The penultimate course is on assessment. This is the last week for it and I feel as though I’ve done nothing new. I started doing the reading but now I need to watch a few videos and post some reflections on Slack. Because I have taken many workshops on assessment with Bambi Betts and Leslie Grant, taken a graduate course last fall with Leslie Grant, gotten up early to watch webinars sponsored by various assessment organizations, and twice this year presented to other teachers about myriad digital formative assessment tools, I had plenty of assignments done already and knowledge in my head. That is in no way saying I won’t learn something. I’m sure I will be stimulated by comments in Slack and by TED Talks and other informative pieces this course provides. I just happen to be ahead on this topic.

I think I’ve blogged about some of my favorite digital formative assessment tools before but I just have to repeat that Go Formative has a lot to offer. I am using it now as a content delivery system. I love that I can put videos and images and documents into it and then have students respond by answering questions that require them to draw or write their answers. While prepping for the WrAP test, I created two separate Go Formative lessons: one focused on introductions and one on conclusions. Within the lessons, I was able to insert videos and diagrams that provided information on both topics. Perhaps the best thing about it is, the students can go back and review these lessons at any time. I can see all results as they come in and can display them if I want to and use them to discuss what I’m looking for in a response. I can leave written feedback and put a number score on each answer. If the answers are more objective, I can put in the correct responses and/or keywords to look for, and Go Formative scores it for me.

I’m trying to convince my teaching partner who teaches math to my kids to use it.

Another go to assessment tool is Quizizz. It is a better version of Kahoot.It. It allows the students to work at their own pace. I can remove some of the distractions like rankings and timers if I want to. The music can be turned off. I get great analytics about test questions and student scores.

You can’t beat Google Forms and Flubaroo. Last year at my suggestion, my team created a portion of our common grammar assessment on Google Forms. We used Flubaroo to grade it. The kids could take the test and it would be graded in a matter of seconds. You had results about what they were getting and what they weren’t just like that. Now I need to convince them to put the constructed response on Go Formative!

As I complete the requirements of this course, I will post more about what I learn about assessment.