Julie Podorsek

Assessment Assignment
Greenwalt TE407

Assessment Definition:
For this assignment we are looking at assessment. When I think of the word assessment I
instantly think of an assignment, test, quiz, or project. Assessment in my eyes is a way to check
what a student has and has not absorbed of the material that was supposed to be covered.
Merriman Webster defines assessment as making a judgement about someone, I think this as a
grain of truth in this when thinking about assessment from an education point of view. As a
teacher you must pass judgement on each of your students work, seeing if they meet your criteria
or not. A educational reform website defines the term assessment refers to the wide variety of
methods or tools that educators use to evaluate, measure, and document the academic readiness,
learning progress, skill acquisition, or educational needs of students. This I believe is a very
good definition since it covers just how broad assessment can be and how it can take on many
forms in order to properly see a student and their work. The purpose of assessment is to keep
track of the progress of a student in any subject that the teacher believes is relevant to their class
or to life, and to pass judgment on their work fairly and accurately.
Bens Test:
Going over Bens exam shows that each question that is asked focuses on some aspect of
the Federalist Era. It test the knowledge of the whole story throughout the time, as well as the
major players in the time period. Ben does not ask the students too many questions that dig super
deep into the material but at the 8th grade level this is a developing skill. I think the Essay
questions start to give the students a feel for. While students are being assessed mostly on
knowledge the format of the exam does make a student stop and start to put together the facts
they have in their heads. This is a skill and something that is needed in the real world and to be a
citizen, knowing how to write effectively is important in the workplace. Being able to understand
what a question is asking is something that can only help a student succeed, by being able to
make sense of instructions throughout their lives.
The break down for the test was varied with the morning classes achieving much higher
scores than the rest. While this can be accounted to many things like the makeup of students, the
after lunch slump, etc, it should be the goal for each period to achieve highly. I do not have any
problems with breaking down the score as 90-100 being an A and 80 to 90 being a B etc. This is
a spectrum that is well used and well known and it allows a student to have a solid base on which
to understand their performance level and then how to improve. If the scale of grades changes for
each test it would make it hard for a student to clearly understand why they would do better on
one over another. Even if a whole class does poor on the first try, everyone if given to
opportunity for a retake and it is up to the student to pull their grades up and seek extra help.
Learning is in the students hands as much as its in the educators, this combined effort should

help a student learn and then be able to show their knowledge when it comes time for an
assessment, because they want to do well and an educator has supported them.
The first section of Bens test is the chronology section, it gives four things that must be
put in order of when they happened. I think this approach is a combination between skill and
knowledge. It take the skill of chronology and being able to recognize the time line of the era,
and combines it with whether the students know that story. Knowing the story of the era is a part
of knowledge, but being able to puzzle together the timeline is a skill. The four sentences to put
in order are difficult because not all are related. I think this was particularly challenging since it
goes from politics to Native Americans. An assessment like this will give been an accurate look
at how well students looked at the dates and can see the bigger picture of what was going on in
the world at this time.
The next section is the short answer section. The first two questions are more essay style
and mainly test knowledge, students only need to be able to pull the right answer out. The only
thing about this that makes it skill is that it is in the form of short paragraphs, a historian can
have all the best ideas in the world, but if they are not able to communicate them in writing they
are useless ideas. Ben is forcing his students to communicate their answers in a cohesive manner.
The next set of short answer are simply just writing a word or two to prove they know the
answer. All his questions are pretty straightforward and relate to things he talked about in class if
a student was paying attention. This assessment is solid because it is testing knowledge and lets a
teacher know if students learned the basic facts or not.
The next two sections are cause and effect. This method of testing knowledge is very
good about diving into the brains of students and making them think critically. Thinking
critically I believe would be considered a skill. Being able to think about an event and
understand the effects is not just a great historical skill for understanding why things happen, it is
a life skill also. These sections would not be able to be answered correctly without the base
knowledge they should have acquired about the Federalist era.
The last section of the test is the matching of federalist verses republicans. This is an
interesting approach to take on this exam since it is testing something that is very narrow.
Knowing the traits of the two parties is something that is important but it is heavily knowledge
based and does not get allow Ben to know clearly is they understand the difference because
guessing between two options ( F or R) is a 50/50 chance of getting it right. It might have been
smart of Ben to ask this in a short answer format asking students to list traits of each party.
Bens Project
This project is a chance for you to explore a topic in the Federalist era more deeply. The
research you do can be presented in many ways, but for this project I would like you to create a
power point. The goal of this power point presentation will be to teach the class about the topic
you have researched about the Federalist era. A power point is a set of slides that contain a
variety of text, media, audio clips, and other forms of media. These slides are generally
connected by a theme and are used to help keep attention, give examples, and project
information to a large number of people. Power points are most commonly found in lectures,

