My thoughts on assessment in general are handle with care. This doesn’t mean to curve grades on everything to make students feel good, but minor and major disasters on tests for instance creates disinterest and defeatism. I do like to structure a series of assessments during the unit and in many units tell the students that when they score a higher grade on an end of unit assessment, I will replace an earlier lower grade in the unit. It makes sense as they have reached a better understanding and their grade should reflect that. In Wiggins’s response to 3, I do agree of course that we must be measuring and have that measurement in mind. I think that a teacher with years of experience can easily think of their course as a list of topics that we check off. When a teacher says, “I did similar triangles.”, their intentions are I’ve taught that unit, but the language of that phrase can actually make you subconsciously root the idea that my students “know similar triangles”. Just as with any goal the assessments we create must have a measurable outcome for each student and the class in total. I could use a little more concrete statistical summary in my units. I often don’t reexamine the average scores, and sometimes feel the pressure of completing the course to the point of ignoring collective gaps in a formal way. I will however make note of areas of confusion discovered on an assessment and address these with a follow up lesson or two. As I am typing this I suppose I could build a better structure in Geometry in particular to serve as a redemption moment. Well I’ll put some more thought into this.
