Philosophizing

I believe the most important thing with assessment is that every students get a fair shot at success. As I have stated before, I am a firm believer in giving out assessments in multiple ways. Some students are not good test takers while others are. Some like to write essays while others enjoy giving a powerpoint presentation. As long as there is a way to let each student demonstrate what they have learned, why not allow for multiples forms of assessment? Give the kids a rubric, tell them what you expect and let them go to work however they want. The assessments should cover the wide variety of intelligences that we have been learning about. People learn differently whether it's visually or audibly and that's fine, everyone is unique and has their own strengths and weaknesses. As teachers, we have to accommodate these strengths and weaknesses and make sure everyone is still learning and understanding the objectives of any given lesson.

I think the three types of tasks are interesting and provides a good breakdown of how assessments can build up. It's also important to remember the difference between an item and a task: "an item refers to the traditional multiple choice, fill-in-the blank...that are common in assessments. The term task refers to more robust ways of gathering information from students...demonstrations and even questions asked by the teacher in informal settings" (Marzano, 62). When dealing with assessments I think it is alright to switch on and off between tasks and items. Yes, students will find more use from the cognitive and affective domains with tasks, but items can help teachers assess properly as well.