Week 1 Reflection

During Week 1 of ELEC 316, I gained a wealth of knowledge about the importance of assessment and the different types involved in the early childhood classroom. In my own words, assessment in education is observing children, recording their progress, and making critical decisions based on their development that influence teaching instruction. As a future teacher, I appreciate the use of assessments, but I also understand that not all assessment types effectively measure student thinking and learning. 

In my future classroom, I plan to use assessments to measure student progress and inform my teaching practices. While formal assessments are useful in that they assess the performance of one student in relation to another student's performance, I’m more drawn to informal assessments. Informal assessments are low-stakes assessments created by the teacher and used to gauge individual performance. A few informal assessments that I’m excited to use in my future classroom include project-based assessments (e.g., group posters), portfolios, and observations. These assessments allow for feedback which in turn allows students and teachers to reflect and grow in their learning and teaching, respectively. Throughout Week 1 of instruction in Developmental Formal and Informal Assessment I also learned about traditional and alternative assessments and how I hope to use them down the road. Traditional assessments are norm-referenced while alternative assessments are focused on the child’s level of understanding and skills. The latter is more appealing to me because there is more of an opportunity for learning through real activities and in real settings. I’m looking forward to administering performance assessments that allow students to show their learning through a variety of skills and dynamic assessments which emphasize the potential of students through instruction.