Like most other professions, education has its own set of vocabulary and terminology. Some words are common with everyday life while others are more specific to teacher jargon. In my next few articles, I would like to discuss some of the educator terms and words.
The first word that I will define and discuss is assessment. Assessment is the continuous process that is used to examine and increase student learning. During assessment one makes expectations for the learner, creates a device for gathering and interpreting information from the child, and uses the results to make changes to improve learning performance.
Assessment helps determine which concepts are being interpreted well and which ones are not being interpreted well. Teachers may assess students using many different forms and methods. The most common methods of assessing students are by using tests, writing assignments, and formal questioning.
An effective teacher takes the assessment results and uses them to determine and reteach skills that are weak. An ineffective teacher uses the assessment results only for the purposes of determining a grade.
Before assessing students, the teacher must give the children a list of specific objectives that are to be mastered. Students should know what information they are responsible for learning.
In many cases students should be assessed before and after a concept is to be taught. Pre-assessing students lets a teacher gain an understanding of what the student already knows and where the teacher needs to intervene. Post-assessing lets the teacher measure how much the student has gained after instruction.
The most common two types of assessments are criterion-referenced and norm-referenced. A criterion-referenced test has a known criteria to meet. The only person that the student is compared to is himself.
A norm-referenced test is used to determine the criteria. In a norm-referenced test students are competing against other students for rank or for grade.
Reaching the Gifted Assessment and Identification