Mrs. Bea's Assessment Strategy

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To provide a range of contexts for assessment to take place, Mrs. Bea uses a strategy described as “creative backwards planning”. First, she determines what skills, attitudes, knowledge or understandings students need to demonstrate. Then, Mrs. Bea will brainstorm a diverse range of engaging ways for her students to show their abilities. Some creative activities Mrs. Bea has used while assessing sight words include students playing a sight word hopscotch game and writing sight words on ping pong ball, then having a student roll the balls, one-by-one, down a slide, students need to read the word on the ball before it reaches the bottom of the slide. Sometimes, Mrs. Bea turns to standard assessments and adapts them in innovative ways to suit her creative needs. Assessment Strategies …show more content…

Bea uses a range of assessment strategies. In relation to scientific concepts, her dominant assessment strategy is to interview students. The goal of this assessment is to determine what the students know. Mrs. Bea is not alone in thinking interviews are a good method to assess students understanding of scientific concepts and phenomena. Puckett and Diffily state their support of the strategy; “interviews with children can provide great insight into how they perceive their world” (1999, p. 135). The teacher aid assists in interviewing students. In contrast, self-assessment using smiley face symbols is used as part of the virtues program to support children reflecting on their behaviour and attitudes. Whereas, during literacy assessments, Mrs. Bea common strategy is an observational checklist on a clipboard. She also keeps running record notes and jottings, a form of abbreviated anecdotes. Furthermore, Mrs. Bea proclaimed mathematics is an excellent opportunity for authentic assessment that gets the children moving. Some strategies she has used include shooting targets with a bow and arrow or nerf gun and solving equations based on the