Chapter 4
Specific Student Assessment Techniques

Introduction

Methods of Organization

• Assessment Stations
• Individual Assessments
• Group Assessments
• Contracts
• Self- and Peer-Assessments
• Portfolios

Methods of Data Recording

• Anecdotal Records
• Observation Checklists
• Rating Scales

• Written Assignments
• Presentations
• Performance Assessments
• Homework

• Oral Assessment Items
• Performance Test Items
• Extended Open-Response Items
• Short-Answer Items
• Matching Items
• Multiple Choice Items
• True/False Items

Organization of the Technique Descriptions

Descriptive Headings

• Description
  A brief description of each technique is provided. It is particularly useful in cases where you are not familiar with the technique or where you know it by another name.

• Evaluation Context
  Here suggestions are made as to how, when, where, and why the technique is used most effectively.

• Using Technique to Best Advantage
  Under this heading you will find some pointers on how the technique is best used within a total evaluation plan.

• Guidelines for Use
  This section describes how to develop and use the technique.

• Example
  Wherever appropriate, an example is given. This may be a sample item or a specimen grid. The examples are chosen to provide clarification and to illustrate the ideas presented in the text.

• Using the Information for Student Evaluation
  This section indicates how the information that you have gathered can be transformed into evaluative data on your students' progress.

• Hints
  Useful information, advantages, and disadvantages of the technique are provided.

• Variants
  Variations, adaptations, or expansions of the basic technique are offered in this section.

Methods of Organization

• Assessment Stations
  Assessment stations refer to areas designated by the teacher that are used specifically for assessment purposes. These areas may be located inside or outside the classroom.

  A teacher may decide to use assessment stations to have students demonstrate a skill, make observations, or manipulate materials. The teacher may observe and keep records of student performance, or students may work through assessment stations, recording their work in a written format.

• Individual Assessments
  Individual assessments focus on individual student progress. Assessment activities constructed by the teacher are completed individually by the students.

  Teachers may wish to have students work individually on written assignments, presentations, or performance assessment tasks in order to assess individual progress.

• Group Assessments
  Group assessments focus on the progress a group of students has made by cooperating and collaborating to complete assessment activities organized by the teacher.

  In order to assess social skills and cooperative learning processes, teachers may decide to have students complete written assignments, presentations, or performance of skills and processes in groups.

• Contracts
  A contract refers to an agreement between a student, or a group of students, and a teacher regarding what activity will be undertaken, who will do it, how it will be done, when it will be completed, and how it will be evaluated according to the criteria established.

  Contracts can be organized on an individual or a group basis and may involve written assignments, presentations, or performance of skills and processes as part of the structure. Students may partially' fulfill the requirements of their contracts by self-assessment of their work.

• Self- and Peer-Assessments
  Self-assessment refers to the students" own assessment of their progress in knowledge, skills, processes, or attitudes. Peer-assessment refers to student assessment of other students. Peer- assessments can be conducted either individually or collaboratively in groups.

  Students may be involved in a variety of self- and peer-assessment activities using their individual efforts, their participatory efforts in a group, their own end products of written assignments and presentations, or their performance of skills and processes. Students may also be involved in assessing their efforts on quizzes and tests. Contracts frequently have a self- or peer- assessment component.

• Portfolios
  A portfolio is a collection of student work that assists the student and teacher to make judgments about student learning progress. Samples of work to be included may be selected by the student, by the teacher, or by the student and teacher in consultation.

  Copies of assignments, contracts, assessments of presentations, assessments of the performance of skills and processes, quizzes, and tests are all examples of items that may be included in portfolios. In addition, samples of students'day- to-day work may become part of the portfolio.

  Samples of work completed on an individual basis may be included along with work completed in groups. Copies of self-assessment instruments and peer-assessment instruments may also become part of the portfolio.

Assessment Stations Description

Evaluation Context

Assessment stations may involve students in demonstrating skills such as the correct use of a microscope, the performance of the physical skills required for basketball, the ability to work with technology, or the writing of a newspaper story based on observations of a predetermined event or situation. Assessment stations can have a paper- and-pencil aspect to accompany the interactive component of the station. Students may be required to record the results of interactive tasks performed at the assessment station. However, requiring students to complete a task using only paper and pencil may be better achieved using traditional organizational methods.

Guidelines for Use

• Criterion-level mode
  Sometimes students must be able to use a piece of apparatus correctly so that it can be successfully and correctly used in subsequent activities. After the class has received instruction in the correct use of the equipment, an assessment station can be set up to assess each student's ability to perform the operation correctly. An example of assessing competence would be to have the students find the mass of a rock.

• Summative mode
  An assessment station can be used when you need to assess students on whether they have acquired sufficient knowledge about a concept so that they can manipulate materials appropriately.

• Setting up
  If the assessment station is to be used within the classroom, a specific area for students to work may be designated. Clear instructions indicating what students should do will allow for smooth student movement to and from the assessment station. These instructions may be recorded on a card or paper. If the assessment station is located outside the classroom, then specific instructions outlining the following information are necessary.
  • the location of the assessment station
  • clear instructions about the task
  • movement from station to station
  • the length of time to be spent at each station
  • the manner in which information is to be recorded
  • the tasks to be begun upon return to the classroom

• Conducting the assessment
  When assessing students within the classroom, one approach is to either choose or ask for a volunteer to be the first student to go to the assessment station. She or he completes the task, hands in the results, tells the next student to go, and returns to his or her place. The sequence continues until all students have visited the assessment station. Meanwhile, regular classwork continues and each student misses only a very small part of the lesson.

  When assessing students at a location other than inside the classroom, you may wish to have the students working simultaneously at assessment stations. For example, to assess students on the soil, plant, and insect samples they have been studying you may have them each use a length of string to make a circle on the ground in a particular area. That encircled area then becomes an assessment station. Students would perform the tasks required at their own particular assessment station.

  When assessing students in groups, you may designate an area outside of the classroom where they are to perform specific tasks. For example, the school library may become the assessment station for assessing students on their research skills.

Example

• Check that there are two bulbs, one battery, one switch, and at least three pieces of wire.

• Connect the materials so that when you close the switch, both lights go on, and when you open the switch, both lights go out.

• Draw a picture of the circuit on a piece of paper.

• Dismantle your circuit and leave the materials in the assessment station.

• Hand in your picture of the circuit to the teacher.

• Tell the next student to proceed, and return to your seat.

Using the Information for Student Evaluation

Hints

• If the same location is always used, such as a designated area in the classroom, the assessment station should operate in the same way each time. This builds consistency in procedure for the students and helps subsequent assessment stations operate smoothly. If the location and rationale for the assessment stations change, there will still be organizational features that may be kept consistent.

• The instructions on the card should be simple, clear, and explicit. They should include how the student must ready the assessment station for the next student. Students should be able to read the instructions without difficulty.

• Keep the activity simple.

Individual Assessments Description

Evaluation Context

• his or her previous level (self-referenced).

• a predetermined standard (criterion-referenced).

• a group standard at the same age or grade as the student (norm-referenced).

Guidelines for Use

• As has been mentioned before, students should be fully informed as to the ways in which they will be assessed and evaluated. Making expectations clear to students is crucial in both individual and group assessment.

• An effort should be made to incorporate a combination of standards into evaluations based on individual assessments. When learning progress, based on self-referenced, criterion-referenced, and norm-referenced standards, is discussed with the student and parents/guardians, an enhanced understanding of student progress is achieved.

• A variety of assessment techniques used to collect student learning progress information is important in individual assessments. A final judgment based on a limited range of assessment information, such as only on a series of similarly structured tests, leaves large holes in the evaluation. In order to assess the broader objectives in the new curricula, it becomes very important to plan a student evaluation program that 'covers all the bases'.

Hints

Advantages

• Evaluations based on individual assessments 'fit' with most school systems in how student progress is reported. Each student at each grade level is assessed according to his or her standing in attaining the objectives set out in curriculum documents.

• Self-referenced standards provide specific feedback to the individual on strengths and weaknesses. In addition, they are useful for motivating students and allow for a more relevant method of reporting progress for students with special needs.

• Individual assessments can motivate students to accept a greater degree of responsibility for their learning progress. For students who set their own standards or expectations of what they wish to accomplish, individual assessments can provide a far greater degree of involvement in the learning process.

• Conducting individual assessments allows teachers to focus on the learning needs of students in a more direct manner. Specific direction or instruction can be given based on the results of individual assessments.

• Using only individual assessments can foster a competitive atmosphere that can hamper learning progress for some students. Competition in learning tasks or getting the highest mark needs to be balanced with cooperative efforts.

• Individual assessments will not give teachers the information necessary to make judgments concerning cooperative work and social interaction objectives.

