Foundations of Teaching for Learning 1: Introduction

Commonwealth Education Trust

Professor: John MacBeath
Student: Jhonattan Alfredo Martinez Portilla
Peer Assessment Two

Ccuta-Colombia
2014

The Importance of Assessment

Assessment is an important part of any learning process because it is promote the students
feedback, also it gives to the students the opportunity to evaluate their own performance
and try to improve it, and it is the tool that teachers use to understand and evaluate the
childrens learning and try to help them to success.
An assessment is a tool designed to observe students behavior and produce data that can
be used to draw reasonable inferences about what students know (Pellegrino, 2003).
is the way to collect data from the students perfomance in a more explicit and tangible way
for use the results to explain and try to improve their performance to assure the quality of
learning.
In Colombia there are many misconceptions about the importance and the way to
assessment, the currently educational system is just assessing the students performance in a
static way, every single day they are using the same type of assessment, even there are
some teachers who has been using the same exam for 4 or 3 years. and the government is
doing the same, each year the students from the elementary school and those who are in the
final year of high school must present a national exam called The Knowledge Test to finish
the elementary schoo,l for children who will begin high school and for the students who
will finish the high school, this exam is tedious, they ask to the students from elementary
school questions about things they dont know or that they never were taught and to the
students of final year of high school they ask questions from the elementary school that
they have already forgot.
In one year I will become a teacher and this course have taught me the importance of
assessement and showed me the differents ways in which assessment can be apply, and for
me that is really important, for example one of the different types of assessment that the
course offers are Assessment for Learning which is a diagnostic for the students but also for
teachers that help them to work together to improve the progress of learning and to focus in
changes in teaching, Assessment as Learning which I consider relevant in the Colombian
context because this type of assessment encourage students to assess their on performance
which give them the opportunity to know what they have to improve on their own progress
and finally Assessment of Learning which is the most common here in Colombia and also
the only what is used but the educational system which only consist in evaluate the student
progress through a writing exam or oral exam to give a grade to the student that then is
going to be shared with parents in the report card.
But those are not the only ways to inquire the students performance or character, also we
have the traffic lights method which is very useful to help struggling students because it is
consist about giving to the students three cards,one red,yellow and green as the colors of
the traffic lights. Each card mean something, red one means that the student do not

understand and that need help, the yellow one means that the student understand but have
some doubts and help from the teacher will be good and the green one means that the
student understand and do not need help, this method is interesting because give to the
teacher the opportunity to focus on the students with problems and doubts.
Also the Spot Check is a really useful tool for teacher because it is thought to measure the
students feelings in the classroom, it is a little survey that are composed of opposite
statements for example happy/sad and with a level from 1 to 3 in which 1 is good, 2 is
neutal and 3 is bad, it is an important tool because help teacher to know what is in children
minds and also their hearts however it is good to say that is not good to be apply with a
huge amount of students, but you can select a sample of your classroom to be measured.
In conclusion this course was a big opportunity to have access to new approaches that are
not applied in my country then for me this is a big challenge to try to apply this new
methods that have made a great impact on my own knowledge and that invite to go further
and to continue with following courses of this.

References
Pellegrino, J. W. (2003). The challenge of knowing what students know. Measurement:
Interdisciplinary Research and Perspectives,
1(1), e7-e11. Retrieved
from http://bearcenter.berkeley.edu/measurement/docs/Pellegrino_1_1.pdf.