Alternative Assessment

Posted by Dorit Sasson Feb 24, 2008

When I taught last year in my school, I asked my studients how they felt about tests and how they made them feel. 88% of the students said tests created a great deal of anxiety and put them under a great deal of pressure.

Teachers for the most part largely overlook the possibilities of alternative assessment. I agree: there is one major area of discomfort, which is trying to find the right tool of alternative assessment.The best way is to start small by distributing questionnaireas around small tasks or even asking a mature and cognitively ready class that know your teaching habits what kind of tasks interest them such as group or pair work, research projects or portfolios. Finally, what topic interests them? Asking these types of questions creates more learner involvement, which is the ideology of alternative assessment.

Alternative assessment Tests

Kids make up their own test questions based on the material you have taught them. You provide a rubric for how you plan on assessing their questions. Kids interact with the material and become "experts." You then choose the questions and it becomes their test. They can also be responsible for marking it depending on how much control you want to give your students.

Depending on how open you are to the alternative assessment methods, you can also incorporate oral presentations, or other meaningful performance assessments such as projects and open your standard based curriculum even more.

If you still haven't decided however to incorporate a performance based assessment and still have questions or concerns about it, feel free to email me.