• Individual assessments may be time consuming. To assess each student's work takes a greater amount of time than assessing a group of students as a unit.

Group Assessments Description

• evaluate group work only by awarding the same mark to all members of the group.

• evaluate individual student progress within the group, using groups to structure learning, but not for evaluation purposes.

• award group and individual marks.

• Evaluations based on group assessment information may be considered as the ideal to which students can strive. Their willingness to accept this type of evaluation will depend upon how long they have been accustomed to working

• cooperatively as opposed to how long they have been accustomed to being evaluated competitively. Students in the lower grades and students with long exposure to group assessment are the most likely to perceive the group assessment option as fair and appropriate.

• For classes where the students are not ready to accept the option of group assessment, the contribution of the individual student can be incorporated into the basic group evaluation. The individual component should focus on those aspects of the group activity that are most appropriately assessed on an individual basis - for example, participation level in the group activity or willingness to respect the views of others.

• Whatever technique is used, communicate it and your expectations to the students. "I will be marking the final group presentation myself. All members of the group will receive that mark. It will be a mark out of 80. In addition, I will be assessing you individually on your willingness to work on your own and your cooperativeness in group situations. That individual assessment information will be used to determine an individual mark out of 20. It will be added to the group mark to give you each your final mark out of 100."

• The effect of the evaluation scheme on the objectives of the group activities should be monitored closely. As groups become more comfortable with cooperative learning, the approach to evaluation may change.

Hints

Group Mark Only

Advantages

• Group work is intended, in part, to foster cooperation among students. Assigning a single mark to the work of the group fosters this trait.

• Since the summative product of a group activity is the product of several students' work, group evaluation frees the teacher from disentangling the contributions of individuals.

• The document Instructional Approaches: A Framework for Professional Practice describes the value of cooperative learning, a view that is supported by the following quotation from Johnson and Johnson (1989):

Disadvantages

• Students have come to expect their progress to be compared against criteria and against each other on an individual basis. There is evidence to suggest that they view individual evaluation as being more fair than group evaluation, at least in the early stages of their experience with cooperative learning.

Advantages

• Assigning individual marks fits into the traditional expectations of students and so is more readily accepted by them.

• Some process measures of student activity, such as participation level in the group activity or willingness to respect the views of others, are more appropriately made on individuals.

• Individual marks assigned for group work diminish the spirit of cooperation that is so valued by advocates of group learning.

• Marking students individually is a more complex task when assessing individual contributions to a summative product.

• The group component may foster the spirit of cooperation and the individual component may permit the recognition of individual contributions.

Contracts Description

Evaluation Context
Students can be encouraged to take charge of their learning by developing a performance contract ahead of time. Usually the contract includes a statement of the goals to be reached, the way in which these will be reached, a timeline, and criteria whereby the performance will be evaluated.

Guidelines for Use
Using the contract as an organizational structure requires an appreciation of the fact that there are two aspects of contract work to consider. First, the contract produces a product, usually a report or artifact of some sort, that is evaluated by the means set forth in the initial contract. Second, and less often acknowledged, the student's participation in the act of setting up the contract is itself a performance that can be evaluated. In view of the emphasis on lifelong learning and personal growth in the Common Essential Learnings, this aspect of the contract should be stressed.

As much attention must be paid to the process of setting up the contract as is paid to the nature of the product that is finally submitted. Students must be made aware that their work in developing their contract is being monitored. Students should be offered some general guidelines. Overly specific guidelines may reduce the opportunities for students to take control of their own learning. A series of teacher-generated questions may serve to organize the contract-development process.

• What work do you wish to include in the contract?

• How will you go about it? For example, what books will you use; what other resources will you consult?

• How long will it take you to develop a detailed plan, to gather your resources, and to finish the assignment?

• What criteria are you prepared to meet for en 'A' grade, for a 'B' grace, or for a pass?

Using the Information for Student Evaluation
If the contract has been well designed, the evaluation of the final product is straightforward because the criteria have been established beforehand. Evaluating the other aspect, the extent to which the student has been able to take control of his or her learning, is best done by breaking up the exercise into subordinate tasks. You and your students need to establish the criteria against which the contract will be evaluated. Another set of questions can be generated. Some of these might be:

• How realistic is the contract in terms of the time constraints?

• How appropriate are the contract questions to the objectives of the project?

• How appropriate are the chosen resources to the objectives of the project?

• How realistic was the contract in terms of the student's knowledge of his or her capabilities?

• How comprehensive was the planning?

Hints

• Be prepared to spend more time than you anticipate when setting up the contract system for the first time. One useful strategy is to take a unit of work that has already been completed and, using it as a sample, allow students to develop a contrac t in a situation where they know the extent of the work involved. "Imagine you had wanted to set up a contract for that last unit on 'Mathematics in the Supermarket'. How would you have found out about the resources you would need?"

• Students vary greatly in their ability to conceptualize what is required for a successful contract. It may be necessary to go through the stages of planning, organizing, and writing a contract with them. The time spent with your students teaching them how to prepare a contract will give them greater independence.

Setting Up a Contract

Contracted Work:                                        & nbsp;                          

Student:                          Class:              &nb sp;      Date:                

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• Example 1 of a Learning Contract
• Example 2 of a Learning Contract
• Example 3 of a Learning Contract

Self- and Peer-Assessments Description

Evaluation Context
Information gathered through self- and peer- assessments can be used by students to make judgments on their learning and on the learning of their peers. Self- and peer-evaluation are designed to allow students to take more responsibility for their learning by reflecting upon it and by receiving feedback from their peers. They are particularly powerful formative evaluation methods. The essential difference between self-evaluation and peer-evaluation is that in self-evaluation the student is learning about learning through reflecting on his or her own activities. In peer- evaluation, the student is learning about learning through reflecting on the activities of other students.

Students and teachers perceive self-evaluation very differently. Historically, students have not felt in control of their evaluation. They see the teacher as naving far more authority. Consequently, they try to match their evaluation to what they perceive are the teacher's expectations.

Encouraging the student to become involved in setting criteria for evaluation of his or her work shifts a portion of responsibility to the student. Used sensitively, with more emphasis on student growth and self-understanding than on arriving at a final grade, self-evaluation can contribute to a student's ability to structure his or her learning. It can increase a student's ownership for the learning process.

A further instructional purpose is served when students help in developing criteria. Students learn the expectations concerning their work in greater depth.

Peer-evaluation can add a further dimension to a student's growth in self-knowledge. Students who are more concerned with "you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours" considerations than with developing insights into the learning process may experience a shift in attitude. More responsibility for what they do and how they do it will occur when they are in consultation with peers who are providing suggestions for improvement. Great benefits accrue to the students who are doing the evaluation and are forced to think analytically about the nature of their peers' performance. In turn, they are able to extend that thinking to their own performance.

Self- and peer-evaluation should be reserved for those situations where student self-knowledge about the learning process is important. Major projects involving a mix of learning skills such as researching, planning, drafting, and bringing to completion are good examples. This also applies to situations where a high degree of student interaction is encouraged.

Guidelines for Use

• In self-assessment, the situation should be structured so that the student feels that he or she is truly in control of the evaluation. A small percentage of the evaluation responsibility totally within the student's control is preferable to a larger percentage ostensibly 'negotiated' between the teacher and the student. Developing the evaluation criteria should be part of the exercise. Students, working alone or in groups, make the initial suggestions and these are modified in consultation with the teacher. (Refer to Contracts, page 52.)

• In peer-assessment, the parameters within which the students will evaluate their peers should be narrow and carefully defined. When considering what aspects should be peer-evaluated, the teacher should emphasize those areas where the act of pee r-evaluating will help the student doing the evaluation in addition to helping the student being evaluated. Not only will this approach maximize the benefits of the exercise, but it will also reduce the influence of any student bias that might exis t. Areas to stress are being descriptive rather than judgmental, being consistent, being realistic, being positive, and being reflective.

Hints
Caution should be exercised when using peer- and self-evaluation in a summative mode. If self- evaluation is to be used in the summative mode, to ensure that the student evaluation result overlaps as much as possible with the teacher evaluation result, the following points should be considered.

• Offer a sequence of self-evaluation opportunities. Experience in self-evaluation activity increases overlap of student and teacher evaluations.

• Restrict self-evaluation to traditional tasks. For example, assess the relative quality of written products. Overlap is the greatest on such tasks and the least on attitude measures.

• Avoid global ratings. Overlap is greatest on specific tasks rather than on global ratings.

• Take the time and effort to work with the students to develop evaluation criteria together. Overlap increases with student development and ownership of evaluation criteria.

• Avoid evaluating 'effort'. Overlap is minimal for teacher and student estimates of effort.

