Assessments, Assessments, Assessments

I enjoyed seeing everyone's lessons tonight. I am always curious to see how people think and create their own lessons from scratch. I think, even with a uniform format, we still find ways to be creative and show our thinking through our lesson plans. Sorry about the technical difficulties tonight with my lesson, guys. I had no idea how to put my lesson on Blackboard! Thanks for being patient. I really enjoyed the hero lesson and I think this is something that teaches students morals and how to be good people, which is a skill that will be used throughout their entire lives.  

There are three types of assessments that we learned about this evening: summative, formative, and authentic. 

Summative: 
These are typically given at the end of a unit or semester, depending on the lesson and age. Summative assessments are comprised of the whole with lots of different elements and parts. An example of this type of assessment is an exam.

Formative:
This type of assessment can be given each day, and it just involves the students doing something that shows what they know and how they are doing. Examples of formative assessments include exit slips and quick writes. 

Authentic:
MY FAVORITE. This type of assessment relates the information/material students learn to the real world. Authentic assessments are something that the students would really do in real life. Examples of this include: making a menu after a nutrition unit or explaining how you adapt to Missouri weather after learning about animals and their adaptations. 

As a teacher, it is important to have a good understanding of each of these assessments in order to make sure the students are on the right track. I feel that students take away much more from the lessons that are authentic because it is connected to real-world applications. 


I think an authentic assessment for a different lesson plan that I have is for students to go home and take an inventory of their fridge. I will challenge students to write at least 15 items down and then sort them into each food group like an inventory. The food group categories would be grains, meat and beans, fruit, vegetables, and dairy. This is authentic because people take inventories of the contents in their fridge before they go to the store and buy more items.