Overview of Professional Inquiry Project
Focus/Purpose:
The focus of my Professional Inquiry Project was originally solely about helping new teachers effectively integrate summative assessment into their teaching and planning. However, throughout my research, I came to understand that formative and summative assessment are so closely intertwined, that in order to answer my inquiry question as best as I can, I needed to research and discuss both forms of assessment. I also found through my research that although this project was mainly based on assessment in elementary, the basics of assessment often apply to all ages, which caused the scope this project to broaden slightly.
From the start, the focus of this project has been to create a resource for teachers, especially new ones, that might be feeling a little lost when it comes to planning, creating, and utilizing assessment in an elementary classroom. After viewing this website, I hope that new teachers feel more comfortable and confident implementing both formative and summative assessment into their planning and teaching across all subjects areas.
Rationale:
I chose to focus my Professional Inquiry Project around assessment, as it is the aspect of teaching that I struggle with the most. Throughout my practicums, my ability to effectively assess students has definitely improved, but at the beginning of PSIII, I felt that I still had a long way to go before I would feel confident in assessing my students' learning.
I also chose this topic because in elementary school, there does not seem to be a definitive way that teachers are supposed to assess their students. This gives teachers freedom to choose how and when they want to utilize and implement assessment, but this can be incredibly vague and overwhelming for teachers entering the field. Every teacher seems to have different preferences, recommendations, and guidelines, when it comes to assessing their students, making it difficult for new teachers to determine how they themselves want to implement formative and summative assessment into their teaching and planning. The purpose of choosing this topic is to help fellow new teachers, in addition to myself, become better assessors, giving planning and teaching more direction and focus.
I also chose this topic because in elementary school, there does not seem to be a definitive way that teachers are supposed to assess their students. This gives teachers freedom to choose how and when they want to utilize and implement assessment, but this can be incredibly vague and overwhelming for teachers entering the field. Every teacher seems to have different preferences, recommendations, and guidelines, when it comes to assessing their students, making it difficult for new teachers to determine how they themselves want to implement formative and summative assessment into their teaching and planning. The purpose of choosing this topic is to help fellow new teachers, in addition to myself, become better assessors, giving planning and teaching more direction and focus.
Why Assess?
We all know that teachers are required to assess their students, but why? Let's take a deeper look into the root of assessment in order to understand why we do it in the first place. Here is a list of some of the main reasons why we should assess our students:
- To inform future teaching/next steps for student learning
- To ensure students are understanding what they are learning (the curriculum)
- To re-teach material if there is student confusion
- To have evidence for report cards and to show to parents
- To fully understand the level of understanding that each student has
- To inform IPPs, modification, or extra help or assistance for students
- To show that students are either performing below, at, or above grade level