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Rating Scale for Student Self-Assessment in Cooperative Work Situations

Self-Assessment Rating Scale to Assess Attitude

Subject: Reading

Date or Time Period of Assessment:

Student Name:

Directions: Color in the face that is closest to how you feel about the questions you or your teacher will read.

1. When you think about reading a book all by yourself, how do you feel?

2. When your teacher asks you to read something out loud to her/him, how do you feel?

3. When your teacher asks you to read something out loud to the other students, how do you feel?

4. When you are reading by yourself and you see a new word, how do you feel?

5. When you get up in the morning and you know you are going to school, how do you feel?

6. When your teacher gives you time to read in school, how do you feel?

7. When your teacher reads a story to your whole class, how do you feel?

8. When you have work to do that you do all by yourself, how do you feel?

9. If an adult asked you to read to a younger child, how would you feel?

10. When your parents/guardians read to you at home, how do you feel?

11. When you think about growing up and reading when you are an adult, how do you feel?

12. When your teacher asks you to talk about a book that you have read, how do you feel?

13. If you got a book for a present, how would you feel?

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Self-Asessment with Essay Question/Assignment

Portfolios Description

Evaluation Context
Because the materials in the portfolio have been collected over a period of time, the student's progress can be judged in a way few other assessment techniques can offer. Reviewing the materials at the end of the course is like looking at a set of photographs taken during a child's developmental years.

The portfolio has long been used by art educators and is gaining popularity in language arts. It is sufficiently versatile to be used in other subject areas, too. Its particular strengths lie in allowing you to evaluate students on developmental patterns and on attributes such as creativity and critical thought, responsibility for learning, research skills, perseverance, and communication skills.

Guidelines for Use
The portfolio is more than a collection of student work. Before the portfolio is begun, inclusion rules need to be established. Some decisions are:

• Who will decide what to include? Student? Teacher? Both, working in consultation?

• What will be included? Examples of best work? Examples of worst work? Examples of typical work? Some of each type?

• Will there be an overall limit to the amount of materials that can be included?

Since the purpose of the portfolio is to record student progress over a long time period, the collecting should be started as early in the course as possible. Baseline data is particularly valuable. Subsequent additions should be made according to the prearranged framework, always allowing for unexpected additions, of course. There are really three phases in the development of a portfolio.

• Before the collection begins
  This phase has been covered above. Decisions need to be made and agreed upon with your students.

• Collecting the materials
  Throughout the span of the portfolio, place the selected materials in a folder or large envelope. Each item should be dated and have a note attached to it from yourself or the student stating why the material was chosen and what special features should be recalled later. If you are unfamiliar with the use of portfolios, you may find that it is hard to come up with many portfolio items. Start by including traditional products such as tests. As you gain familiarity with the technique, you will find yourself designing assignments that fit the portfolio mode: a biology assignment might be to review a 'Nova' or 'Nature of Things' television program; a math assignment might be to write a story of a world with no zero in its numbers.

• Evaluating the materials
  When the portfolio is complete, you will need to examine the contents once again. One method is to prepare a grid with the list of attributes you decided to evaluate written down one edge and a Likert-type scale (e.g., very good/good/average/ poor/very poor) across the top. Complete the grid. A complete grid will provide a rich array of assessment information.

Using the Information for Student Evaluation
A grid can serve as an evaluation document just as it is. If you wish to record a numerical grade, you can also assign numbers to the five points on the scale and convert your evaluation into a number grade.

Hints

• Limit the number of items or storage could become a problem. If you find you have too many items, leave out things like quizzes or final exams which do not fit the portfolio philosophy that emphasizes work created by the student.

• You may wish the student to have the portfolio item available for reference. In that case, file a photocopy in the portfolio. Senior students often produce written work on computers. They will find it easy to produce two copies of products, one for the portfolio and one for themselves.

• Portfolios are powerful ways to report student progress to parents/guardians. Prepare a 'typical" portfolio with samples from students you have taught previously. Be sure to remove names and obtain student permission. Make this sample available to parents/guardians ahead of time, perhaps with the items in a folder in the waiting area or mounted on a convenient wall. Your discussions with the parents/guardians can then be informed by their awareness of what you expect of your students.

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Portifolio Assessment

Methods of Data Recording

• Anecdotal Records
  Anecdotal records refer to written descriptions of student progress that a teacher keeps on a day- to-day basis.

  A teacher may decide to keep anecdotal records on students' ability to manipulate materials at assessment stations, to work in a group, to work in a test-taking situation, or to complete a project or a written report. There are situations where a teacher will keep anecdotal comments on the development of specific skills related to instructional objectives, on the behavior of a student, or on the attitude expressed or demonstrated by a student. Anecdotal records are as flexible as a teacher wishes to make them.

• Observation Checklists
  Observation checklists are lists of criteria a teacher determines are important to observe in students at a particular time. Beside each of the criteria, a notation is made as to whether that particular criterion was observed.

  Checklists can be used to record the presence or the absence of knowledge, particular skills, learning processes, or attitudes. They may be used to record such information in relation to written assignments, presentations, classroom performance, test-taking behaviors, individual or group work, fulfillment of the requirements of a contract, self- and peer-assessment of work, or completion of an assessment station. How a teacher wishes to use an observation checklist depends upon the type of student progress information required.

• Rating Scales
  Rating scales have the same usage as observation checklists. The essential difference lies in what is indicated. Observation checklists record the presence or absence of a particular knowledge item, skill, or process. Rating scales record the degree to which they are found or the quality of the performance.

Anecdotal Records Description

Evaluation Context

• Formative
  The very act of recording observations may serve to alert you to some aspect of a student's learning or attitude that may need immediate attention; for example, an outburst caused by frustration.

• Summative
  Since the anecdotal record concentrates on describing incidents of student performance over a period of time, the sequence of anecdotes can serve as a record of the student's development towards long term goals such as lifelong learning, healthy self-concept, cooperative learning, skill development, work/study habits, knowledge attainment, and interest/attitude.

• Diagnostic
  Through the regular spotlighting of a student's performance, areas needing special attention may emerge. Examples include communication skills and personal development. Your anecdotal records may start to show that Billy is consistently having trouble in expressing coherent thoughts. As a consequence, you may decide to investigate the causes of this behavior more thoroughly.

Guidelines for use

• What to write
  First, you write a description of the incident in an objective way by describing what actually happened. Then make further notes on your analysis of the situation, any comments you want to make, and any questions you pose to yourself that may guide further observations.

• When to use
  For many teachers, the time when students are engaged in writing offers an opportunity to demonstrate that teachers are writing, too. You can use a portion of your writing time for recording your anecdotes. Teachers who do not have these opportunities may use times when students are engaged in independent work. In program areas such as physical education and home economics, there are parts of the period when students change clothes or tidy up equipment. You might be able to use these times for recording entries. Whichever scheme is chosen, it should offer regular opportunities for entering observations.

• How to record
  Various formats have been developed. A notebook with each entry dated offers a powerful chronological record, although it is sometimes difficult locate a particular student. Alphabetized notebooks, looking like large address books, are available and they permit easy reference by student name. Alternatively, a loose leaf format may be used so that the entries may be entered chronologically, and at the end of the year may be reformatted by student name. One further idea: modern technology has provided us with conveniences for recording and storing student progress data that range from electronic student data files available on various software programs to removable self-stick notes that can be used to record the anecdote and then be affixed to the student record.

Using the Information for Student Evaluation
While the entries themselves are usually not shown to the student or the parents/guardians, they can form a valuable basis for communication. They allow you to flesh out your year-end reports on the more holistic dimensions of student growth.

Hints
Be faithful in your use of the anecdotal records. Fair-weather entries are easy to make. It is only human nature to want to tell somebody, even your anecdotal records, about a particularly successful student experience, but these alone give a distorted picture of the total year-long educational situation. The converse is also true. Only recording unsuccessful attempts or behaviors gives a limited view of a student's total school experience.

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Anecdotal Records in an Art Class

Anecdotal Records for Group Process Activities

Students' Names:

Date or Time Period of Assessment:

Observation Period:

Comments Regarding Group Members:

1. Demonstrating balance between talking and listening:

2. Demonstrating respect for others:

3. Demonstrating active participation:

4. Stating own opinion:

Student(s) who fulfilled the role of recorder for group information:
Effectiveness:

Student(s) who fulfilled the role of reporter for the group:
Effectiveness:

Student(s) who fulfilled the role of participant:
Effectiveness:

Student(s) who fulfilled the role of time-keeper:
Effectiveness:

Observation Checklists Description

Evaluation Context
The observation checklist is most appropriately used in situations where you wish to assess your students' abilities, attitudes, or performance in process areas. For example, it can assess communication skills, cooperative learning skills, extent of participation, interest in the topic, and psychomotor skills.

