Assessment in Math

"Everybody is a genius.  But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing it is stupid" - Albert Einstein

The way in which we conduct assessments in schools is one of the many ways the education system has changed in the 21st century.  Measuring a child's intelligence strictly by their ability to hand in a piece of work that has robust guidelines is an outdated and ineffective way to measure student success.  What about the student who is intelligent, but not engaged?  The student who excels in one subject area, but not another?  The student who has great work ethic, but marks do not reflect this.  This form of assessment does not take into account a wider range of student skills and promotes the tragedy of lost potential in students.

The way in which I have seen math assessment conducted highlights this change in assessment through the emphasized importance on work habits and learning skills.  It is not the outcome that matters, but rather the process to promote assessment of and as learning.  This is especially important for the student whom you have no work collected for.  Keeping a record of anecdotal assessment notes is imperative to understand where the student excels, struggles and will help to determine where to go next in order to create sufficient evidence for their report card.

Getting students to understand that mistakes are good as they provide learning opportunities has also become pivotal in student learning.  Students who show reflection and growth during these moments are engaging in a higher level of thinking.  As teachers, we should be encouraging our students to learn from each mistake.  This was shown in the video of "My Favourite Mistake."  In this, a teacher took the opportunity during a bell challenge to pinpoint mistakes and take them up with the class.  To make this effective, the work should remain anonymous so that students can feel comfortable and further, not shame these mistakes, but state what you loved that they did right and explain how the mistake led to further learning.  Such skills are important as a stepping stone for students to achieve success in their educational careers.

It is of course still important fof students to realize the importance of handing in work, however marks are not and should not be the most important aspect in child education.  This idea is highlighted brilliantly in Sal Khan's Ted Talk Let's Teach for Mastery not Test Scores.  In this talk, he discusses how test scores are used inappropriately- we teach, we test and then we move on irrespective of the students not all understanding the unit fully.  But how do we ensure that every student understands the material fully without spending too much time on it and not fulfilling the rest of the curriculum?  Through observations and anecdotal records and summative assessment!  Unit tests are not the best means of understanding student ability.

There are, what seems like a thousand, ways to assess student's ability.  If a student is not performing well on tests and as previously stated, not handing in work, the teacher mst elicit information about that students learning.

   Above all, teachers need to ensure they are providing students with ample opportunities to show their learning and understanding in a variety of ways.  Differentiating you instruction as a teacher may be one of the most important roles to encourage student success.  Provide modifications to students who are in need so that they can show their understanding in a way that better fits their learning.  Recognize lags in student learning and find a different approach so that student can show their ability.  This math class has highlighted the importance of all these methods to ensure students are not getting left behind, which ultimately will have a profound impact in my own teaching strategies and assessment strategies in the future.