Assessment Tools

Performance assessment is getting increased attention from educational experts across the nation. Teachers should be up to date on the latest assessment tools and learn to use them effectively to assess student understanding of a given topic.

Worksheets are a very important form of performance assessment. JumpStart has an extensive collection of worksheets that teachers can use to ascertain how well students have understood a topic:

• Grade-Based Worksheets

The Need for Assessment Tools

Every lesson that a teacher teaches has an objective – that students who have understood the lesson are able to perform tasks they couldn’t have done before the lesson. At the end of the lesson, teachers like to know whether or not the objective has been realized. For this, they need assessment tools. These allow teachers to measure how well students have understood a topic. One of the most basic tools is worksheets. Teachers can ask students to complete worksheets, and how well the worksheet is completed is an indication of how well the students have understood the lesson. With this feedback, teachers can review the lesson and the teaching methodology used. The teacher may decide that some teaching methods were more effective than others, and based on this conclusion mold future lesson plans. These important tools allow both teachers and students to improve their performances.

Performance Assessment Tools

Traditionally, teachers used paper and pencil tests to assess student mastery of a given concept. However, this assessment method doesn’t necessarily grade the performance of the student. In a multiple-choice question, students may pick the right answer out of luck. Similarly, in a math test, a student may pick the wrong answer due to an error in calculation and not because of incomplete understanding of the concept. These drawbacks call for better assessment methods. This has given rise to the concept of performance assessment, where students are judged on task performance. Teachers use assessment tools like rubrics to grade the student’s performance. Once the tools are designed, teachers share them with the students. This gives students an understanding of what the evaluator will be looking for and students can hone their skills accordingly. In this method, students are learning even while being tested.