This document discusses assessment and reporting in education. It begins by outlining the purpose of keeping a journal on assessment topics and classroom activities. It then explores formative and summative assessment, noting the difference is that formative assessment provides feedback during instruction while summative assessment measures growth after instruction. The document also examines the cycle of inquiry in teaching and learning, emphasizing the importance of reflection. Key aspects of quality assessment like clear purposes and targets are connected to the author's experiences. The relationship between assessment and evaluation is defined, and ingredients for an effective assessment approach are presented.

1. Assessment & Reporting
Lucía Conde Cambelo
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The main aim of this journal is to keep a record of my thoughts, notes,
reflections and questions about this subject, and some implementation activities related
to this subject that I have carried out in my classes. All the information we can find in
this journal is connected, however I have decided to classify them by topics.
 Assessment & Evaluation:
I would like to center this reflection on my personal opinion about the fact
of assessing and being assessed: how people feel, if they like or not and why, etc.
In my opinion the feeling people have when we are assessed changes
through the years and it different depending on the kind you are. When children are at
school they feel that assessment is something compulsory for them, but they do not
really feel the pressure that, for example, students at high school feel because they know
that they have to achieve the goals and the targets and unless they do it, they will not
promote. On the other hand, we can think of assessment from the teachers’ or parents’
perspective. If we focus on parents’ perspective, assessment is something good because
it facilitates them the fact of knowing that their children are working at school and if
they are truly learning or not. Now, I will focus on teachers’ perspective. For teachers
assessment is something great because it gives information about students and their
progress in the learning process, about our own job (because we are assessed by others
teachers of self-assessment) and information about the quality of the tools we use in our
classes.
 Formative & Summative Assessment:
I would like to mention that, before studying this unit it was difficult for me
to understand the difference between formative and summative assessment. However,
now, I am able to distinguish them and that’s why I would like to refers on these terms
in the following lines. After each explanation, I will give you some examples of how I
use each of the assessments with my students.
- Formative assessment provides explicit feedback to both, teacher and
students, in order to improve the teaching-learning process, it means, the

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student’s achievement of intended instructional outcomes. This method
focuses on continuous evaluation of the academic needs and development of
the students within the class and precedes the summative assessment. There
are three questions that students should answer in the formative assessment,
they are as follows: “Where am I going?” “Where am I now?” and “How
can I close the gap between both?”.
These are the tools I usually use in order to do formative assessment:
Guided reading, daily activities in the classroom, cooperative work,
notebooks, participation in class, everyday homework.
- Summative assessments are used to make teachers and students
realized about the progress they have made. Summative assessment
measures the student’s growth after instruction at the end of a unit, a
trimester or a course. This kind of assessment does not provide
instantaneous feedback but it is really useful in order to organize the
curriculum’s information (for example).
In order to do summative assessment I usually use these two tools: Tests
and oral performances in which students show the knowledge they have
acquire.
 The Cycle of Inquiry:

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The Cycle of Inquiry is really important in order to get the change education
needs. The cycle starts when someone has a question about something (in this case:
education). Next step consists on searching for information related to the theme of
study. Then, it is important to organize all the ideas and analyze them, reflect on them
or even compare them to other issues in order to get more ideas and draw wider
conclusions. Finally, that analysis and reflection yields the action, the results. It is
relevant to mention that the cycle does not need to follow this order.
If we related this cycle of inquiry to the teachers’ practice, we could say that our
work would be better if we focused on this cycle or process because whether we make
ourselves questions about what our students need, then we start planning from that
needs, we share the information with our mates, we reflect on that information and think
about how to improve it by getting students’ involvement and then we put all of this
into practice; we could enrich our classes, and make students be more effective and
successful. If we take into account this cycle and all the steps, we are centering our job
in the students’ needs and we are assessing the way we work in order to make it better.
Moreover, when groups of teachers work and collaborate together in the work of
inquiry, they do change the education their students receive, because they go ahead
through the important questions and they are able to explore and manage more data in
order to facilitate their students’ learning process.
 The 5 keys to Quality Assessment:
The aim of the following task is to connect the 5 keys to Quality Assessment to
my own experiences as a teacher and as a student.
Clear Purpose
As teachers, it is important to have clear purposes in order to facilitate our
student’s understanding. If we do not have a clear idea about what students have to
work on, they will not have it neither and it will mean that they are not going to
understand why they are working on that thing.
Having clear purposes means let students have a clear idea about these aspects:
- What information they will be taught.

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- How they are going to use the information.
When I started teaching (I have just finished my degree and I only have some
months of experience) I did not use to let my students know what they were going to
do and why they were going to do it, so they got lost, they did not pay attention to me
and I felt frustrated and unmotivated. However, a month ago I realized that it would be
a good idea if I made a list (on the blackboard) of everything that was going to be
taught in each class and by the way we did it we removed it from the list. It really
worked. Now my students know what they are going to do from the beginning of the
class and they pay attention to me and carry out all the activities because they want to
be able to finish everything I prepare for each day. Since that moment in which I
starting doing the list, I feel my students are more enthusiastic and they really feel they
are part of the class.
As a student, I feel we sometimes have enough, even too much, information
about the purpose but sometimes we have no information. From the student’s
perspective, I can say that when teachers do not have a clear purpose students feel lost
and we do not know what to do, even you do not give importance to the classes
because you feel that you are not going to learn anything. On the other hand, when the
purpose of the subject is clear we feel more relaxed and we enjoy the subject and learn
more things.
Clear Targets
Having clear targets means that, as teachers, we really know what kind of
achievements we want our students to get and, therefore, we are going to take into
account in the assessment.

