Journal #1: Assessment and Learning

How can assessment improve learning?
Assessment is a wonderful tool to see the level of information that the student has absorbed. Assessment can be written quiz, an observation, questions asked orally, or a product that was produced by the student. I think it is important to remember that students absorb information in different ways. I am a visual learner and so it is harder for me to process infomation orally. A quiz helped in school when it included graphs and pictures. I also see that other people are not right brained and are better at information that is analytical and systematic. I think assessment improves learning if it reaches diverse types of learners. When teachers are giving a lesson on say the Santa Fe Trail, it would be important to remember that some students will be able to summarize information in an essay where as others would do well at drawing a map or building a covered wagon. I was fortunate to have a mentor teacher that utilized different forms of assessment and showed me how it can be used to collect information for the proceeding assignment. Sometimes if a hands on activity was given in one chapter, she would use another type of assessment, like an essay question or quiz for the next. I believe that students need to be exposed to all types of assessment as it only confirms information that they are learning. I think assessment only in test form is incomplete as it does not take the whole student into consideration as far as their abilities to express the information that they have processed.