Assessment

Hello everyone!

I’ve had a great time this summer reading up on authentic assessment tools used in today’s classrooms:  observation, discussion, portfolios, checklists, interviews, learning logs, rubrics, and self-assessments.  Although I often find it difficult to carve out the time for interviews or conferencing with individual students, it seems these special times provide rich rewards in the student’s performance and motivation to further achieve personal academic goals.

What assessment tools are you most likely to use?  How do you most commonly measure your students’ growth in-between benchmark tests? I’d enjoy hearing  from you and what is working for you and your students.

Marshia

Calling all DEN members who have already or will be attending Discovery’s Summer Institutes! We are offering each of you a free classroom subscription to Discovery’s new ThinkLink Assessment. Let us know if you are interested………….also we need to plan a webinar to familiarize everyone with the tool. I would love to hear your comments about assessment in general and what you are currently using.  Thanks, Donna

I am teaching at a teacher institute in two weeks and I was putting together my presentations.  My first title was "Using Technology for Authentic Assessment".  Then I looked at some definitions of authentic assessment.  One of the ones I found was "Assessment that fits meaningful, real- life learning experiences".  Another definition said, "Sometimes called direct or performance-based assessment." They all said something about real-world and/or performance-based.  So, for this institute, the main tool on which I intend to focus is ThinkLink.  Do I have to change the name of the session?  How can I explain ThinkLink as a technology authentic assessment tool? 

Hello again,

I’ve been reflecting on some of the posts I’ve read since I first began participating with you here.  It seems we’re all in agreement that technology has really changed the face of teaching and how we assess our students’ progress.  There’s one glitch, however; where do we find the time to use our new tools and plan successful strategies for their use? 

Although ThinkLink is easy to use and the probes are very helpful, there are teachers at every school who do not seem to be able to create the time to further explore the usefulness of these probes for their students. What ideas do some of you have to bring more teachers on board?

Has anyone in Illinois used the ThinkLink test for 11th graders yet?  If so, are you using it for ONLY 11th graders, or are you letting 10th graders take it as well?

Wow, can you believe it? Summer is almost half over for some of us. As Lynn said earlier…..many high stakes test scores are being released this summer which tens to turn our attention once again to student achievement. Contacts I have tell me that those using formative assessment did indeed make gains toward student, school and district goals.

Allow us to celebrate with you any success you may have experienced by sharing on this blog !!

Calling all Illinois Educators!!!  Rumor has it the ISAT scores are out.  Have any of you seen your results?  Do you have individual student scores, or just AYP status?  I’m just wondering how much impact ThinkLink had.  I have contacted all my schools looking for feedback, so I’ll keep you posted on our little corner of Illinois; but I’d sure love to hear what you are seeing as well.

Lynn

Hello everyone;

As my thoughts begin to turn to the new school year, I’d like to know if any of you have had experience using the ThinkLink probes with your students on an ongoing basis? Are you planning time for this daily? Weekly?  Have you tried using the ThinkLink probes during your computer lab time?  Last year, I had success with this by enlisting the occasional help of our computer lab assistant.  While the class worked on other assignments, we worked together to help students who needed individual help with specific subskills.

Currently, I am planning to use the probes at least twice a week with my second grade students.   I will enjoy "sharing notes" with you!

Hello Assessment fans, my name is Laurie and I have been invited to be a guest author on this assessment blog. I just finished my 11th year in education, all of it in the elementary realm. I have taught first grade, elementary gifted K-5, and I am currently an elementary reading coach and part-time data analyst for our school district. Last year was our district’s first with ThinkLink. One of my jobs is to meet with grade level teams to pull apart the ThinkLink information to look for the many ways these data can help us help our students.

We will give our first ThinkLink assessment of the 0708 school year shortly after our students return in mid-August. The information we get will allow us to create reading/math groups, identify students who need a bit of review, and plan for our after-school remediation. I am eager to hear any suggestions from experienced users.

Greetings Assessment Bloggers:

Yesterday I met with a school new to ThinkLink this fall.  We were talking about the power of the program, and then the discussion turned to teacher buy-in.  They have several teachers who are, quite frankly, tired of having another new thing added that they have to learn and implement.  Other than a show-n-tell to demonstrate how user-friendly it is, how are you experienced folks getting good teacher buy-in?  What support networks are you setting up in the schools?

Lynn Burdick