Dr. Torres's EDUC 303 Spring Quarter

Which kind of assessment was most difficult to create? Why?  Which one was most easy?  Why?  What was something that surprised you about creating assessments? I think the most difficult assessment to create is the selected response assessment. By this I mean, I find it difficult to word the assessment in terms that do not sound confusing to students and align it with the learning target. My goal is to write questions that are easy for students to answer, while still being able to test the students knowledge, rather than testing their ability to take the test. I think that it can be difficult to come up with the selected response options. My problem is coming up with possible answers that may be too easy. Another problem is to make sure my students are able to pick an answer they know for certain is the best answer and that there is not another option. I have had this issue come up in other classes from other teachers, where there are multiple answers that sound like ...

I think that in lesson planing the part that comes easier to me is coming up with ideas for a lesson, until I start writing it. Then the difficulty comes in when I have to pick what activity I need to have students do. I usually have lot of ideas, but I'm not sure which one would work better or that would be easier of me to teacher and for the students to learn from; I do not want to over complicate it. I also have many issues when coming up with the lesson. For example, I need to consider if the lesson is reasonable for the age group and if it would be interesting. I think that once I pick an activity and I find a standard that matches well with it, then I can find my learning target. From there I break it down into kid-friendly terms, which is easier or harder depending on the standard. I do not generally consider the process difficult once I understand what I am doing, as far as planning the activity, finding the standard and writing a matching learning target. The part that...

The Pros and Cons of Assessment Methods Selected Responses work well with assessing mastery of knowledge and reasoning proficiency; however this method is not good for assessing skills or the ability to create products. A pro is that it makes assessing quick and easy, because it provides a given right or wrong answer, which enables the teacher to quickly observe mostly accurate results that can be expressed in terms of a score as a number. A con is that it is variable to test anxiety and test preparation from the student and the quality of questions from the teacher.  Extended Written Responses work well with assessing mastery of knowledge, reasoning proficiency and works the best with assessing the ability to create products. However, this method is not beneficial in assessing skills. A pro of this method is that it allows the teacher to assess students on larger more complex pieces of knowledge, rather than in selected responses where students are asked to pick from l...