Assessment

Peer assessment

Peer assessment involves asking learners to use assessment criteria to assess each other’s work. Using it changes the way teachers work and leads to them spending more time on, for example, defining clear assessment criteria, and less time on marking work that is not to standard.

Peer assessment is particularly important in CLIL because it can help the learners to understand what is expected of them. By acting as an audience for a piece of written text, learners start to understand how clearly they need to express their ideas for a third person to understand them. This is particularly important in CLIL, because it can help improve both language skills and subject skills. By experiencing the effect of unclear language, spelling mistakes or confused ideas themselves, learners will be encouraged to use language more carefully to put their ideas across.

Assessment of Learning

The purpose of this kind of assessment is usually SUMMATIVE and is mostly done at the end of a task, unit of work etc. It is designed to provide evidence of achievement to parents, other educators, the students themselves and sometimes to outside groups (e.g., employers, other educational institutions).

Assessment of Learning is the assessment that becomes public and results in statements or symbols about how well students are learning. It often contributes to pivotal decisions that will affect students’ futures. It is important, then, that the underlying logic and measurement of assessment of learning be credible and defensible.”

Teachers have the responsibility of reporting student learning accurately and fairly, based on evidence obtained from a variety of contexts and applications. Effective assessment of learning requires that teachers provide:

A rationale for undertaking a particular.
Assessment of learning at a particular point in time.
Clear descriptions of the intended learning.
Processes that make it possible for students to demonstrate their competence and skill.
A range of alternative mechanisms for assessing the same outcomes
Public and defensible reference points for making judgements
Transparent approaches to interpretation
Descriptions of the assessment process
Strategies for recourse in the event of disagreement about the decisions.”

Assessment for Learning

The emphasis shifts from summative to FORMATIVE assessment in Assessment for Learning. Assessment for Learning happens during the learning, often more than once, rather than at the end. Students understand exactly what they are to learn, what is expected of them and are given feedback and advice on how to improve their work.

In Assessment for Learning, teachers use assessment as an investigable tool to find out as much as they can about what their students know and can do, and what confusions, preconceptions, or gaps they might have. The wide variety of information that teachers collect about students’ learning processes provides the basis for determining what they need to do next to move student learning forward. It provides the basis for providing descriptive feedback for students and deciding on groupings, instructional strategies, and resources.

Assessment for learning occurs throughout the learning process. It is interactive, with teachers:

Aligning instruction
Identifying particular learning needs of students or groups
Selecting and adapting materials and resources
Creating differentiated teaching strategies and
Learning opportunities for helping individual
Students move forward in their learning
Providing immediate feedback and direction to students

Teachers also use assessment for learning to enhance students’ motivation and commitment to learning. When teachers commit to learning as the focus of assessment, they change the classroom culture to one of student success.

Here you can find a ppt presentation with 70 ideas for assessment for learning and a presentation from David Smith with some more ideas.

Assessment as Learning

Through this process students are able to learn about themselves as learners and become aware of how they learn – become megacognitive (knowledge of one’s own thought processes). Students reflect on their work on a regular basis, usually through self and peer assessment and decide (often with the help of the teacher, particularly in the early stages) what their next learning will be.Assessment as learning helps students to take more responsibility for their own learning and monitoring future directions.

Monitoring Metacognition:

What is the purpose of learning these concepts and skills?
What do I know about this topic?
What strategies do I know that will help me learn this?
Am I understanding these concepts?
What are the criteria for improving my work?
Have I accomplished the goals I set for myself?

Teachers’ Roles in Assessment as Learning

The teachers’ role in promoting the development of independent learners through assessment as learning is to:

Model and teach the skills of self-assessment
Guide students in setting their own goals, and monitoring their progress toward them
Provide exemplars and models of good practice and quality work that reflect curriculum outcomes
Work with students to develop clear criteria of good practice
Guide students in developing internal feedback or
Self-monitoring mechanisms to validate and question their own thinking, and to become comfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty that is inevitable in learning anything new
Provide regular and challenging opportunities to practise, so that students can become confident, competent self-assessors
Monitor students’ megacognitive processes as well as their learning, and provide descriptive feedback
Create an environment where it is safe for students to take chances and where support is readily available.