INSET PRESENTATION ABOUT ASSESSMENT

Classroom Assessment is an integral part of curriculum implementation. It allows the teachers to track and measure learners’ progress and to adjust instruction accordingly. Classroom assessment informs the learners, as well as their parents and guardians, of their progress.

POLICY GUIDELINES ON CLASSROOM ASSESSMENT FOR THE K TO 12 BASIC EDUCATION PROGRAM (BEP)

Theoretical Basis

Classroom Assessment is a joint process that involves both teachers and learners. It is an integral part of teaching and learning. Teachers provide appropriate assessment when they aim to holistically measure learners’ current and developing abilities while enabling them to take responsibility in the process. This view recognizes the diversity of learners inside the classroom, the need for multiple ways of measuring their varying abilities and learning potentials, and the role of learners as co-participants in the assessment process.

At the heart of this assessment framework is the recognition and deliberate consideration of the learners’ zone of proximal development (Vygotsky 1978). Appropriate assessment is committed to ensure learners’ success in moving from guided to independent display of knowledge, understanding, and skills, and to enable them to transfer this successfully in future situations. From this point of view, assessment facilitates the development of learners’ higher-order thinking and 21st-century skills.

This view of assessment, therefore, acknowledges the unity of instruction and assessment. Assessment is part of day-to-day lessons and extends the day-to-day classroom activities that are already in place in the K to 12 curriculum.

What is Classroom Assessment?

Assessment is a process that is used to keep track of learners’ progress in relation to learning standards and in the development of 21st-century skills; to promote self-reflection and personal accountability among students about their own learning; and to provide bases for the profiling of student performance on the learning competencies and standards of the curriculum. Various kinds of assessments shall be used appropriately for different learners who come from diverse contexts, such as cultural background and life experiences.

Classroom Assessment is an ongoing process of identifying, gathering, organizing, and interpreting quantitative and qualitative information about what learners know and can do.

Teachers should employ classroom assessment methods that are consistent with curriculum standards. It is important for teachers to always inform learners about the objectives of the lesson so that the latter will aim to meet or even exceed the standards. The teacher provides immediate feedback to students about their learning progress. Classroom assessment also measures the achievement of competencies by the learners.

There are two types of classroom assessment, namely, formative and summative.

Formative assessment

Formative assessment may be seen as assessment for learning so teachers can make adjustments in their instruction. It is also assessment as learning wherein students reflect on their own progress. According to the UNESCO Program on Teaching and Learning for a Sustainable Future (UNESCO-TLSF), formative assessment refers to the ongoing forms of assessment that are closely linked to the learning process. It is characteristically informal and is intended to help students identify strengths and weaknesses in order to learn from the assessment experience.

Formative assessment may be given at any time during the teaching and learning process. It is also a way to check the effectiveness of instruction.

Formative assessment involves teachers using evidence about what learners know and can do to inform and improve their teaching. Teachers observe and guide learners in their tasks through interaction and dialogue, thus gaining deeper insights into the learners’ progress, strengths, weaknesses, and needs. The results of formative assessments will help teachers make good instructional decisions so that their lessons are better suited to the learners’ abilities. It is important for teachers to record formative assessment by documenting and tracking learners’ progress using systematic ways that can easily provide insight into a student’s learning. Such monitoring will allow teachers to understand their students and thus teach them better. Formative assessment results, however, are not included in the computation of summative assessment.

Formative assessment must also provide students with immediate feedback on how well they are learning throughout the teaching-learning process. Recommendations on how they can improve themselves should also be given by the teachers. Formative assessment enables students to take responsibility for their own learning, and identify areas where they do well and where they need help. As a result, students will appreciate and make their own decisions about their progress.

Summative assessment

Summative assessment, on the other hand, may be seen as assessment of learning, which occurs at the end of a particular unit. This form of assessment usually occurs toward the end of a period of learning in order to describe the standard reached by the learner. Often, this takes place in order for appropriate decisions about future learning or job suitability to be made. Judgments derived from summative assessment are usually for the benefit of people other than the learner (UNESCO-TLSF).

Summative assessment measures whether learners have met the content and performance standards. Teachers must use methods to measure student learning that have been deliberately designed to assess how well students have learned and are able to apply their learning in different contexts. The results of summative assessments are recorded and used to report on the learners’ achievement. Primarily, the results of summative assessment are reported to the learners and their parents/guardians. In addition, these are reported to principals/school heads, teachers who will receive the child in the next grade level, and guidance teachers who should help students cope with challenges they experience in school.

What is assessed in the classroom?

Assessment in the classroom is aimed at helping students perform well in relation to the learning standards. Learning standards comprise content standards, performance standards, and learning competencies that are outlined in the curriculum.

A. Content Standards identify and set the essential knowledge and understanding that should be learned. They cover a specified scope of sequential topics within each learning strand, domain, theme, or component. Content standards answer the question, “What should the learners know?”.

