Creating Assessments
What I struggled with
Surprisingly, I had the most trouble with determining a performance task. My first thought was developing something science or social studies related which honestly isn't my specialty. I had such a hard time finding a topic that was suitable but still within my range enough to apply a detailed rubric. I thought this would be the easiest of all the tasks but it was actually far from it. However, the rubric took the cake. For some reason, it's really hard to determine the most important aspects of the test without being biased or examining the wrong age. Staging a reenactment is a lot harder to grade in depth than I initially realized. I also struggled with developing THIRTY questions. I think it was hard to base them all around Blooms taxonomy because our questions often feed off of our students questions or confusion. However, it was really eye opening to see the importance and benefits of preparing questions beforehand.
What Felt Easy
Opposite of what I expected, I enjoyed making the selected response assessment the most. There are so many structural steps that guide you. I chose a topic I am pretty developed in so it was relatively easy to format a test that covered the material and learning targets. I could really see the assessment of mastery as I created each section. I also found the extended written assessment to be quite easy, too. Although I am not a fan of rubrics, finding a topic to write about isn't hard. There are so many options and topics to dive into that the opportunities feel endless. Especially given the various writing styles. There are just so many directions this assessment can be taken in that it didn't feel limiting. I also think being a literacy major played a role in that. Writing papers has become very familiar so creating a prompt wasn't very far fetched.
Something that Surprised me:
Something that surprised me was how time consuming planning assessments can be. Between determining a topic, type of assessment, and adequate way of assessing each learning target, so much goes into the process. It's easy to write on a lesson plan how you will assess something, but actually formatting that into a resource that is kid friendly is quite difficult. I'm glad to have recognized what it's like to be on the formatting end of assessment but definitely could use more practice on doing so.
I felt the same way with my surprise. I knew it took time to come up with assessments but did not realize the extent of how long it could take. It is not like you are just looking for what you will expect the students to do bu also if they are exceeding, if they are developing so on. Also we have to think about how students are going to approach this with our word placement. We have to almost put our selves in their shoes and ask our selves. Is this too obvious? Is this clear? Is there another way to say this? What do I want as a end result? The selected response was not hard for me to create it was just really time consuming because I had to draw pictures of what I wanted students to select from. I know I made my life harder but I wanted to challenge the students and truly see if they understood the targets I was teaching. Performance task I ended up using a literacy task because I was more assessing if students could use the strategy in a little game. So it was more about their actions.
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