Chelsea Bowden

Dr. Bluiett- Speaker Reflection 6

Assessments
Today, Dr. Bluiett talked about the importance of assessing your
students and getting a gage for where they are academically in certain
subject areas. The reason for assessing your students is to give you an
idea of were the students need help or if any of the students have prior
knowledge about the topic to be presented. There are many types of
assessments out there for teachers to use and Dr. Bluiett highlighted a
few of those. Dr. Bluiett specifically focused on reading assessments
and how as pre-service teachers we can assess students properly
throughout our clinicals.
Like mentioned before, assessments are beneficial for teachers
because they provide a resource to know how their students are doing
and what areas they need to be addressed and focus on, so they can
be successful in the classroom. One way as pre-service teachers we
will engage in learning about assessments is through our morning
intervention program. Many of the students coming to visit us need
extra help and we will get to assess and see their progress over time.
This helps the students and teachers know where the student is
struggling and how to target that area before it becomes a major
problem. Im looking forward to assessing students and seeing how we
can improve an area of their learning. Data from assessments is crucial
to student growth and leading teacher instruction.
Another vital component of assessments is communication.
Assessments provide a way of connecting parents, students, and
teachers, so that all parties know what is happening with a child
academically and where there needs to be a larger focus in class and
outside of class. Assessing a student gives the teacher data that she or
he can take to the parents and show as proof of the student struggling,
progressing, or simply a resource to have on hand for clerical purposes.
Assessments should constantly be giving the teacher and the parent
reliable and consistent data about the child. The process of giving an
assessment is in four parts and should be monitored regularly for
student growth and improvement.
I have always known the importance of testing students, but I
didnt think about it from the perspective of helping them, rather a
final grade you put into the computer. Assessments are so much more
than that and they help the teacher help the student. I felt I gained a
lot of ideas, thoughts, and feelings about Dr. Bluietts lecture today and
greatly benefited from it. Im looking forward to trying some
assessments out at Trace Crossing and seeing how students improve
over time and how we can help them be successful.