CONNECT CLEAR TARGETS TO ASSESSMENT QUALITY

CONNECT CLEAR TARGETS TO ASSESSMENT QUALITY 

•  After having studied Unit 2B, explain three ways in which clear targets are a necessary precursor to assessment quality. 

Provide examples from your own experience to illustrate the connection between clear targets and assessment quality. 

First of all we have to remember what Learning Targets are, Learning Targets can be: all those Objectives, Lesson Objectives, Essential Learnings, Grade level expectations, Common core standards, Goals, Content standards, among others, and they are classified in five groups: Knowledge, Reasoning, Skill, Product, Disposition.

As I have been saying in my latest posts, having clear targets not only helps teachers to improve the teaching and learning process and as well to have information for preparing the assessment of the unit, topic or theme, also helps the students to know exactly what is expected from them in each unit, theme or topic and even the parents so they can help their children knowing what is expected from them in each level of the year at school.

Right now I am not working but I am going to use my professional experience to illustrate the connection between clear targets and assessment quality, I have been working as a preschool teacher more than fifteen years and I have seen the importance of explaining very well the targets/objectives, first of all the teacher needs to plan a very specific targets and stick to it not have a lot of objectives because with small children is very important to have “everything tied up”, that means that the teacher cannot improvise with the plan.

In my preschool in Venezuela we have year/ level targets or Grade level expectations, Project targets or Content Standards and Unit targets or Lesson objectives this targets were related to one another and all of them have to be presented for the parents and the students at some point in the school year.

In preschool we have to be very friendly with the language used to inform the students about what is expected from them, that’s why I always begin my classes with a Circle time where among other things we explain the content of the class and talk about what do we have to learn about this class and how we are going to learn it (the assessment/ activity), That way I can know the prior knowledge of my students about the topic and resolve the possible doubts that may arise, also when I talk about the assessment/activity I show my students a work already done so they have a good example of the finished work, I think that if this explanation is clear when we do the activity, this will come out very well.

One time as a part of a Project I had to go to another class in my preschool and I realize the teacher does the things in a very different way, she only explains the activity before the moment the students will have to do it but she doesn’t explain the objectives of the unit or the class in any time after the assessment/activity, well the results in that assessment were completely different than the results of the same assessment in my classroom. That’s why I completely agree with the idea about the connection between clear targets and assessment quality.