Assessment Revelations

I was blown away by the list of assessment possibilities in the Abell & Volkmann article we read in class today.  Prior to today I would have said that being in this program has really stretched my thinking on assessment beyond the traditional paper and pencil test to include projects, portfolios, digital stories, etc., but that stretching was taken to a whole new level with this reading.  I am in awe of the array of creative assessment tools that are available to us as teachers.  It is also gratifying to know that the utilization of  various types of assessment is also leading to greater equity in education as different assessments lend themselves to different learning styles.  As we discussed in class, however, any assessment must be constructed carefully to yield both validity and reliability of results.  So I have learned that there is not just one time (the end of a lesson) for assessment, there is not just one type of assessment but I also learned today that there is not just one level of assessment.  Looking at Bloom's taxonomy (a pyramid of levels of thinking) adds another interesting layer of constructing assessment and that is by the level of thinking that it is measuring in our students.  We must be careful not to hang at the bottom of the pyramid, only testing our students' knowledge and comprehension.  Instead we must stretch ourselves to assess in creative ways their ability to apply, analyze, evaluate and create new ways of thinking about and applying what they have learned.