Changing the A+B=C mentality of Math Assessment

By Michael Piper

Mathematics can be a dangerous subject to teach. It carries with it the connotation of being a cold and objective subject, with black and white answers. People rarely tend to think of math as an art form or an adventure. Teachers and students alike are guilty of this impropriety, neglecting math’s mysterious and elegent nature. The glory of math bravado and intense mental gymnastics gets traded for cold methodologies and mindless repetition. Students fail to exclaim eureka and great scott as they conquer concepts and self. Teachers fail to glow or shed tears when whispering delicious formulas and sacred teachings. The goal of the math teacher must be to once again move the student to tremble with awe and excitement over this great subject. But with growing pressure to meet the rigorous demands of quantitative standardized testing, how can one achieve this end? How can one implement assessments so that they kindle a passion for math instead of smothering it? The goal of this article is to help equip the motivated secondary teacher with tools that promote the understanding and appreciation of mathematics.

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How Well Do They play?

By ReAnne Shields

Assessments are very important to the learning process. With the use of assessments it allows for teachers and students to see how they are progressing in particular subject areas. Is the student learning the correct information and retaining it well? And is the teacher giving effective lessons that allow the student to learn and understand? These are two of the main questions that revolve around the idea of assessments.

When looking at subjects other than the basic math, English, history, and science, how do teachers assess their students? As for physical education there are a few assessments used to see how well their students are doing with specific motor skills or sport activities.

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Assessing Art

by A. Jones

In order to assess art you must first understand why we teach and make art. Art is a means to engage all students senses for learning and expression. Creating art helps children express their imaginative and emotional personal development. Art lessons contribute to the cognitive development and their critical thinking skills. Art is crucial in helping students to understand and explore their world and develop their own abilities to function in it. Art exposes students to world cultures, individual expressions, visual symbols, and it helps them to develop their own preferences, and it makes them aware of influences in society. Art has the ability to integrates all major subjects : Math, Science, Social Studies, History, Language Art, and Technology. Students enjoy art classes because it allows them to touch on experiences not addressed in any other classes. In art, students can express opinions and ideas that are uniquely different then their peers.In art there is always more than one way to achieve excellence. According to Elliot Eisner “the arts teaches children: to make good judgement, that problems can have more than one answer, the arts celebrate multiple perspectives,the art teaches that in complex forms of problem solving are seldom fixed, the arts makes vivid facts that neither words in their literal form nor numbers exhaust what we know, the art teaches students that small differences can have large effects, the art teaches students to think through and within a material, the art enables us to have experiences no other source has the capability of.”(Eisner,2006)

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Assessing Today’s Students in Social Studies

The classrooms we teach in today are so diverse. Inclusion in the classroom helps to add to classroom diversity. With this diversity you have students with different abilities and talents. The days of taken regular assessment of test and essays are a thing of the past. Not all students are great test takers nor are all students are great at creative projects. Assessing students with one type of medium does not help to show whether a student has mastered a concept. This is even more evident with the subject of Social Studies because it can deal with simple knowing facts about an event in history to interpreting and using sources to understand history.

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Performance Assessment—Elementary Math

By Taylor Smith

Performance Assessment is especially important in mathematics as there are many processes involved in coming to a correct answer. There are many levels in mathematics to build on. For example understanding addition helps you understand subtraction Understanding multiplication helps you better understand division and so on. Students must always “show their work” so the teacher knows they understand the process to getting there.

The best way to decide how to implement performance assessment in a mathematics lesson is to fully understand performance assessment.

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