TYPES OF ASSESSMENT

TYPES OF ASSESSMENT

There are different types of assessment:

1.-Formative and Summative Assessment:

*Formative: These are the evaluations that teachers apply to students while in the middle of an unit. This type of assessment provides us some feedback about how the students are doing at the moment; if they are acquiring the knowledge or not. Sometimes, they are not graded. 

*Summative: These are the tests that we apply at the end of educational periods. Their main purpose is to tell us if the student learned the content or no. They are all graded. (ALthough I use them because I HAVE to, I´ve always considered that these are the most powerful and dangerous weapons that teachers have. You can extermine so many dreams with them, so BE CAREFUL!)

2. Classroom based/ Large scale Assessment:

*Classroom based: Type of assessment that is provided by the teacher to collect, synthesize and make decisions about the classroom. It does not have to be  necessarily formal. It is always formative since its purpose is not to let us know if the student learned the expected content, but to provide information for us to be  interpreted.

*Large scale: Summative tests that are provided by institutions, goverments, etc to measure students progress in a large scale. They are applied to numerous amounts of people at the same time, and the provider is in charge of dealing with all the answers, in order to present a general report of the collected data. Standardized tests are examples of this type of assessment.

3.-Formal and Informal Assessment:

*Formal: These are all the prepared tests that we apply to students to measure what they have learned. Their purposse is to reveal  how much or how well the students know something. Standarized tests and achievement tests represent this type of assessment.

*Informal: These are all the unplanned assessments that we daily apply in our classrooms.  Their purpose is to reveal the students progress in a certain area. Observation is the most commonly used tool for this type of assessment.