How classroom assessments improve learning

Rodalyn V. De Leon

Classroom assessment, which is a joint process that involves both teachers and learners, is an integral part of teaching and learning. Here, teachers provide appropriate assessment to measure learners’ current and developing abilities while enabling them to take responsibility in the process.

Assessment is a process that is used to keep track of learners’ progress in relation to learning standards and in the development of 21st-century skills; to promote self-reflection and personal accountability among students about their own learning; and to provide bases for the profiling of student performance on the learning competencies and standards of the curriculum.

Classroom Assessment is an ongoing process of identifying, gathering, organizing, and interpreting quantitative and qualitative information about what learners know and can do, according to the Department of Education.

According to the DepEd, teachers should employ classroom assessment methods that are consistent with curriculum standards. It is important for teachers to always inform learners about the objectives of the lesson so that the latter will aim to meet or even exceed the standards.

There are two types of classroom assessment: formative and summative. Formative assessment may be seen as assessment for learning so teachers can make adjustments in their instruction. It is also assessment as learning wherein students reflect on their own progress.

According to the UNESCO Program on Teaching and Learning for a Sustainable Future (UNESCO-TLSF), formative assessment refers to the ongoing forms of assessment that are closely linked to the learning process. It is characteristically informal and is intended to help students identify strengths and weaknesses in order to learn from the assessment experience.

Formative assessment must also provide students with immediate feedback on how well they are learning throughout the teaching-learning process.

Summative assessment, on the other hand, may be seen as assessment of learning, which occurs at the end of a particular unit. This form of assessment usually occurs toward the end of a period of learning in order to describe the standard reached by the learner.

Often, this takes place in order for appropriate decisions about future learning or job suitability to be made. Judgments derived from summative assessment are usually for the benefit of people other than the learner (UNESCO-TLSF).

Summative assessment measures whether learners have met the content and performance standards. Teachers must use methods to measure student learning that have been deliberately designed to assess how well students have learned and are able to apply their learning in different contexts. The results of summative assessments are recorded and used to report on the learners’ achievement. Primarily, the results of summative assessment are reported to the learners and their parents/guardians. In addition, these are reported to principals/school heads, teachers who will receive the child in the next grade level, and guidance teachers who should help students cope with challenges they experience in school.

So why is appropriate assessment important? Because this will ensure learners’ success in moving from guided to independent display of knowledge, understanding, and skills. This will also enable them to transfer this successfully in future situations, facilitating the development of their higher-order thinking and 21st-century skills.

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The author is Teacher II at Tinang Elementary School, Concepcion North

District