I'd suggest in the classroom is to allow students for self-assessment. Thus, to give students an opportunity to assess their own learning and reflect on the progress they are making. For instance, I may give students at the end of the lesson some kind of “review activity”, so that they may see the progress they’ve made in just one lesson. For instance, taking the last five minutes of class to ask my students, “What have you learned today?”.  By doing this, students may pick up something they missed earlier. Something else, I could do is also to have some sort of “performance activity about correction and feedback”, like a role play. When students are done, I would end the class with corrections of words or expressions they used incorrectly; things they forgot to say, etc…; or sometimes I would ask students to give their opinion or feedback on their classmates’ performance. I strongly believe that we as teachers should use this way of evaluation more, as this process also helps students stay motivated and interested in their own learning.

Using Technology for Student Assessments

As we all know, technology has changed the way we teach and how students learn. Teachers can now use technology to help with their student assessment.

1.Plickers is a fantastic way to get formative assessment from your students without each student needing a device. The teacher sets up a Plickers account, and prints off a class set of answer cards. The teacher asks the class a question. The students respond by turning their answer card in one of the four directions. The teacher uses a smartphone or tablet to scan all of the student’s cards. Since each card is assigned to a specific student, teachers get real data on who answered the questions correctly and who still needs more review. 

2.Ed Puzzle allows teachers to embed questions and quiz questions aligned to the specific video students are watching. It let’s you know which student have completed the assignment and the grade they achieved. Students can now independently watch a video, with the benefits of the guiding questions from their teacher. This would be great as a station activity or to leave for a day when students have a substitute teacher.

3.Edulastic - An efficient platform and a powerful standards-based assessment tool that tracks student progress on standards mastery, especially for test prep.

4.Classkick - Easy-to-use, real-time monitoring, feedback, and assessment for 1-to-1. It's a great option for teachers who want to go paperless, provide specific feedback, and encourage collaboration among students in 1-to-1 classrooms.

5.Spiral - It's an engaging, easy-to-use tool that supports both formative and summative assessment while allowing for student collaboration.

6.ClassFlow - is a robust lesson creation and delivery tool that helps with assessment. In the hands of a determined teacher, this platform's useful suite of tools can support learning experiences that move from instruction to assessment and back.

To sum up, student assessment is an ongoing continuous and daily activity in the classroom, and it is integral to effective teaching. There are many ways we can use to assess our students both in a physical and an online classroom. However, we should choose carefully as that can not only have a positive, but also a negative effect on our student's motivation, process of learning and their attitude towards us.

That all! Thanks! Hope it helps you!