Barry White Jr. 11/23/12 Elementary Curriculum Assessment Mrs.

Wright
Assessment Inventory

I have observed Ms. Kennedy teach two lessons, one was on fact and opinion and the other was on Reading comprehension as far as the main idea and key topics found in the passages. For both lessons Ms. Kennedy used commercially based assessments. In the fact and opinion lesson Ms. Kennedy used formative assessment after teaching a mini lesson she handed out a commercially made teacher worksheet with questions asking which sentence is either a Fact or opinion statement. Ms. Kennedy handed this out to the entire class going from row to row. She handed it out after doing a quick review that lasted approximately 15mins on fact and opinion, using the smart board and PowerPoint presentation in doing her mini lesson. The worksheet had 15 questions on it and was a selected response assessment of binary choice (true and false). This was an objective test where a single correct answer is identified for each item and scoring is simply a matter of checking to determine whether the correct choice was made. The teacher collected the test after giving students 15mins to take the pop quiz and used the data to determine if the students was grasping the information in their long term memory based on how much days the lesson had been covered. Ms. Kennedy used a summative assessment in her lesson on comprehension. The teacher had went over different reading comprehension topics such as main idea, inferences, predicting, summarizing and etc and Ms. Kennedy wanted to test the students on how much they learned from the unit. This is also known as cumulative assessment, Ms. Kennedy told the students to put

away their notes and only leave out one pencil. She than instructed one of the students to make sure everyones pencil was sharpened before starting the test. In this test Ms. Kennedy used selected response in some multiple choice questions, also she used brief constructed response items such as short answer questions and Show your work. Ms. Kennedy gave the class 45mins to complete the end of the unit exam, there was no talking during the exam and everyone was to keep their eyes on their own paper. Ms. Kennedy would often let the students know how much time they had left in increments. Ms. Kennedy liked to use timers when she gave the students a timed test or quiz and had her timer set to buzz when the students time was up. When the buzzer ring Ms. Kennedy told the students to put their pencil downs and she collected the test. Ms. Kennedy used these test to determine how far the students had grew from the pre-test she gave at the beginning of the unit to determine the students zone of proximal development. She compared the two tests to each of the students scores individually and modeled her reflective lesson plans after what the majority of the class was struggling in and scheduled someone one conference with the students to further help them with what they had struggled with on the test. My reaction to the test was I thought it was a very structured and good idea to give some formative assessments to make sure the teacher wasnt losing the students as the lesson were going on and be able to alter her teaching method or lesson according to if the way the information was being presented was reaching the students or not. I also feel formative assessments go hand and hand with reflective practicing because it gives the teacher an opportunity to change what isnt or working or tweak what is working. The end of the unit assessment also known as the summative assessment gives the teacher the full view of who has been learning and if the information was being transferred into their long term memory or if it

only was being transferred into their short term memory. And this can measure how effective the teacher skills are in teaching and believe this was a good assessment and the type of questions Ms. Kennedy used were correct.