presentations, and business meetings. It is important to keep the information presented on the
slides short and interesting in order to keep the attention of the audience.
While a lot of information can be presented using power point it is important to
remember that your voice is an important tool to keeping the attention of the class, and making
your presentation interesting and engaging. Make sure you DO NOT JUST READ YOUR
SLIDES to the class. It might be helpful to write up note cards with additional information to
help you while presenting. Make sure to keep your presentation under 2 minutes.
Content: 25pts_______Each slide has accurate and relevant information that focuses on the
topic and helps to contribute to the overall topic of the presentation.
Slide Creation: 10pts________The slides are all connected and there is a sense that they fit
together and move smoothly from one topic to another.
Media: 5pts________Any images, clips or audio all help to enhance the presentation. They are
all relevant and appropriate.
Presentation Skills: 5pts______The presenter does not simply read the slides to the class, they
speak to the class and loud enough for the class to hear as well as displaying some confidence in
the material being presented.
Mechanics: 5pts_______ The presentation is in Final Draft Form meaning that the information
has little to no writing errors and all of the text is written in the presenters own words

Bens Students Work

Student Zs Work
One of Zs strong spots on this exam is their knowledge of the chronology of the time. Z
showed this in the first section but also in the first cause and effect section. Z was able to see the
effects of certain events and know what happened because of them this involves a higher level of
thinking then vocab. One of the things the student struggled with the most was knowing the
differences between the Federalists and Republicans. This challenge really hurt Z on the initial
exam, but on the retake they were able to rectify it and write out the differences between the
parties. The test was a much better indicator of the knowledge that student processes. The project
Z turned in was simply key words pulled from the book. Even explaining some of the words does
not prove or show the full or lacking extent of how much the student has learned. The project
does not even help to show if the student understands all the key words they choose. If the
project had required the student to be more in-depth it might have been a better help for a teacher
to see what had been picked up in the lessons. To be able to properly assess an assignment an
instructor needs to be able to pull as much out of her students as possible. In this case I believe
that the test does a much better job of showing areas needed for improvement. This is the case
because the test is asking students to answer questions about specific things. If a student lacks
knowledge in this area then it means they answered wrong, and that shows blatantly. For Bens
project, a student in Bens class can pick to do a project on any subject, most students will pick a

subject they are comfortable in and stick to that. It would be very hard with Bens project rubric
to be able to see areas a student is struggling in because it gives so much freedom to the student
to choose something they are comfortable in. After the student has received their final score on
their test, I would offer time outside of class to sit down and go over it with them so they could
see where they errored. On top of that I would give the opportunity to take the test home and
correct it on their own. If students are able to correct all of their wrong answers and return to me
a correct test, I would give points back. Knowing the information and being able to work through
a question and then find and fix a question is important. The grade a student receives should
show what a student knows but if a student is willing to take the time and learn the material, even
after the fact, it is still a valid assessment since they are learning the material.
Student Z I loved the different use of fonts, how your poster was set up, and how each of
the words related to our chapter. This was a nicely focused project. In your written explanation
you wrote that you picked words you thought were important from the chapter, I wish you would
have expanded on why those words were indeed important. Another thing to think about for
future projects is that your project is your chance to show how much about the chapter you know
Next time please write a sentence or two defining each word in your written explanation.
When teaching this lesson next, I may want to spend a little bit more time on giving nice
concrete explanations of the federalists and republicans. This is something that Z really struggled
with the first time through. The use of a T chart used several times throughout the unit could help
drill in the differences in the political parties. I would not want to over emphasis vocabulary at
the expense of other information but it think more focus on key words would have helped Z be
able to make more connections and know how things fit together. This would have helped Z
succeed in the second set of cause and effect also. As a whole student Z seems to have the overall
picture of the Federalist Era but lacked some of the basic knowledge in key terms.