Assessment, both formative and summative

Assessment as a Way for Teachers to Learn

It is crucial that you raise the notion of assessment as a way for a teacher to learn more about how the pupils respond to the instructional choices. Teachers can benefit from your example of the summative assessment occurring at the conclusion of a unit since it puts them in a better position to determine how much the students were able to retain. As a type of formative evaluation, I like your suggestion that teachers should keep track of student behavior as the lesson unfolds. This would enable them to adjust their teaching strategies as necessary. Notably, your suggestion on teachers developing a critical thinking about the performance and the product of their design is intriguing. For instance, the teachers should not just be focused on how the lessons, assignments, and activities are structured, but also what they want the students to have achieved in the course of the project (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005).

Using Understanding by Design for Assessments

Using Understanding by Design in both summative and formative assessments will allow the teachers to structure their teaching design to suit the understanding and the ability of the students. Therefore, students can benefit more if the teachers, like you, develop various strategies in which informal assessments are included, so that the students can better grasp what is being taught (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005). By recommending the idea that the teachers should include performance tasks instead of multiple choice questions, you bring up a notion of creating an interesting learning environment for the students, in which the students can reproduce what they learnt. The feedback through both formal and informal assessments like music and artwork will enable the teachers to confirm having attained the goals of the level of understanding the presented information by the students.

Reference

Wiggins, G. P., & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by design. ASCD.