Using Technique to Best Advantage
Used on a single occasion, the observation checklist can provide formative evaluation information for the situation in which it is used For example, to learn how effective students are when working in groups, a checklist to observe them in a single group session can be used. This will provide information to guide future instruction.

Observation checklists are most useful when collected over time and used summatively or diagnostically. Once you decide to use observation checklists in your evaluation plan, you must use them systematically. They are misleading when used sporadically.

Guidelines for Use
Usually the observation checklist is used during class time. Therefore, it must be simple. The most efficient way to collect data is to record learning progress on four or five students at the same time. If you choose to observe four students per lesson and you have 28 students, you will cover the class once every seven lessons. At the end of the term or unit, you will have several observations on every student. If your class is working in groups, do one group every day. If not, use your seating plan to identify groups of students sitting in the same area. If you choose students alphabetically, you may find that your eyes are having to cover too much of the room in order to encompass the selected students.

• Before the unit or course begins, develop an estimate of what would constitute appropriate learning outcomes for your students. If you intend to use the information for making criterion-referenced judgments, decide on what your criteria will be. You may wish to develop minimum criteria (e.g., "six of the eight behaviors must be observed over the course of the unit"), or you may wish to develop different criteria levels for what would constitute excellent, satisfactory, or unsatisfactory work. Decisions on criteria should be made before the observation sequence begins.

• Before every class, enter the names of the students, the date, and the activity. During class, pay special attention to the selected group so that you build an impression of their level of competence or execution of the skills, processes, or attitudes you wish to record.

  Recording options: You may simply mark an entry on the item's first appearance and leave it at that, or you may record an item's every appearance (e.g., ). If you develop some measure of degree to describe the item (e.g., !, ?, or X), you have transformed your observation checklist into a rating scale. This is a characteristic of rating scales and checklists that gives you more flexibility. Make sure you record the date and the class on every observation checklist you use.

• After class, annotate the checklist sheet with any appropriate thoughts. For example, "Fire drill interrupted the group activity - recorded instances are therefore lower than I anticipated." Ä File the checklist sheet with the others so that the class set is available for evaluation at the end of the course or unit. Large envelopes are useful here.

Using the Information for Student Evaluation
Arrange the sheets into piles according to the student groups. Read them all over once or twice to develop a feeling for the overall class picture. For criterion-referenced judgments, refer to the criterion levels you made initially. For norm-referenced judgments, estimate where each student lies relative to the others in the class and make your judgment. If you have looked for very general or broad items, be careful not to over interpret your data - for example, "On these aspects of the course Kim seems to be performing a little bit more consistently than most of the students." This may be about the level of sophistication that is possible, depending on how you constructed the instrument. For self-referenced judgments, all the checklists on one particular student can be studied, providing a measure of progress over the span of the unit or course. This is one of the most powerful uses of the checklist.

• Where you can, start with an existing checklist and modify it according to your needs.

• Choose items that relate to the intended learning outcomes of the unit. If you wish to use checklists in several courses and they have many overlapping items, develop a master list and eliminate those items that are inappropriate for the specific unit or course.

• Choose items that you can observe or reasonably infer. If an item is too vague (e.g., interest in the subject), you may not be consistent throughout the term in your estimation and recording of it.

• Keep the list of items manageable. Twelve is about the maximum.

• Keep the language of the items simple and jargon-free. In that way you can use the checklists at parent-teacher or student-teacher interviews.

As previously mentioned, the observation checklist shares many characteristics with the rating scale. This is an advantage that can be a time-saver for you.

For printing and copying, this table requires Acrobat Reader

Science Observation Checklist

Observation checklist for the Assessment and Evaluation of Affective Aspects

For printing and copying, these Checklists require Acrobat Reader

• Checklist to Assess a Student's Handwriting in a Writing Sample
• Checklist to Assess Problem-Solving Skills in Mathematics
• Checklist for Marking an Essay
• Checklist to Assess Student's Ability to Use Information
• Checklist to Assess Spelling
• Checklist to Assess Students' Attitutdes and Values in Relation to an Issue

Rating Scales Description

Evaluation Context
Rating scales enable the teacher to record student performance on a wide range of skills and attitudes. They are particularly useful in situations where the student performance can be described along a continuum, such as participation in a debate or skill in preparing a microscope slide.

Guidelines for Use
Usually the rating scale is used during class time. Therefore, it must be simple to use.

• Developing the rating scale
  Once you decide upon the activity you wish to rate, break it up into its constituent parts. Make the parts as specific as possible so as to increase the scale's reliability. For example, instead of globally rating "performance in debates," decide on what performance criteria you wish to observe in the student. Perhaps "states argument," "demonstrates background preparation," "responds to opposition arguments relevantly" might together give a less inferential picture of the student's performance than the rating on the global behavior alone.

  The next task is to develop the scale points. You might use the old stand-by: "very good/good/ average/poor/very poor," or you can develop more descriptive scale points. For the criterion mentioned above, "states argument," you could choose to use points based upon how forceful the student was: "very forceful/forceful/average/ diffident/very diffident."

• Before the unit or course begins
  If you intend to use the information for making criterion-referenced judgments, decide on what your criteria will be. You may wish to develop minimum criteria such as, "six of the eight behaviors must be rated at the satisfactory level or higher over the course of the unit." Or you may wish to develop different criteria levels for what would constitute excellent, satisfactory, or unsatisfactory work.

• Before every class
  Enter the names of the students, the date, and the activity. This will usually be governed by the activity being rated. If Peter and Petra are facing off in today's debate, then theirs are the names entered.

• Recording
  As you form an impression of student behavior on each criterion, mark the point on the continuum.

• After class
  Examine the individual criteria and decide on an overall rating for each student on the total behavior being rated. File the rating sheet with the others so that the class set is available as a record. Large envelopes are useful here.

Variants
Rating scales have many variants and any book on measurement will offer examples. Two variants are described here.

• Self-evaluation
  Rating scales are very useful in allowing students to perform self-evaluation on their own work. Present the student with a rating scale that covers the aspects of the unit or project which you wish him or her to self-evaluate. Examples may be the amount of effort expended in research, the amount of effort expended on initial organization, the extent to which the student reflected on the initial organization, the amount of reorganization, or the effort spent on writing. The student's ratings on the five-point scale can form a useful starting-point for teacher- student dialogue. A number of examples of rating scales for self-assessment are included within the section'Self- and Peer-Assessment'.

• Number line
  The number line is a variant that is particularly useful with pre-reading students. On a long piece of paper, draw a horizontal line and mark off five to ten intervals. On the extreme left- hand mark, draw a sad face, at the mid-point draw a neutral face, and at the right-hand mark, draw a happy face. Mount the number line on the wall at a suitable height. The student then places the left palm on the sad face and, in response to a question (such as "How much did you like that story?"), positions the right palm accordingly. If the story was not a success, then both hands overlap on the unhappy face. By training the students to pass by the number line fairly quickly, you can obtain rapid feedback on the question you pose. With experience, more sophisticated questions can be asked. Here are examples from a unit on estimation. "When you guessed the number of peas in the pea pod that I showed you, how sure were you of your answer?" "Now, when you guessed the number of Smarties in the bottle, how sure were you?"

For printing and copying, these Rating Scales require Acrobat Reader

• Rating Scale
• Rating Scale for Cooperative Group Learning
• Rating Scale for Technical Skills (Example: Science Laboratory Work)
• Rating Scale for the Assessment and Evaluation of Affective Aspects
• Rating Scale for a Food Preparation Class

For printing and copying, these Holistic Rating Scales require Acrobat Reader

• Holistic Rating Scale to Mark an Essay
• Holistic Rating Scale for an Oral Presentation

Ongoing Student Activities

• Written Assignments
  A teacher may wish to collect student progress information by having students plan, organize, and produce a written product. This may be done on an individual or a group basis and may occur in the form of a contract or as an ongoing task. The written report may accompany a presentation or it may be the sole focus. Teachers may assess the content, skill development, attitudes of the student toward the task, and learning processes found within the task of producing a written product by using checklists or rating scales. They may be included in a portfolio. Self-assessment or peer-assessment may be used in conjunction with teacher-assessment of the written report.

• Presentations
  Presentations may accompany written assignments and student performance assessment. They may be done on an individual or group basis, be organized into assessment stations or contracts, be self- and/or peer- assessed, and be included in portfolios. Checklists, rating scales, and anecdotal records may be used to record assessment information.

• Performance Assessment
  Students may be assessed on various forms of performance. Performance may be individual- or group-based, may be organized into contracts or assessment stations, may involve a self-assessment and/or peer-assessment component, and may involve written assignments and presentations. The recording of assessment information may be done by checklists, rating scales or anecdotal records.