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For me, as a teacher, it is important to have clear targets because I am
inexperienced so I do need to know what I want my students to learn and do in order to
prepare good activities which can be helpful and useful for the students’ learning
process.
From my point of view, as a student, it is relevant to have clear targets because
it makes teachers be clearer and more communicative in their classes which help us to
understand what they want to transmit. Moreover, when targets are clear, assessment is
clear so it means that having successful is easier for students.
Sound Design
Sound Design is connected to assessment design which can be divided into four
sections: selected response, written response, personal communication and
performance assessment.
In my opinion, as a teacher, the assessment methods I use should match the
learning targets, if not they are not appropriately and I have to change them. In my
classes, I usually use assessment methods in which students have to give both written
and oral responses because I want them to communicate orally but I also want them to
be able to write it. By this way, I use different assessment methods that fit different
students.
As a student, I do not like being assessed orally because I feel nervous and I can
not do my best. However, at university teachers have asked or ask me to do works or
projects that must be presented orally, so I am getting used to it, even although I do not
like it. From my point of view, teachers have to take into account that every student is
different so their way of working and studying will be different. Because of this reason,
teachers have to design different kind of assessment in order to see what their students’
have learnt.

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Effective Communication
Effective communication is responsibility of both teachers and students;
however teachers’ ability and effectiveness in communicating the knowledge is an
important factor in education. The competence of educators in this regard is of great
importance for students to be guided in the best way possible.
Based on my personal experience, I may say that I am learning how to be an
effective communicator. It is being difficult for me and I know it will take me longer,
but I am working on it because I do consider it completely important. If I am not able
to communicate effectively, or even not to communicate, my students will not be able
to understand what I am telling them and as a result they are not going to learn.
As a student, I need teachers who communicate effectively and who give me
feedback when I do something because that is the only way to learn. On the other hand,
I think that it is essential to communicate students the way they are going to be
assessed and the criteria teachers are going to use in order to know if you have done it
properly o not. Sometimes, my teachers have given me the grade and they did not tell
me what I had wrong so I could not improve in that way or simply know what I did not
do right.
Student Involvement
Student’s involvement makes the change. If students feel that what they are
learning is worthwhile, they work harder and they are more interested in what they are
learning, but if not, they do the opposite. We need to make our students feel they are an
important part of the teaching-learning process.
In my classes I try to make my students feel they are part of the teaching-
learning process. For that, I do different things such as asking them for opinion in order
to prepare different activities or asking them for participation in the class. For example,
in one of my classes I am teaching English to students who are 12 years old so when I
have extra time I ask them for songs they like and we learn them together. By this way

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they are learning English, they are enjoying and they are involved in the teaching-
learning process. In my classes with the 8 year-old-students I usually do a game at the
end of the class (hangman, bingo, guess who?, etc.), the way I get them involved is by
letting them choose the game.
Other times, I make them work together on the same task and then they have to
present it to the rest of the class as if they were teachers, and so on.
Getting involved in the teaching-learning process makes students (at least it
happens to me) give importance to what they are learning and, at the same time, it
makes us work harder and enjoy more the learning process.
 Assessment VS Evaluation:
Dimension of Difference Assessment Evaluation
Timing Formative Summative
Focus of Measurement Process-Oriented Product-Oriented
Relationship Between Teacher and
Student
Reflective Prescriptive
Findings and their uses Diagnostic Judgmental
Criteria Flexible Fixed
Standards of Measurement Absolute Comparative
Relation Between Objects Cooperative Competitive
Source of information:
http://www2.binghamton.edu/academics/provost/documents/assessment-evaluation-straight.ppt

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 Assessment Recipe:
ASSESSMENT RECIPE: INGREDIENTS
♣ Diagnostic assessment.
♣ Pre-assessment.
♣ Clear goals, objectives, targets, etc.
♣ Keep the written curriculum in mind.
♣ Appropriate tools and strategies to reach the
goals.
♣ Effective feedback.
♣ Assessment guidance for the students.
♣ Assessment guidance for the teachers.
♣ Formative and summative assessment.
♣ Self and peer assessment (between students and
teachers).
♣ Observation.
♣ Redo activities or tasks.
♣ Active participation.
♣ Taking into account the behaviour.
In the chart above your can see the recipe my classmates and me made last day
during the class. Now I am going to connect these ingredients to my own teaching
experience. In my classes I usually do a pre-assessment. It is not always a written test,
but it consists on different activities or games that are useful for me to see the level my
students have, to realize about what they know or do not know in order to go further in
some contents or slower in other.
On the other hand, I try to create clear purpose and targets but it is sometimes
difficult for me because of the lack of experience, however I consider I am improving a
lot because I can see how my students understand my instructions and they know what
to do and why they do it. Of course, I can also notice it when they carry out different
tasks or activities.
About the different tools and strategies I use in order to achieve the goal, I think
I give my students a huge variety of activities to make all of them being involved in the
learning process. Sometimes when I feel a strategy is working I use it more fluently but

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when I do feel that a strategy is not working I quickly change to another because if not
my students get lost and then it is more difficult to “recover” them.
If I focus on formative and summative assessment and the way I carried them
out in the class, I have to say that formative assessment is the assessment I use most in
my classes, because I just use summative assessment at the end of the trimester or even
the semester. As formative assessment I take into account these factors: daily
observation, activities and tasks, active participation and their behaviour in the class. I
am an extracurricular teacher and because of that in my classes the mark or the grade is
not important, it is not necessary to promote, so what I really want my students to do is
to learn as much as possible and be able to put into practice their knowledge in the real
life.
Finally, it is important to mention that I have no experience about peer
assessment. However, I try to assess myself everyday I finish my classes in order to
change or not the way I have worked.