November 9, 2010

David W. Johnson and Roger T. Johnson write about designing group experiences for assessment in their book, Assessing Students in Groups. They discuss the use of simulation as a means of assessing students abilities and learning. After reading about simulation, I realized that I was part of one for my Oral Communication class. For the final to the class, we were put into groups that solved a problem in front of the class and the class observed us, looking for proper characteristics of working groups. I really enjoyed this activity because it put us into the situations we were learning about.

While reading, I got the idea to use this in my future classroom as a way to develop knowledge about problem-solving. There may be many students who come into my classroom with no background in problem-solving and, especially, no experience problem-solving using mathematics. I thought it might be a good idea to learn the general steps a problem-solving group goes through by doing a problem-solving activity that does not involve math first. For example, some students could participate in the 'Winter Survival Situation' and front of the class. The other students in the class would be given detailed observation sheets and the simulation would begin. After the simulation was over, I would lead a discussion with the class about what steps the group took to solve the problem, what roles were apparent in this process, and the techniques the students used to come to a conclusion. The students would be informed of the schemes of problem-solving and it would then be discussed how those compare to solving math problems. Thus, giving the students more of a basis in problem-solving.

I believe the main goal of assessment is to determine if a student has mastered a learning objective. Susan K. Green and Robert L. Johnson write about the processes teachers must involve in to make fair and accurate grading decisions, in Assessment is Essential. The topics they discussed that I thought were most important were, ensuring the quality of assessment given by having a variety of forms and sufficient information, avoiding inappropriate weighting factors, and using criterion-referenced grading systems.

The authors write about the importance of looking at grading with a "purpose to communicate the level of student achievement (295)." I agree with this statement and think teachers should really think about what their information assessment results relate. A teacher may properly align the learning goals with assessment but that doesn't necessarily let on the true information of the students mastery. There are other factors that effect a grade. The teacher may have let the student use their book and notes for the assessment or the teacher may weigh the students grades so that showing up to class is worth 50% of the total grade. Teachers should really focus on expecting the best from their students and giving them grades that reflect their mastery of the learning objectives.

I also believe teachers should focus their grading approaches on relating to students whether they have mastered the learning goal - not whether they have met it compared to other students. I think norm-referenced grading is not an appropriate way to let students know what is expected of them because this type of grading has the appearance that meeting the goal is not the most important goal. Criterion-referenced grading and "not yet" grading are better ways of portraying to the students what your expectations are. That is clearly what is important in developing students that will begin or continue to believe their own growth and development in knowledge is important.