• Homework
  Homework refers to assignments students are given that are to be completed during their time away from the classroom. Homework is both an assessment technique and an instructional method. As an instructional method it can involve activities for independent study such as assigning questions, completing reports, and preparing for presentations. As an assessment technique, it can be used to evaluate student performance through the use of rating scales, checklists, or anecdotal records.

Written Assignments Description

Evaluation Context
Written assignments are powerful instructional methods. Evaluating plans prepared in advance and communicated to students, can provide structure to the whole exercise, as well as indicate to the student your criteria for assessing the quality of the work.

There is a wide range of student activities that fall under the category of written assignments: essays, laboratory reports, short-response questions, journal entries, letters, articles, poetry, written dialogue, the written solution to a mathematical puzzle, and research. Major projects often have a written component. Learning logs and journals can also be considered under the heading of written assignments.

• Describe your overall expectations for the written assignment in as much detail as possible. A student's first assignment should be more tightly structured; whereas, later ones can be left more in the student's control. The more structure you provide, the more comparable the assignments will be.

• If the assignment has a number of development stages, construct evaluation criteria for each segment of the written assignment. For example, if your students are doing a project on how local government operates, they may:

• interview council members.

• research the stories from the local newspaper.

• trace the path of a local issue through the stages from initial submission to council to the final decision.

• prepare a display or presentation for their classmates.

• hand in a final report to you.

Guidelines for Use

• Schedule regular consultations with students. During these times, you can reinforce the evaluation criteria and adjust them if necessary (for example, if certain segments of the project become unworkable).

• If you allow students to work in groups, you have introduced another variable into your evaluation. Three students working in a group may not produce a project or report that is three times as good as a single student's. Maintaining the group integrity can take an appreciable amount of effort. This will need to be factored into your evaluation scheme.

• If you use an outsider as a judge, remember that only part of the report, usually the final display, will be involved. The other segments must not be neglected in your overall evaluation.

• Use a variety of techniques, matching each technique to the objective of that segment of the assignment that is under consideration. Observation checklists and rating scales offer potential.

A Framework for Marking a Project or a Written Assignment

Student Name:

Date or Time Period of Assessment:

Topic or Project Description:

Presentations Definition

Evaluation Context
Presentations are extraordinarily rich in possibilities for assessing student progress. Knowledge, skills, attitudes, and processes all become evident throughout the stages of development. A presentation may be used as a summative assessment activity at the end of a unit or course. It may also be used formatively to assess student progress while the unit or course is proceeding. A presentation may accompany a written report as part of a major project. If you are wanting to improve your students' actual presentation style, having them become involved in a presentation can serve a diagnostic function as well. Suggestions for improvement can be made based on their performance.

There are many possibilities for using presentations within your student evaluation program. Presentations can be as flexible as you wish to make them. Students may present to the class individually, or to each other in small groups. Such a situation is conducive to peer-assessment. You could assess more globally on the presentations as you circulate among the groups, gathering more general student information such as attentiveness, listening behaviors, and active involvement with the topic through questioning.

If presentations are on a broad topic, the topic may be divided into sections with groups within your class presenting each section. You could then use group evaluations with the added benefit that the students would be teaching each other at the same time. For instance, if your students are to present the broad topic of 'pollution', several sub-topics could be constructed, giving each group their own area of "expertise'. Some examples of sub-topics are deterioration of nonrenewable resources, Canada's legislation related to pollution, priority listing of pollution concerns to be addressed by Canada at present, provincial comparisons on pollution and efforts to alleviate it, what major companies with polluting by-products are doing to combat the problem, and how individuals may get involved in the fight against pollution.

A third possibility is to have students individually present on a topic to you and to the class on an ongoing basis. If the content of the presentations is secondary to the processes and skills you wish to assess, your students could take turns over the course of the year presenting on a topic of interest to them. Students may choose their topics or they may be related to ongoing units of work. For example, teachers may suggest students use current events as sources of information for reports and they may ask students to relate the significance of the events to Canada, Saskatchewan, and themselves. The structure would then remain the same for each student, allowing for comparisons, but the topics would change from student to student.

Guidelines for Use

• Students come with varying experiential backgrounds in conceptualizing, organizing, and delivering a presentation. To use presentations as a diagnostic assessment technique, have the students use what they currently know. To use presentations in formative or summative assessment may require teaching how to 'co' a presentation effectively.

• As with all other assessment activities, students must know how they will be assessed - what you are looking for and what standard of performance is expected.

• Not all students have the self-confidence necessary to stand up in front of their peers and teachers to give a presentation. Consider some of the following questions prior to assigning a presentation to your students.
  • Have I established an atmosphere of acceptance in my classroom so students will feel confident that what they present will be well received?

  • Do I have students who have disabilities that would hamper their ability to give a presentation? If I do, what modifications can be made so that they can present to their best ability?

  • Have I established expectations about how and why these presentations will be assessed?

  • Have I thought through how I will help or modify the situation for students who might find this activity extremely stressful?

Performance Assessments Definition

Evaluation Context
Assessing student performance can occur over a wide range of ongoing student activities. It has value in formative evaluation where information is gathered that will help determine further emphasis in instruction as well as in summative evaluation where students' performances are evaluated at the end of a unit, term, or course. The main element of performance assessment focuses on the consideration of what is being assessed. As students are involved in performing an assessment task that requires interaction, performance assessment provides teachers with the opportunity to gather student information on the processes that students use in addressing the tasks. You are basically looking for evidence of student learning through what your students do.

Guidelines for Use
The objectives you are teaching toward will guide your decisions concerning the type of student performance to assess. The new curricula, with an emphasis on interactive and experiential teaching and learning, offer unlimited potential for assessing student performance. Some suggestions to simplify the process follow.

• Identify the student performance you wish to assess - for example, students' performance in a group. You may be looking for evidence of attentiveness, sharing of ideas, and contribution of ideas. Perhaps the performance may be in the area of kinesthetic skills. You may be looking for technical skills in a particular sport through a regular physical education class situation. Or, you may be looking for attitudinal indicators like willingness to participate, a demonstration of effort, involvement in the activity, or the encouragement of others.

• Specify the criteria you will use in determining the performance level of your students. To extend the previous example, if you wish to assess your students" performance in a group, one of the things you may look for is the sharing of ideas. The next step is to specify whet 'sharing of ideas' actually means in terms of student behavior. Does it mean extending another person's idea with thoughts of your own, relating the current ideas to previously learned concepts, putting ideas into real-life context, or giving an opinion regarding the topic? Once you begin to consider these broader categories of student behavior, you will find constructing lists of criteria much easier.

• Decide how you will record the information you gather on student performance. Will you use a rating scale? a checklist? or anecdotal records?

• Share your evaluation plan with the students. Students must know not only that you are assessing their performance, but also what you are assessing and how you will be doing it.

Variants
Performance assessment of ongoing student activities is applicable to all students. This type of assessment and evaluation is well suited to documenting the progress of special needs students. Specific criteria of what is expected provide a range of information that can be used diagnostically to initiate instruction, formatively to guide instruction, and summatively to assess the degree of progress.

Homework Definition

Evaluation Context
Homework can provide teachers with a further source of valuable student learning information. What is learned about student progress depends upon the purpose for the homework.

Homework as an assessment technique can take many forms. When students do not complete assigned work within the class period, teachers may have students do the work as homework. This homework can be assessed for student understanding, quality of work, task commitment, or other indicators of student willingness to keep up with the assigned work. This type of assessment may be best recorded in the form of anecdotal records.

If students are required to gather information prior to class, this can be classified as homework. The task might include reading assigned passages, researching a certain item, or bringing certain materials to class. A checklist could be used to assess whether or not the students did the assignment.

Students in need of extra practice of certain skills prior to learning further concepts may have additional practice assigned as homework. Evidence of this additional practice may be gathered at the classroom level and may be assessed through observation of the student using anecdotal records. If a teacher asks students to use the knowledge, skills, and processes learned to generate a novel or a creative solution to a problem, this too may be homework. Once again, assessment data may be collected on such homework items.

Students may be asked to take the knowledge, skills, and processes learned and practiced in the classroom and apply them to a different life situation as a form of homework. Such assignments are actually asking students to extend what they currently know. Assessments of such homework may be in the form of rating scales or checklists that specify particular criteria.

Guidelines for Use
When assigning tasks to students for homework, there are some general principles to follow:

• Students should receive instruction on the task prior to assigning it as homework.

• Instructions to students must be clear, unambiguous, and in written form, if possible.

• Students should be provided with guidelines or a structure concerning expectations related to the completion of the task and how it will be assessed.

• The length of time given for the completion of the homework assignment must be reasonable and take into consideration the many other school- related tasks students often have assigned at the same time.

• The resources or materials required for students to complete the homework assignment must be taken into consideration.

