The role of assessment in kindergarten to grade 9 years should be utilized in a variety of ways to help all parties involved. Ranging from the ability to guide a student’s learning, to having the ability to monitor each student’s progress throughout their elementary years, effective assessments let the educator meet their student’s learning needs, and are integral to the success of a teacher and student in their respective learning environments. Additionally, assessments play an integral role in a teacher’s ability to differentiate their instruction and reflect on their lessons. Assessments demonstrate if a teacher’s approach is being received well by their students, as effective assessments do not only benefit the learners who receive it, but the educator as well that is distributing them, representing a relationship of mutualism.
In elementary education, numerous assessment methods help identify where a student is at in their learning, and which target areas should prioritized regarding individual learning needs. The two most prominent forms of assessment in education are formative and summative. As an educator in the elementary years, I will more than likely utilize formative assessments regularly to benefit all learners. Formative assessments give an educator a better indication of where their students are at within a lesson or unit. A teacher can use these to check understanding and identify a student’s learning needs, as formative assessments create the ability to construct feedback and reinforcement for students to help them gain a better understanding in whichever areas they need. Formative assessments also allow the teacher to be reflective, which helps reinforce lessons so that when they are performed again or another similar lesson begins, they can be better prepared, and adapted in a way that enables students to absorb information and adapt to respective lessons to the best of their capabilities. Not to mention, if these assessments are done regularly, it can enable the educator and parent to be on the same page when monitoring a student’s education and generate more communication between the two which is important in addressing a student’s needs and understanding which areas of schooling need to be prioritized.
Furthermore, summative assessments can occur after numerous formative assessments have taken place, as an educator can monitor the progress of students on a formative scale and then use a summative assessment to see the overall development of a student’s learning for their respective lesson/unit, and gain a better understanding on how effective formative assessments were for the learning.