What to assess and how the assessments will be used effectively
The world today requires that students learn many skills. The action plan will focus on thinking skills that can make students understand the relationship among concepts that seem diverse. This can help the students to fit in the present economy which is highly technological and knowledge based.
Assessment will be done based on abilities such as analysis, recalling, inference, evaluation and comparison. Other skills to be assessed will include collaboration, moral character and teamwork. These skills cannot be measured by use of standardized tests. The assessments will be effectively utilized if alignment is observed in an effective manner.
The teaching objectives and those of the expected learning outcomes will have to be defined clearly for the benefit of the teacher and students. These outcomes and objectives should be aligned with those being assessed. Students must understand them so that they can be able to concentrate on achievement (Edutopia, 2012).
Role of standardized testing in the action plan
Standardized testing in the action plan will be used in assessing the academic progress of students. It will diagnose weaknesses and strengths in the students and put them in different instructional programs appropriate to them. The standardized tests are also important since they can serve the purpose of providing information for the improvement and evaluation of programs. Standardized tests may be inaccurate, biased, limited in measuring ability and achievement but they still play a role in assessment.
Standardized tests will be useful in determining the readiness of children for school, putting students into instructional groups, diagnosing for disability in learning, retardation and any other handicap. It will help decide if a student is ready for promotion, needs to be retained in a grade or should be graduated. Finally standardized tests will help control teaching methods and curriculum content (Edutopia, 2012).
Creating clarity of expectation
Clarity of expectation creates fairness in the assessment process. In order to create expectation clarity the assessor will have to clearly state the assessment rules to the students and what he expects from them.
Students will have to be told the standards they should meet and all the penalties that can result from their failure to meet the assessment standards. In creating expectation of clarity the teacher will have to make clear the learning intentions, relevance, modeling examples, the criteria for success and how to check understanding (Good & Brophy, 2008).
Use of assessment as a learning tool
Tests with short answers and multiple choice questions are not the best or only way that can be used when gauging the ability and knowledge of the students. Assessments based on performance can be incorporated into the standardized tests to increase the understanding of students. Assessment vehicles like presentations and student portfolios are also helpful for learning (Good & Brophy, 2008).
Assessment has many purposes in learning. To the teacher assessment brings feedback about the failure and success of the objectives of teaching. It gives the teacher a focus for the strategies used in teaching when it defines the behavior of learning that the teacher wishes to see (Edutopia, 2012).
Assessment that has been appropriately designed helps to recognize the achievement of students. To the students, assessments create the focal point for student learning. It provides a very clear and understandable definition of skills and content that is expected of the students and may provide organizational models necessary for student learning by providing scoring rubrics or stating the objectives. Assessment also gives students feedback about deficiencies in learning and can redirect students in the required manner (Edutopia, 2012).
Aligning assessments with real-life demands and opportunities
Assessments will be aligned with the opportunities and demands of real life by including in them, projects based on standards and various assignments that demand the application of skills and knowledge from the students. Examples of these include designing a house or examining the quality of water in a pond.
The assessments will have criteria or rubrics that are designed in a clear manner to help create a consistent and fair evaluation of the work of the students and to give opportunities to students to gain from feedback received from peers, teachers and experts from outside (Good & Brophy, 2008).
Tools for evaluating the action plan
Evaluation of the action plan will help to show how effective it is in helping the students to learn. Evaluation of the action plan will be done against the goals and objectives set earlier for the assessment. The teacher will use various tools to evaluate the effectiveness of the action plan.
Different rubrics will be used as tools for evaluation. Among them will be standards and class improvement rubrics, improvement plan scoring rubric and review process guide among others. A typical action plan evaluation rubric will have to answer questions of who the action plan will involve, why the action plan will be used, when it will be used, where it will be used and the purpose for its use (Good & Brophy, 2008).
Action plans are very important in assessments and evaluating them helps to ensure that they are effective and successful in bringing about quality in learning.
References
Edutopia, (2012). How to teach with project based learning: A professional Development Guide. Retrieved from https://www.edutopia.org/
Good, T., & Brophy, J. (2008). Looking in classrooms (10th ed.). San Francisco: Allyn and Bacon.