• Collect the homework assignments on the date specified, correct them, and return them promptly to the students.

• Be consistent about how the homework assignments are assessed and provide comments for students regarding their work.

Using the Information for Student Evaluation
The product of the homework assignment is not the only assessment information that a teacher may glean from such student activity. By looking carefully at how the students arrived at the product, conferencing with the students regarding their thought processes in completing the task, and noting the technical development evident, information concerning knowledge, processes, skills, and attitudes may be gathered. A self-assessment instrument completed by students can aid in revealing information about student attitudes and values. Work/study habits and independence in task completion may also be assessed.

Hints

• Never assign homework as punishment.

• Do not use homework as a way of regaining lost instructional or work time due to interruptions or faulty timing.

• Try to assign tasks that are of interest to the students.

Quizzes and Tests

After addressing general issues in test construction, this section will deal with descriptions of the following test item types and specific test construction issues. Several books on test construction are listed in the Bibliography.

• Oral Assessment Items
• Performance Test Items
• Extended Open-Response Items
• Short-Answer Items
• Matching Items
• Multiple-Choice Items
• True/False Items

Making Quality Tests
The Student Evaluation Handbook (Saskatchewan Education, 1983) drew upon Gronlund's checklist of questions that should be asked about teacher-made tests. These questions are still valid.

• Does each test item measure an important learning outcome?
  The key word here is 'important'. Be ruthless in judging your test items on this criterion.

  Don't be swayed by items that are attractive for their own sake but are off the point.

  Don't use items that concern themselves with arcane or trivial knowledge on the grounds that these are for the smart students or these are needed to bring down the overall mark. Students should feel that if they address the main objectives thoroughly, their knowledge and skills will be fairly measured.

• Is each item type appropriate for the particular learning outcome to be measured?
  The type of test item you use will depend on the type of student learning you want to assess. Each type of item has its own strengths and can be used effectively for the right purpose. To determine which items may be the best, you will need to consider carefully the learning objectives and the instructional strategies you have used. For example, if you are interested in measuring students' recall of previously taught content, objective questions such as multiple-choice, short-answer, or matching would be appropriate. If you wish to assess how well your students are able to synthesize what they know and extend from what they know, an open-response question would be appropriate.

• Does each item present a clearly formulated task?
  Students should not have to decode what it is that you want them to do.

• Is the item stated in simple, clear language?
  Again, this is essential if you want to focus your assessment on what the student knows rather than how well he or she can interpret your language.

• Is the item free from extraneous clues?
  Some types of items suffer more from this problem than others. It is important that items test what they are designed to test and not the students' ability to construct the answer from clues you never intended to offer them.

• Is the difficulty of the item appropriate for the students who are to be tested?
  The aim should be to develop an item that allows the student who is in command of the material to show this, and the student who isn't, to show that fact also. It follows that items shouldn't be either too difficult or too easy.

• Is each test item independent and are the items, as a group, free from overlap?
  Occasionally you may find that if a student answered one question in the test correctly, that same answer may enable them to answer other questions as well. Also, the wording of particular questions may inadvertently hold the answer required for another question in the test. Check to be sure there are no overlapping items.

• Do the items to be included in the test provide adequate coverage of questioning?
  You will find that some aspects of your courses offer more opportunities for developing test items than others. For those aspects that are not as conducive to testing, check to ensure you are using some other assessment technique. You want to ensure a balance between collecting student information through ongoing student activities and quizzes and tests.

• Are your test items free of gender, class, and racial bias?
  This issue was discussed in Chapter 2, in 'Fairness and Equity'. Teachers and test developers have become very aware of biases that can creep into test items. For example, you may find that your math or science items portray situations such as hockey or football that are more familiar to the majority of boys than to the majority of girls. Research has found that boys will, in general, do better on such items than girls. Either choose your examples from the typical worlds of both girls and boys, or choose examples equally unfamiliar to all children. The same considerations apply to items that may reflect class and race bias.

Evaluating the Assessment Instrument

• Before administering a test, check that it meets the criteria previously established. As teachers, we may be tempted to reuse tests from earlier occasions without checking to see if they still fit the objectives in our courses.

• As you grade your students' test papers, also grade the test itself. If, for example, you are finding that one of the short-answer items is consistently being answered incorrectly, even by your best students, ask yourself why. The answer may be obvious, or your students' responses may give you a clue as to why they are having difficulty. If the item is salvageable, make the correction on the original. If you are still puzzled as to where the problem is, then make a note to remove the item altogether from your item bank.

• Sacrifice a few items each time in order to check the perceptions of your students. When you return the test to the students, select a couple of items for investigation and ask your students to tell you what they thought you were expecting in the way of an answer. It will be time well spent. You may be very surprised at how the students interpret items that appear crystal clear to you. In a recent survey of Canadian Grade 12 students quite a few of them interpreted a question on 'social and political climate terms of Canada's weather. Use the student feedback to construct better items for the next version, but be sure to 'rest' the checked items for a cycle or two. By emphasizing them in your debriefing, you are guaranteeing that these will be the items passed on through the grapevine to the next class of students.

• Develop a feeling for how well your items differentiate between those students who have attained the objective for which you are testing and those who have not. Here is a simple but powerful method.
  • Photocopy your class list and paste it onto grid paper so that the sheet looks like an attendance record or a mark book. In the place where you would normally write the attendance date, write the number of the test item.

  • Let us take a twenty-item multiple-choice test as an example. Write the numbers 1 to 20 across the page. When you have finished marking the test, you or your students may use a check or a cross to record whether each item was answered correctly or incorrectly.

  • When the grid is complete, examine each of the columns in turn. If Item 5, has all check- marks, then you know that it is very easy. A good test needs some very easy items, but not too many. If another item has all crosses, then you know it is too difficult.. There are other patterns that could indicate problems with individual items. If most of your average students are getting the item right but the very best students are not, then you may have a wording problem or a subtle ambiguity that is confusing the best students. If students from one particular cultural group are performing more poorly than you expected, then the item may be culturally biased. If the pattern of responses shows no relationship to your understanding of your students' abilities, then the students may be responding by guessing.

  • These conditions may indicate that you either rework the item or submit it to validation through student perception.

• Good items are valuable. If you intend to reuse your items, make sure that you arrange for the items to be secure. For example, issue the exact number of test papers as there are students, and keep the completed papers under lock and key.

• Check each time you use the test items to ensure they are still appropriate for assessing the learning objectives. If they are not, either modify them or consign them to an item bank for future use.

Oral Assessment Items Description

Evaluation Context
There are two distinct types of situations in which oral assessment of student work is used. First, oral assessment may take the place of written assessment tasks when written responses are not feasible.

Second, oral assessments can be used in situations where the attributes being tested are best accessed through oral responses, such as the ability to think on one's feet, the ability to use the spoken word correctly, the ability to speak a second language, or the ability to debate. More information relating to this particular aspect of oral assessment can be found in the descriptions of performance assessment in the section Ongoing Student Activities and in the descriptions of rating scales and checklists in the section Methods of Data Recording.

Oral testing situations follow the procedures for their written counterparts with some modifications. For example, a short-answer question could be read to the student instead of providing a question paper, and he or she could respond orally instead of writing the answer. You would record either the student's words in answering (as in writing the answer verbatim) or noting specific elements in the student's answer (using a checklist or a rating scale). There are situations in which oral assessment may be preferable to any other option epending on the objectives and instructional methods used.

Guidelines for Use

• Oral examinations can be stressful for a student when this approach is first used. This stress can be reduced significantly if the testing is done privately or if the testing is conducted within an atmosphere of acceptance.

• Depending on the student's rate of speech or complicating disability, oral examinations may cover less content. Attention must be focused on selecting the most important areas to be examined. Make the questions as clear as possible so that time is not spent on clarifying the questions.

• Oral examinations are a more intimate form of communication than written ones. Consequently, you may be tempted to 'fill in the blanks' in what the student says with the result that you feel that the student has said or explained more than she or he actually has. Your body language can also provide the student with clues that are not available in the written situation. It is important that you concentrate on what is actually being said and the student's reactions.

• Oral examinations, being interactive in nature, accentuate any cultural or gender differences. Adolescents, in particular, may feel uneasy or tongue-tied in the presence of an adult of the opposite sex. Children from various cultures may react differently in teacher-student situations. Be alert to such influences, try to mitigate them, and take them into account in your evaluation. In extreme cases, consider enlisting the help of a colleague whom the student would find more compatible.

• If you are examining some of your students orally due to a physical handicap such as blindness or motor paralysis while the rest are being assessed by written tests, you should verify that the test content and procedures are reasonably equivalent.

