FS5: LEARNING ASSESSMENT STRATEGIES

EPISODE 3

Name of FS Student: ALDWIN MARTIN

Course: Bachelor of Secondary Education

Resource Teacher: Mr. Melchor Abu

Cooperating School: Isabela National High School

My Target

At the end of this activity, you will be informed on the principles of authentic assessment and its usefulness in the classroom.

My Task

Authentic assessment is an alternative way of assessing students’ learning to be able to use it, you must have a deep understanding of it. To help you reach your goal, do the following task:

1. Visit a classroom and interview the teacher on his/her experiences in using authentic assessment.

2. Describe how the teacher uses the authentic assessment.

3. Write a reflective journal on the activity.

My Tools

For this learning activity, please document the information gathered from the interview with the teacher on authentic assessment. Write your documentation using the activity form provided for you.

MY INTERVIEW NOTES

How does authentic assessment differ from traditional assessment?

Authentic assessment evaluate students abilities in a real world setting, students apply their skills and abilities to authentic or in a performance based or on projects, it allows learners to integrate what they have learned, individually or by a group, while in traditional assessment, or a pen and paper test, most of the time, students are engaged in rote learning or memorization the low level learning skill which is exercised when taking a passive test.

How does authentic assessment helps in the improvement of students performance in the classroom?

Authentic assessment helps students not only for them to use what they have, which are their ability and skills to do a task in a real world context, it also helps students to discover their hidden skills which they have not thought they can do, authentic assessment also help to assess fairly mainly because in today’s most recent curriculum, the k-12, students are known as diverse learners which have different techniques in learning, multiple intelligences and different behaviours as well, so in assessing learning and to help learners improve their potentials, authentic assessing really helps teachers.

What are the authentic assessment tools do you use?

As a science teacher, there are varied assessment tools that I use to assess authentically, like in laboratory exercises, I ask my students to perform an activity by group, and I also use oral recitation to assess if they are aware of the things around them, like making jingles regarding our topic, this are only some of the assessment tolls that I use to assess authentically, and as I learn how learners respond to how I assess them, I gather more ideas on what to do to improve instruction each and every day.

1. What is Authentic Assessment?

Authentic assessment is an assessment which relates to real life situations or scenarios. Students are asked to apply or demonstrate what they know and showcase their skills and abilities of different fields.It involves authentic learning and oftentimes performance based ,therefore it requires higher order thinking skills. Authentic assessment is engaging, interesting, effective and reliable yet sometimes it is quite time consuming because a teacher needs to make a rubric in conducting /doing so.

2. How was authentic assessment used? Was it used to measure learning through the product?

Authentic assessment is used to measure through the product and a process as well, though it doesn’t encourage rote learning or memorizing but encourages learners to apply their knowledge by their skills and ability to do and create a thing in their own style, in their own way, the ability to work individually or by a group whether in a written or oral.

What are your insights and feelings about the use of authentic assessment?

Authentic learning is very significant because without it students may not able to understand the lesson well because they just learn things without applications .It goes on with authentic assessment that the use of it is also significant, whether it focuses on the product or on the process. Authentic assessment gives better learning to students and reliable feedback to the teacher if it is done well , so the use of it is quite critical. A teacher must have a wide knowledge and understanding about authentic assessment to achieve good results

Describe how the teacher used the authentic assessment?

The authentic assessment have been used by administering activities, individually and by group, and oral recitation that allows learners to relate the lesson in real life, and ask students to bring materials for laboratory experiments like what they have used while discussing properties of light and it’s importance, even though the teacher have less materials to demonstrate the lesson for him to be able to relate it well in real world setting, he makes sure to find ways to make the students see what they are discussing by the use of models and pictures and a simple sketch on the board, as the saying goes, if you can’t bring the child to the mountain, bring the mountain to the child, and as a product, the teacher requires the students to come up with a project with regards to a specific lesson of the grading period for him to know the overall learning of the student.

How did you feel about the teacher’s experience in the use of authentic assessment?

I admire how the teacher relates every lesson in action by the letting the learners learn by doing it, and as a facilitator, he is there to facilitate learning of each learners even if they are somewhat hard to handle, in how the teacher use authentic assessment, I myself appreciated every lesson he discuss after the students learned them by doing and making this and that on their own, and when you go deep the process and it’s product, I come to realize the importance of science and the use of it in our lives, not only by listening to the teacher alone, but in being able to demonstrate the concepts by yourself.

What could be the gains of the students and teachers in using authentic assessment?

As a teacher, authentic assessment really helps in evaluating your students overall performance because in this method of assessing, it allows teachers to assess not only the knowledge of the learning about something but the learner’s behaviour, how they learn best, and what to inject for instruction to be better, and as for the learners, learning by doing something makes learning more fun and exciting, it let the students explore and learn and discover their strengths.

Which part of the teacher’s use of authentic assessment do you feel like improving or revising?

I think it is the motivation phase because from what I observed she lacks the power to motivate her students well or encourage them to learn whenever she conducts the authentic assessment