Information for Parents
Each day, you watch your children walk out of the house and head off to school. Most parents begin to wonder what’s happening at school as soon as the door closes. Why do so many parents wonder? Shouldn’t every parent know exactly what is happening with their children at school? This page is designed to help you understand how your children are assessed when they come to school.
Each day your children are learning new information. This information is part of the district curriculum, which follows the state standards. Throughout every lesson, assessment is taking place, whether it is formal or informal. The easiest way to gauge how well a lesson is going is through informal assessments.
These informal assessments are used only for the teacher’s own information, and they direct further teaching and learning. Informal assessments are not used as a way to obtain grades for students. Informal assessments can range from simple observations of student frustration to questions or discussions between the teacher and students.
Upon the completion of a lesson, it is still important to assess how much of the information the students have obtained. This is typically done with formative kinds of assessment tools. The most common type of assessment after a lesson is homework or future class work. This kind of assessment can be used for grading purposes as well as teacher feedback.
Generally, at the conclusion of multiple lessons or a unit, the students will possibly complete a formal exam (that can be made up of multiple-choice questions, true-false, matching, short-answer, or essay). Students may also be asked to demonstrate their understanding of material through an assessment project. These kinds of assessments are used to show student understanding (grades) and to further indicate areas that may have to be re-taught by the instructor in the future.
In a perfect world, all students would have equal abilities; however, this is not the case in our schools. Students come to school with different background experiences and varying mental and physical abilities. Part of my assessment, for grading purposes, is based upon pretest and posttest of covered material. By testing students prior to actually covering the material, and then retesting them after covering all of the material, I am able to indicate student growth. I also grade based upon effort as well. I expect all students to do their best at everything they do.
Helpful Links:
http://emsc33.nysed.gov/repcrd2004/