• To keep the time requirements for oral assessment to a minimum, make sure that the task you will ask the students to perform is one that is truly inaccessible in other ways. By knowing exactly what you want to assess you can ensure that your techniques are appropriate. For example, if you wish to assess how well your students can express themselves in French, you can engage them in a conversation or have them converse in paired groups.

• Arrange for a quiet place for the examination.

• Ensure that the examination period is long enough to provide you with adequate information to make your assessment.

• If the student is a good reader, consider combining written instructions with oral responses such as cue cards.

• Be consistent about what you record. Consult the sections on the techniques of observation checklists and rating scales for assistance.

Performance Test Items Description

Evaluation Context
Performance test items are used in those situations where the student is required to demonstrate competence directly such as playing a musical instrument, driving a car, solving a mathematical puzzle, demonstrating skill with technology, giving a speech, or identifying and repairing a fault in a piece of machinery.

They are also used in simulation situations. Two examples are using a driving simulator or practicing a tennis serve in slow motion without the ball. In simulation situations, the emphasis is upon mastery of the fundamentals of a performance skill.

Guidelines for Use
Performance tests, as with other test formats, have to be thoroughly prepared. Some points to remember are:

• The manner in which the performance test is constructed and administered should be equivalent for all students. Otherwise, it is impossible to claim that the same assessment has been conducted for all the students. For example, have all candidates in a music examination play the same piece on the same piano. There are other variables such as the order of playing that may affect both the performer and the evaluator. Careful preparation can help you control many external variables.

• Give the students clear information on what will be required of them. As with any assessment technique, students should be informed well ahead of the time of the assessment.

• The information to students should include a list of the performance attributes that you will be assessing and the criteria you will be using. For example, "the student will hem a skirt of cotton material so that the hem is straight, the material is not gathered, and the ends of the stitching are neat." These detailed criteria can be incorporated into a rating scale, an anecdotal record, or an observation checklist that will guide your assessment of the performance. The criteria should, where appropriate, include elements from both the process and the product. In the example above, the finished hem represents the product and the correct preparation and use of the sewing machine represents the process.

Variants
Performance tests are frequently organized in assessment stations. More than one station can be set up in a series to test a variety of skills.

In designing a performance task, here is a framework for design you may find useful in thinking through the process. For each of the headings, attempt to be as specific as possible.

• the objective of the task

• the design of the task

• previous knowledge students need in order to complete the task

• knowledge directly related to current in-class work with which students need to have a reasonable level of familiarity or skill in order to complete the task

• processes involved in completing the task

• attitudes that may be observed during the students' interaction with the task

• technical skills students need to complete the task

• materials that the student would use to complete the task

• the location of the performance of the task

• number of students working at the task at the same time

• assessment instruments used to record information

• method of communicating evaluation information to the students

Extended Open-Response Items Description

Evaluation Context
Extended open-response items give students the freedom to respond to a question in ways that each one of them feels is appropriate.

Extended open-response items are effective in the assessment of students' powers of argument, evaluation, and synthesis. They are also important in allowing students to present their beliefs and value positions on a wide variety of issues. Some appropriate situations for using extended open- response items include when:

• you wish to assess a student's ability to communicate through writing.

• you wish to encourage a student to express him- or herself personally and uniquely.

• students need the opportunity to synthesize a broad base of information at the end of a unit.

• Developing the open-response questions
  
  • Keep the learning objective for which you are preparing the extended open-response item in mind. This will help you sharpen the intent of the question.

  • Ensure that the question identifies exactly what the student will need to do. For example, instead of "Discuss the repatriation of the constitution" try "Imagine that you are preparing a speech for a politician who is in favour of the repatriation of the constitution. What would you write?"

  • Indicate the criteria that you will use in evaluating the open-response item. For example, for the above item, you might say "Pay special attention to the accuracy of any facts you mention, the clarity of your writing, and the persuasiveness of the argument."

• Selecting the items
  
  • In most test situations, it is advisable to avoid providing students with a choice of extended open-response topics. Often, if you allow choice, you cannot know whether all students have taken a test of equal difficulty.

  • Use extended open-response items on occasions when you want to be able to collect student data on a broader and more in-depth scale. If you wish to see how your students can describe, contrast, compare, explain, discuss, develop, summarize, or evaluate, then an open-response question should be used.

• Marking the responses
  
  • Write a model answer to the question to help you develop your marking criteria. This is the best way to understand any inherent difficulties with the item, such as unreasonable length to answer the item fully or ambiguities in the wording.

  • Grade all the responses to one question at the same time.

For holistic scoring, you would need to outline a list of attributes you would expect in student responses. One method for doing this is to write out a response to the item yourself. Having done so, you are in a better position to be able to list the elements specific to the item that you wish to assess in the students' work.

An example of a list of attributes for an extended open-response item may be the following.

• degree of clarity in communicating the objective of the writing

• the choice of ideas incorporated into the writing

• the range and effectiveness of vocabulary chosen to convey the intent of the writing

• the organization of the writing (opening, middle, sequence of details, ending)

• skill in using sentence structure to convey meaning

• the accuracy of the technical aspects of the writing (spelling, punctuation, grammar)

If you are concerned about whether you are marking consistently, one way of checking is to redo the first few essays in order to check your impressions and your grading. When your reread marks are comparable to the original marks, you have finished the task.

For analytic scoring, prepare a list of attributes that you feel the open response should contain and assign a proportion of the available marks to each. As you read the responses, identify the attributes as they occur and award the marks accordingly.

Holistic scoring has the disadvantage of having less detail for the justification of the final mark. By breaking an open-response item down into constituent parts (analytic scoring), there is a dilution of the power of this type of question to allow students to synthesize a wide variety of ideas in an individual and creative way. Apart from that, there seems to be little difference in the reliability of the two methods.

Short-Answer Items Description

Evaluation Context
Short-answer items are most often used for testing students' ability to recall knowledge. This type of item usually is of the completion type where one word or a phrase is required for the answer. Short- answer questions can also be used to test higher levels of thinking or to assess attitude. To do this a sentence or two may be required, but the format would still correspond to the category of short answer.

Short-answer items are relatively easy to develop. They are useful when you wish to assess how well students have internalized content, but they should be complemented with other techniques that assess other aspects of student progress.

Guidelines for Use

• Short-answer items can range from one-word answers to paragraph answers. Arrange for a variety of items in your test.

• If your short-answer question will be of the completion type, try not to simply leave out words from sentences taken from the resource material used for instruction. For example, if you want to see whether your students can recall the term 'alliteration' when they see an example of it, develop your item: "The figure of speech exemplified by 'lovely, laughing lilacs is     The response from your students is then a one- word item that is either correct or incorrect.

• Make sure that enough detail is provided so that the item is unambiguous. For example, "Fluorine was first isolated in      ." is ambiguous. The answer could be the location or the year of the experiment. Try: "Fluorine was first isolated in the year     ."

• If the question is in the form of filling in the blank, arrange for the blank to come at the end of the item. This allows the student answering to absorb all the information before being faced with the unknown. For example, instead of"In the year     , Saskatchewan became a province of Canada" try "Saskatchewan became a province of Canada in     ."

• For completion items, tell your students whether the length of the blank reflects the length of the intended answer. The item is somewhat easier when the length of the blank does reflect the length of the intended item.

• If your item requires the- students to write sentences rather than fill in a blank, tell them how much you want them to write - for example, "Give three important reasons why some western premiers advocate the Triple E Senate. Write one sentence for each reason."

If you are teaching a unit on safety to your elementary school class, you may wish to construct a short-answer item that would describe a fictional child's activity in a situation that the students would recognize as dangerous. the students would be asked, in their short- answer response, to write down what words they would call to this child to persuade him or her to move away from the situation. The words would have to fit the following categories: what, why, and how. Through the short responses of your students, you would be able to assess a variety of thinking levels. Some examples are recall or recognition of what had been covered in the unit to do with safety in situations such as this; analysis of the situation in order to make a response; prediction of what would happen based upon what they know; synthesis of what they know in order to form a response; and evaluation of the importance and effect of the words in order to include them on the list. Such a question format would then give you the key words that you would be able to use as a criteria base for assessing the students" learning. You may wish to use a checklist or a rating scale to record the student information.

Using the Information for Student Evaluation
The simplest way is to assign the same number of marks for each question and use the total, or some predetermined fraction of it, as the score. However, short-answer items often vary in complexity and significance. You may wish to assign different marks to different items. If you do, indicate the number of available marks beside each item.

Variants
Multiple-choice items or true/false items can be turned into short-answer items by requiring the students to select the correct response and to write an answer justifying their choice. When marking the answer, you will have to decide what weight to give to the correctness of the response and to the quality of the written justification.

Matching Items Description

Evaluation Context
Matching-item questions are most commonly used to test the recall of factual information. They can provide broad coverage of related facts, associations, and relationships in a quick and efficient manner. Matching items are most effective when used in conjunction with other types of items. Too many matching exercises on one test can result in student fatigue.

