Assessment Strategies

Assessing student learning is one thing that can be pointed to quickly when a teacher is struggling. I myself am dealing with a teacher who has not assessed my work and I have been in the class for 7 week. How am I to know if I am where I should be? It’s too easy to teach and teach and pour out information and assume the students had soaked it up, when really there is no accountability.

My favorite form of assessment is short speeches. It is far easier to tell if a student has put in the work when they are talking about something. Discussion can help or even be a formative assessment leading up to a speech, but the speech itself is a great way to tell if standards are met. Writing and quizzes are also helpful assessments, but both can be plagiarized or in some way fudged while a speech is just you and your voice.

The toughest thing about assessing a speech is writing a rubric. Some rubrics are far too generic and some are too vague. Specificity is crucial to a good rubric. It should also fit the goals and standards that have been set throughout the unit. I had a rubric that I thought was great until I realized that a student with a great introduction but only a 1 minute speech still got a passing grade. My rubric stressed introduction but not length or development of ideas. I had several students pass with speeches that were barely 2 minutes long, but the rubric is the law in my mind once the students have it.

I will always use writing in my classes, but not so much as a final assessment, that can put too much stress on it and take away from the important part of writing, which is the process. I much prefer having my students get up and talk.