Keeley: Assessments

There's a lot of valuable information in the Keeley article. Assessment is one of the most important aspects of being a teacher - you have to know where your students are at, where they're going and how to get them there - in order to be a successful teacher. This is done through formative assessment - the focus of Keeley's article. One of the things that really stood out to me in this article was describing formative assessment as "assessment for learning, not assssessment of learning." I've not really considered it in this way before, but it makes sense because I'm using these assessments to guide my teaching.

Last week we read about student misconceptions and difficult it can be to change the framework in which they've previously stored knowledge. Keeley points out a very important aspect of formative assessment, that is that it not only identifies where students are grasping concepts and using critical thinking, but it also exploits their misconceptions and incomplete thoughts. Ignoring these discoveries in formative assessment results in stronger beliefs in those misconceptions down the road (I'm thinking the gifted student in the video with the curly-cue path of orbit).

The other key idea that Keeley talks about is using the "probes" (assessment types) to guide explorative learning for students and curriculum development for teachers. Specifically, what resonates with me is the idea that incorrect responses to probes can be catalysts for investigations, discussions and experiments.  By allowing students to further investigate their misconceptions, they'll be better able to understand why it's not wholey correct and will be more successful at correcting their misguided schema.  Similarly, for the teacher, allowing the students to explore their misconceptions can help create a new method for teaching the subject matter, and maybe preventing or correcting future students' misconceptions.