Ways to Assess Students

This is a great article for any teacher looking to understand the meaning and purpose of assessment. The author tells of four different types of assessment: diagnostic, formative, summative ... See More

This is a great article for any teacher looking to understand the meaning and purpose of assessment. The author tells of four different types of assessment: diagnostic, formative, summative and confirmative and also describes the number and types of questions that would appear on each type of assessment. Additionally, for teachers looking to expand their repertoire of questions used on assessments, the article mentions the sample test questions written by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) that provide examples of higher order thinking questions. A great article for teachers wanting to truly assess their students' learning to purposefully guide instruction.

Assessing Understanding Through Questioning

This article discusses the need for ongoing assessment in the classroom. The authors describe the cycle of assessment and the importance of including all forms of assessment in lesson plann... See More

This article discusses the need for ongoing assessment in the classroom. The authors describe the cycle of assessment and the importance of including all forms of assessment in lesson planning and presenting. Moreover the author discussion the need to ask higher order questions and offers NAEP examples of "probing questions". Probing questions consist of "choice explain," "advantage disadvantage," "interpretting data questions," and "experimental design" questions. Examples were provided for each. Overall this is a very thorough article that offers insight and examples into how to ask higher-order thinking questions to assess to student understanding. Highly recommended!