Classroom Assessment

Colby Wegter

Keeley’s Classroom Assessment

To me the most important part of this article was the relationship between the students’ thinking and the teacher’s instruction. When you are talking about formative assessment elicitation is a key factor in progressing in learning. Without knowing the students’ thoughts and notions before hand it is a lot harder for the teacher to move forward. Elicitation is also a great tool for the students because it gives them a heads up on what they will be learning in the future part of the lesson and it allows them to make their thoughts explicit, which, once again help the teacher and the students move forward. This is also complemented by the exploration and concept development stage in which the students actually learn as a group.

The probes were a big part of this article and the nice part of them is that the article only highlighted the paper-and-pen option but they can also be used orally to. They can be predetermined or simple short answer questions that allow the students to articulate what they are thinking. I really like these because you can get the range of all your students’ thoughts. Especially when it comes to science, because you can catch misconceptions. Also it’s good to do it orally to make the students have a rationale for their answer.

Finally I believe the most important part of this article was how it helps the teacher and I agree with the article when it explains: “Probes... ‘turn the spotlight from examining students’ work to examining teachers’ work.’ In other words they help you understand student thinking so that you can develop more effective ways of teaching.”