Assessments

Performance Evaluation

There are many ways to assess students as a teacher.  When I was younger, I would be graded using quizzes, tests, projects, and presentations.  I found projects and tests to be the most helpful forms of assessment as a student.  Of course I hated tests and found them stressful, but I also found them extremely beneficial and an accurate representation of what I had learned.  Projects were also really helpful because they made me think abstractly about what I was learning and apply the concepts myself.  I believe that presentations were the least helpful assessment because I would not really learn anything.  I could have just created a PowerPoint about a topic and put some definitions and pictures in and in the end, not really understand the subject.

I believe that test assessments should be given by the teacher at the end of a unit.  Some teachers give tests at the beginning of a lesson so that they can see how much the students have learned by the end of the lesson.  Quizzes can also be given throughout the lesson to see if the students are learning as the lesson goes along.  Tests usually determine what a student knows or is able to do in an academic area.  Performance assessment measures what someone actually does in a certain activity.  Tests determine student knowledge through questions and essays while performance assessments determine what a student knows through activities that get students involved.  Performance assessments often require higher order thinking.