Guidelines for Use

• Develop groups of facts that you wish to include. Members of a group should be closely related. If members are widely different, students will be able to use common sense to answer the question.

• Develop parallel lists of 'premises' end 'responses' for the facts in the group. For example, for 'fruits" you might have the following premises.
  1. has furry skin and no central stone
  2. grows in clumps of a hundred or more
  3. has furry skin and a central stone
  4. is produced one per plant

1. grape
2. nectarine
3. peach kiwi
4. tomato
5. pineapple

Notice that there are a few more responses than premises. This arrangement reduces success due to guessing.

Hints

• Make sure the directions are clear and provide all the information necessary.

• Keep the lists of premises and responses manageable. Overly long lists cause confusion and waste time through scanning of the lists.

• Arrange list items arbitrarily - for example, by length of word- or alphabetically by initial letter. This jumbles the lists satisfactorily. Notice that in the example the last response matches the last premise, probably because the writer thought of them at the same time. Re-ordering will eliminate that clue.

• Make sure that the material in each matching exercise is homogeneous in nature. Information that is unrelated does not serve as a plausible distracter.

• Ensure that the entire matching question is included on one page. To have the question at the bottom of the page where there is not enough room causes a split in the question that alters the nature of your question. You don't want half of one question on one page and the other half on the next page.

• While this technique is usually used for assessment purposes, you can use it during instruction by having the students develop lists of premises and responses as part of their review of the unit. You can then use the lists to develop items for the subsequent test.

Multiple-Choice Items Description

Evaluation Context
Multiple-choice items are used most often to test student recall and recognition. If carefully constructed, they are also capable of testing higher-order thinking skills.

With multiple-choice items being versatile and easy to mark, sometimes teachers are tempted to make whole tests of them. However, they are best used in conjunction with other types of items so that a wider range of student learning can be assessed and students have a chance to respond to different types of format.

Guidelines for Use

• A good stem should be straightforward and contain enough information to set the context for the item.

• The stem should be phrased as a question which demands a specific answer: "Which of the following is a metal?" Sometimes statements rather than questions are used as stems, but it is believed that questions help the respondent focus more quickly and sharply on the item. Where possible, the stem should be written in the positive. Negatives tend to be confusing. If a negative must be used, make sure that the negative word is stressed: "Which of the following is not a compound?"

• Avoid nonessential detail in the stem. In the following example, the first sentence is unnecessary. "Metals are very useful for our industry. Which of the following is a metal?" You want to make your stems as short and concise as possible, but you also want to state the problem as completely as necessary. The response options to the stem should be equivalent, of the same number, form and length, and equally plausible to the uninformed respondent.

1. sulphur
2. silver
3. bromine
4. oxygen

Obviously incorrect response:

1. sulphur
2. silver
3. bromine
4. elephant tusk

   Clearly, 'elephant tusk' will be identified as being outside the general set of the other choices. The acid test is whether the respondent must read and consider every choice.

• The position of the correct response should be randomized. It is tempting to put the correct response as b) or c).

• Ensure that there are no grammatical or substantive clues that serve to indicate the correct response. Here is an example of each.

  Grammatical: Which of the following cause food poisoning?

  1. virus
  2. excitement
  3. bacteria
  4. depression

  The stem calls for a plural as the correct choice. Only 'bacteria' satisfies this requirement and so must be correct.

  Substantive: Which of the following is a property of all metals?

  1. coloured
  2. solid at room temperature
  3. unreactive with water
  4. metallic luster

  Since d) contains the word 'metallic', it could be identified as the probable choice.

• Be wary of using 'all of the above' or 'none of the above' as responses. Often they are used because it is difficult to find four or five plausible distracters. Unfortunately, they cause confusion for respondents. Finding distracters that share enough characteristics to be able to say 'all of the above' with certainty is difficult. The same applies to 'none of the above'.

• Make sure that the answer to one item is not contained in the stem of another item in the same test.

• Be prepared to accept legitimate answers, even when they come as a surprise to you. "Which one of the following authors should not be included in this list?"
  1. Margaret Atwood
  2. Northrop Frye
  3. Robertson Davies
  4. Jack Hodgins

  The teacher may have been expecting d), because Hodgins is the only West Coast writer. However, b) may be correct if the students identified Frye as the only writer who specialized in non-fiction writing, or a) if the students saw that Atwood was the only female writer on the list. In subsequent versions of this item, you should clarify the nature of the distinction you wish the students to make. For example, "Geographically speaking, which one of the following authors should not be included in this list?"

• Explore a variety of designs for the answer:
  
  • Select the one correct answer. This is by far the most common design.

  • Select the one incorrect answer. Sometimes it is easier to construct an item where the incorrect answer is required. If you use items of this sort, be sure to emphasize that you are expecting something different (as can be done by using bold type).

  • Select the best answer. This format allows you to construct more ifficult items where shades of meaning are more important than absolute right or wrong answers. These items can be very effective but must be thoroughly tested to ensure that students are making the desired distinctions between the possibilities.

Hints
Keep the language simple. The item should not be a test of reading skill.

True/False Items Description

Evaluation Context
True/false items are used mainly to assess student knowledge of content. However, with careful attention to the items' construction, a true/false test can measure abilities in a broad range of thinking levels.

For instance, should you wish to test students' recall of information, questions could be constructed that would ask students to establish whether or not a rule, a principle, or a definition is correct. Should you wish to assess students' ability to use a definition of a concept, questions could be constructed to ask students to classify statements as examples or non-examples of that concept. To involve students in evaluating material, questions could be constructed that would require students to agree or disagree with evaluative statements concerning the material.

True/false items are best used in conjunction with other types of items so that students have the opportunity to respond to a variety of testing formats.

Guidelines for Use

• Developing the items
  Make a list of the ideas you wish to include in the true/false items. By going through resource material, you can often identify the key ideas in a sentence, paragraph, or longer section. In order to develop natural-sounding items, use your own words to express the ideas. Do not use the wording of the resource material.

  Arrange for more false items than true ones. Guessers tend to guess true more often than false.

  Arrange for at least some false items to look correct. For example, "A volcano cannot exist under the oceans because the water would put it out." (F) This item may appear plausible to an uninformed student. This type of item is to be distinguished from a 'trick' question. A 'trick' question fools both students who know the answer and students who do not. A plausible item fools only the students who do not know the answer.

• Checking the items
  Use language that is simple and clear. Avoid sentences that have complex sentence structures. Check that the item is grammatically correct and unambiguous. Words like more, few, large, or good are confusing. They are not definite enough.

  Check that only one idea is contained in each item. This is very important. You can easily have statements that contain more than one idea, with one part being true and the other being false.

  Check that negatives are used sparingly, if at all. Check that the negatives are clearly underlined or emphasized.

  The items you develop should prove a challenge to your students. They should not trick them.

• Marking the items
  You can count up the correct answers and use that as the mark. This is the easiest approach. You could also subtract the number of wrong answers from a previously established mark. This approach is generally used with large numbers of true/false items and should never result in a negative mark.

Write pairs of items for each idea - one True (T) and one False (F). If you cannot write a pair of items, then the original idea was probably too fuzzy to lead to a good item. For example, "Both the peasants and the landlords suffered from starvation during the Irish potato famine." (F) "The landlords had enough food for themselves for survival during the Irish potato famine." (T)

Select one of the pairs as the test item and discard the other. Superficial plausibility may be a factor in your choice. For example, the first variant may appear to be the better item.

Variants
Sometimes you might ask the students to go beyond indicating True or False. You might ask them to explain their choice. This is now no longer the same testing situation and is much more akin to the short-answer type of item.

Time Management Suggestions

• Collaboration with colleagues is of tremendous value. It can reduce the time required to develop items such as rating scales and checklists and also target proven assessment techniques in your subject area. Examples of collaborative activities include the following.
  • Teachers of students requiring adaptations to curriculum content, instructional practices, learning environment, and assessment techniques can share valuable insights based on their own experiences.

  • Teachers teaching in the same subject area or across subject areas can work together to develop curriculum-based assessment instruments, whether they are tests, rating scales, checklists, or formats for anecdotal records. These instruments, developed over a period of time, could become a resource for the school division. This process could be ongoing for each of the new curricula with different groups of teachers contributing assessment examples to the school division's resources on student evaluation.

  • Teachers at the same grade level can share ideas concerning standards of performance. This will enhance the consistency in reporting student learning progress.

• It is important to establish student evaluation priorities. Using worksheets and charts such as the ones in this handbook is one way to do this. Integrating student learning outcomes, instructional strategies, and assessment techniques during unit planning will save you time.

• Peter Drucker, in