Kathy Rheams Chapter 4 Blog

According to our book, "Ongoing Assessments is a term that signals that assessment should be diverse and happening ALL the time." Because of this teachers MUST continually update their knowledge about what students are experiencing in and out of the classroom and what students know and what they can do. It is extremely important for teachers to stay up to date with changes in the school system and in the real world in order for them to be able to assess what students know and what they need to learn. Our book also describes "Classroom Assessments -- which are particularly useful, including day-to-day conversations with students, observations, and reviews of classroom work and classroom test performance." I agree that these assessments are often over looked and therefore students lose out on the learning process because of lack of involvement in class discussions. The more we get our students involved in discussions and hands-on learning the more they will learn and the more they will want to learn.


In the section on "Personal Assessments" I totally agree with the book when it states: "Knowing more about students as individuals will help with teaching and learning in at least three ways: (1) Motivating students by bringing their backgrounds and prior knowledge into classrooms; (2) Helping students to make connections between their lives adn academic texts and concepts; and (3) Guiding students to use their backgrounds and life experiences to critically read and evaluate academic texts and texts from popular culture(mass media, film, music, sports, and the internet)." This is so true when students can relate what they are learning to what they have experienced in life they are more adept to remember the information because they have "experienced" in some form in their life. Experience is the best teacher and when teachers can use life experiences to help students learn it makes a tremendous impact on their learning skills and ability.


"Portfolio Assessment" is a great way to get students involved because it allows them to keep up with all their work, feedback from the teacher and their peers, their own self evaluations, and
notes about their progress from the teacher and themselves as well. This type of assessment allows the students the opportunity to evalute their own work and allows the students to be involved in their own learning process. There are different types of portfolios that can be used like: (1) "Personality Profile Portfolio" this type of portfolio asks students to represent something that they are extremely knowledgable about -- their own personal identity. (2) "Academic Portfolio" which is a collection of students' best work. and finally (3) "Growth Portfolio" which exhibits students' development from an earlier point to a later point. By having students create and keep portfolios of their own work they are more adept to do their best work to keep in their portfolio. I would definitely use portfolios for older students, and they could be used for younger students as well.