Assessments take on many forms, but all have one distinctive purpose, to empower a teacher with a resource that gathers information about students that will later be used for evaluating and analysing students’ knowledge and understanding, guiding teachers on what to report about a student’s achievement to the relevant stakeholders. Krause describes assessment as “The gathering and analysing of information about a student’s achievement”. (date). Assessing and reporting the achievement of a student is fundamental in the process of creating lifelong learners. brady & Kennedy define “the purpose of assessment is a method used to make a diagnoses of students learning and progress (date). Principle one of …show more content…
Teachers have a responsibility to their students to ensure they are providing every opportunity for their student to become strong, independent learners. This is reflected in the Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians (2008) goal one, promoting equity and excellence in schools and in goal two, for all students becoming successful learners, confident, creative individuals and active informed citizens (Ministerial Council for Education, Early Childhood Development and Youth Affairs [MCEECDDYA],2008). To achieve these goals schools, teachers, families and the broader community must work with the Australian governments to commit to the Melbourne Declaration’s goals and by helping to promote world-class curriculum and assessment (MCEECDDY, 2008). Assessments are an important part of a student’s learning and development. Without the use of assessments in practice, teachers would not be able to fulfil their role. Teachers, however need to be aware of the impact and dramatic effect assessments can have on students’ lives. (marsh, ___). With the use of a teaching learning cycle teachers are able to assess students learning, plan and reflect. This in turn will enable teachers to use their professional knowledge to assess students and …show more content…
Marsh states “Assessment can take many forms and is certainly much wider than traditional forms of objective tests and essays (date). In today’s day and age children are not able to be measured by simple by paper and pencil assessments alone. Arthur at el describes assessments as the collection of information about children in multiple ways, contexts and sources, collected in a variety of formats (date). Assessments are broken down into to two main groups, summative and formative. A summative assessment are often given to students to comprehend how much knowledge a student has about a subject. Usually a summative assessment is given at the end of a unit to compare knowledge gained over a period of time. Arthur at el. defines summative assessments as a way to differentiate a student’s knowledge and familiarity of subjects at the beginning and end of a learning period (date). Summative assessments can take the shape of standardise assessments focusing on measuring a student achievements against other students. Standardised assessments are usually administered under rules and procedures and are then used to compare students’ performance against other students. (brady &kennedy 2010). Summative assessment also include traditional assessments and diagnostic assessments. Marsh describes summative assessments as a way