Assessment and Grading Made Easy

Much of what we covered this week during our own time had to do with Assessment and Grading. The previous blog post spoke about Engrade, which I found to be a very easy tool for teachers to create assessments and keep a grade book. We were also provided other resources and reading materials to try this week including: Flubaroo, Socrative, and Schoolology. Before posting my responses to these grading websites, I want to share with you what I learned about assessment.

There are three kinds of assessment:  diagnostic, formative, and summative. Diagnostic Assessment refers to what teachers may call fishing for prior knowledge. We do informal tests or activities to see how much a student knows about a topic before we delve into the main teaching. This is where teachers learn what students already know and where they should begin the lessons.

Next is formative assessment. Formative assessments refer to informal assessments that generally occur throughout the lesson. Often, this is in terms of questions asked by the teacher to the students. It can also be questions that the students ask the teacher in order for them to fully understand the material. Formative assessments may also be in the form of whole group or even small group discussions where students listen to varying opinions about the topic.

Finally, Summative Assessments are done at the end of a lesson or at the end of a unit. They are questions that ask students to display what they have learned either during a particular lesson or at the end of the unit. Oftern, summative assessments cover large areas of information and students are provided materials to study from.

When the assessments are done, it is key that teachers keep track of students' grades. Flubaroo and Socrative are websites that teachers use to generate assessments and keep track of students' grades. Although similar, each one has different characteristics that make them stand out. For instance, Flubaroo provides teachers with a spreadsheet. It automatically calculates the points that students received and their percentile for a particular assignment. It also highlights in orange which questions students received less than 60 percent on. This makes it easy for teachers to notice which questions students struggled with. Socrative is an interactive website that allows teachers to generate assessments. Socrative is software that runs on any device- whether it is a computer, a smart board, or even a smart phone. Students can access socrative.com and interact with their teacher via the website. When doing activities, the information that students understand and complete can be portrayed through a chart. This allows the teacher to see how well students understand the material. The graphic information is immediate for the teacher to see because it is sent directly to the device that the teacher is using. This is wonderful because the teacher will see if the students are understanding the information.

Schoolology is a bit different. This website is for teachers only. It is a social networking site where teachers can come together to discuss topics in education. The website allows the user to create a profile, associate themselves with a school and create their own course. To me, it looks as though the website would be useful when setting up and teaching professional development courses dedicated to assessment and grading. I think that websites like this are important, because they serve as a springboard for teachers to post their ideas and promote collaboration among teachers. I think that using this website would be a good place for teachers to share their assessment questions and ideas with other teachers. If possible, I would suggest even adding a video option to this website, this way teachers could speak directly to each other.

Overall, I learned a lot from these tools tonight. I still think that the easiest assessment and grading website to use is Engrade. I will keep these other tools in my repertoire, however, and plan to explore them further. Seeing new and different ways of assessing students and grading students is important for me because I like to see which options I have that keep things simple yet are still engaging to the students.

Engrade

I just opened an account with the free online grading software entitled Engrade. I am currently a substitute teacher, so I decided to create my own class on the website and my own fake assignments.

To tell you the truth, I never thought that online grading could be so easy! I really like this website and will definitely be keeping it as a resource for myself. The website is extremely easy to navigate and easily allowed me to put students grades in. I liked that the website served as more than one purpose. While navigating the site, I also explored creating my own assignments and quizzes that I could share with and use with students in the future. It also provides a seating chart where the teacher can move the names of the students. This is helpful, because sometimes it is difficult to come up with a seating chart. I would absolutely recommend this site for classroom teachers to use.

I think that students and parents would find this website helpful. Students and parents are provided the access codes and can easily access important grades and assignments. I think that the website is easy to navigate and that parents would not become frustrated when searching for their child's grades. I like that the website had a 'discussions' spot where students and parents can leave messages for the teacher. This is a great way to easily keep in contact with the students and parents on a daily or weekly basis.

I would suggest having a tab where teachers could link classes together. For instance, many classrooms are inclusion classes. In upper elementary or middle school grades, sometimes the special education students are pulled into another classroom for part of the day. If teachers can have those students on the same grade book list as the other students, it would make life easier for the teachers. There would be less grade books to deal with. Also, there would be less confusion for the students as far as receiving access codes. Overall, I think that the website is wonderful and I will definitely be looking to use it in the future.