Assessing Students and Texts

Monday
February 18, 2013

How do I assess students for *understanding* rather than memorization?

As I look back at my time in high school, I feel that a lot of my teachers made the mistake of thinking that because I had memorized the material, I had truly learned it. However, once done with the unit and test, the material became a distanced hazed; disappearing almost as fast as my cramming the night before had allowed it to come. I was in advanced classes and did well in them all, but I realized that I wasn't really learning anything. I couldn't apply what I was doing to real life situations. It was not until college when I learned how to study to learn and not study to memorize.

So, as I get closer to my own secondary classroom, I want to learn more ways to incorporate knowledge and understanding into my assessments. Not just ways in which the students have memorized the information to pick choice a, b, c or d on the multiple choice test. Chapter 4 discusses both formal and informal types of assessments that can be implicated in a classroom in order to determine what students have or have not learned. In regards to formal assessment, the books talks about standardized tests for your class.  Here is where my interest peaked. How do I make a standardized tests that enables my students to show there full understanding of a topic. Multiple choice? True or False? A student could have a lucky guessing streak and have a high chance of at least getting a C. When I was in high school, I simply memorized the main points of each lecture and apply those memories during the test hour. Once done, those memories faded away and I continued on with my day to day life. What is the perfect test? Quite a loaded question, I'm aware, but I digress.

I believe the problem of coverage focused learning occurs when students begin to teach toward standardized tests that they are held accountable for. At what point are teachers giving the chance to truly teach so that their students will learn and excel; using that knowledge outside of school and in college? Chapter 4 discusses the penalizing of teachers who do not reach a certain passing rate for their students on the test. Unfortunately, these tests do not necessarily say if students understand the work or not. These tests, again, call for memorization of facts for the subjects of math, science, reading and writing. For the students without the best of memories, they are stuck with remedial classes and failing test grades.