Addressing Professional Goals - Testing, Testing

I work under a contract that includes merit pay. We use the Danielson model for teacher evaluation. As part of the process, we have to do a mid-year self-assessment. As I worked through the assessment, I pinpointed some strengths and weaknesses in myself or my teaching. I am going to do a couple of posts on what I am doing to address these professional goals.

One area that I am working on is aligning my assessment with my instructional outcomes. I am using a variety of formative and summative assessments. One of my favorite formative assessments are exit slips for math, reading, and writing. I purchased the sets of passes from Melissa O'Bryan last summer. They are common core aligned, so you just need to print the relevant slip for the day. They are easy to use. They do require printing and storing the slips. They give you a snapshot of how students are doing on the concept. You can graph responses to track student progress, so you don't need to keep the individual slips. You can check the exit slips out here, in her store.

I also use technology based assessment. My students love the instant feedback. I was using a Senteo response system for all of out selection tests for stories from our anthology. Our system is older, so I am limited to multiple choice, true/false, and numerical answers. My neighbor and I both use Senteos, sometimes at the same time. They are great for giving feedback, and grade the test for me. It helps save time. What I don't like, is that the technology can be quirky. Sometimes the computer acts up, or the receiver cannot "find" our class. 

Class and individual results are easily accessible. I can easily see what concepts were difficult and may need to be readdressed. I export the results on an excel spreadsheet. It makes transferring to the grade book easier. Overall it works well, but there are other ways that use other devices that I will get into in next week's installment. 

 In the meanwhile, I would love to hear what works for you.