Fair Assessments - Process, Product, Formative and Summative & Psssss Follow Me on Bloglovin

Ok here is a post that I did not post from April.  I am not sure why but if has been sitting in my list of posts waiting....... I had a few teacher friends that I told about this workshop and they wanted to see the handouts but of course I threw them out.  Duh!  Then I remembered this unposted (not a real word but don't know what to call it) post. Also as EVERYONE knows Google Reader is gone so follow my link on Blog Lovin,

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Here is my unposted post.....
This week I went to a workshop on assessments, Diverse Learning: Assessing and Grading Fairly, with my partner teacher.  It was a free workshop and who can resist free CEU's?  I know the title may be boring but I had one of those Ah Ha Oprah moments right in the middle of the workshop. 

The entire workshop was about changing your idea of assessments from comparing students to others to  standards base grading.  OK I was listening at this point but was still skeptical.  Then we did an activity where we used a rubric that assessed the process or how the project was completed and then did a rubric to grade the actual product. 

Here is the rubric that we used to grade the process of our pretend student.  Don't mind the math scribble, my mind was shot by then and I could not even do basic math.  Ugh!!!  This student struggled with the process of writing his paper and that was evident in the grade.

Then we looked at the completed rubric of our pretend student that assessed his actual project.  The project was not as bad as the process and that was evident in the grade he received.  He was able to do the project even though his process was weak.  Think of all those students you have that struggle with organization, deadlines and retrieving the info needed to do the project but the actual project was pretty good.  It showed an actual assessment of that student.  He struggled with the process but he did ok on the project itself.

The presenter said you could either average the two rubrics or keep them separate.  This was the Ah Ha moment!  I always struggle with how to portray that the student really was not independent with the process but the actual project wasn't too bad or the student was totally independent on both process and project and did awesome.  In my previous rubrics I always had a statement or two on the process such as using the internet, use of graphic organizers, rough draft you get the idea but two separate rubrics.....GENIUS!

Then the presenter talked about formative and summative assessments.  I do use both of these in my math class so I can see how my class is doing and if I can move on but I had another Ah Ha moment even after I was so pooped after a long day at school I thought I was imagining things.   Hmmmm could be both. 

We also had to look at a standard - "Draw on information from multiple print or digital sources demonstrating ability to locate an answer to a questions."  So our formative assessment we came up with; an Exit Ticket to look for a teacher created question, Webquest to practicing locating answers, graphic organizer to organize the info for the project / paper and the deadlines for each step of the project.  The summative assessment would be the project or paper.  Ok here was moment......the formative assessments would be assessing the process and the summative would be the final product.  Love it!  Well I hope you enjoyed my rambling on assessments.  How do you grade projects?