B. Performance Standards describe the abilities and skills that learners are expected to demonstrate in relation to the content standards and integration of 21st-century skills. The integration of knowledge, understanding, and skills is expressed through creation, innovation, and adding value to products/ performance during independent work or in collaboration with others. Performance standards answer the following questions:

1. “What can learners do with what they know?”
2. “How well must learners do their work?”
3. “How well do learners use their learning or understanding in different situations?”
4. “How do learners apply their learning or understanding in real-life contexts?”
5. “What tools and measures should learners use to demonstrate what they know?”

C. Learning Competencies refer to the knowledge, understanding, skills, and attitudes that students need to demonstrate in every lesson and/or learning activity.

D. Concept Development

The learning standards in the curriculum reflect progressions of concept development. The Cognitive Process Dimensions adapted from Anderson & Krathwohl (2001) may be a good way to operationalize these progressions. It provides a scheme for classifying educational goals, objectives, and standards. It also defines a broad range of cognitive processes from basic to complex, as follows: Remembering, Understanding, Applying, Analyzing, Evaluating, and Creating. Each dimension is described in Table 1.

Table 1. Adapted Cognitive Process Dimensions*

Cognitive Process Dimensions	Descriptors
Remembering	The learner can recall information and retrieve relevant knowledge from long-term memory: identify, retrieve, recognize, duplicate, list, memorize, repeat, reproduce
Understanding	The learner can construct meaning from oral, written, and graphic messages: interpret, exemplify, classify, summarize, infer, compare, explain, paraphrase, discuss
Applying	The learner can use information to undertake a procedure in familiar situations or in a new way: execute, implement, demonstrate, dramatize, interpret, solve, use, illustrate, convert, discover
Analyzing	The learner can distinguish between parts and determine how they relate to one another, and to the overall structure and purpose: differentiate, distinguish, compare, contrast, organize, outline, attribute, deconstruct
Evaluating	The learner can make judgments and justify decisions: coordinate, measure, detect, defend, judge, argue, debate, critique, appraise, evaluate
Creating	The learner can put elements together to form a functional whole, create a new product or point of view: generate, hypothesize, plan, design, develop, produce, construct, formulate, assemble, design, devise

Adapted from Table 5.1 “The Cognitive Process Dimensions” (Anderson and Krathwohl 2001, pp. 67-68)

To align the assessment process with the K to 12 curriculum, the adapted Cognitive Process Dimensions may be used as guide not only in lesson development but also in the formulation of assessment tasks and activities.

How are learners assessed in the classroom?

Learners are assessed in the classroom through various processes and measures appropriate to and congruent with learning competencies defined in the K to 12 curriculum. Some of these processes and measures may be used for both formative and summative assessment, which have different goals. Learners may be assessed individually or collaboratively.

Individual and Collaborative Formative Assessment

Individual formative assessment enables the learner to demonstrate independently what has been learned or mastered through a range of activities such as check-up quizzes, written exercises, performances, models, and even electronic presentations.

Collaborative formative assessment (peer assessment) allows students to support each other’s learning. Discussions, role playing, games, and other group activities may also be used as performance-based formative assessment wherein learners support and extend each other’s learning.

Formative Assessment in Different Parts of the Lesson

Formative assessment may be integrated in all parts of the lesson. Basically, every lesson has three parts: before the lesson, the lesson proper, and after the lesson. Formative assessment conducted in each part serves a different purpose.

Before the Lesson

Formative assessment conducted before the lesson informs the teacher about the students’ understanding of a lesson/topic before direct instruction. It helps teachers understand where the students stand in terms of conceptual understanding and application. Formative assessment provides bases for making instructional decisions, such as moving on to a new lesson or clarifying prerequisite understanding.

During the Lesson Proper

Formative assessment conducted during the lesson proper informs teachers of the progress of the students in relation to the development of the learning competencies. It also helps the teacher determine whether instructional strategies are effective. The results of formative assessment given at this time may be compared with the results of formative assessment given before the lesson to establish if conceptual understanding and application have improved. On this basis, the teacher can make decisions on whether to review, re-teach, remediate, or enrich lessons and, subsequently, when to move on to the next lesson.

After the Lesson

Formative assessment conducted after the lesson assesses whether learning objectives were achieved. It also allows the teacher to evaluate the effectiveness of instruction. Students who require remediation and/or enrichment should be helped by the teacher using appropriate teaching strategies.

Table 2 enumerates the purposes of formative assessments conducted before, during, and after the lesson. It also shows examples of assessment methods. Teachers should not limit the assessment methods they use to the examples provided in the table 2.

Table 2. Purposes of Formative Assessment

Parts of the Lesson	For the Learner	For the Teacher	Examples of Assessment Methods
Before Lesson	Know what s/he knows about the topic/lesson Understand the purpose of the lesson and how to do well in the lesson Identify ideas or concepts s/he misunderstands Identify barriers to learning	Get information about what the learner already knows and can do about the new lesson Share learning intentions and success criteria to the learners Determine misconceptions Identify what hinders learning	Agree/disagree activities Games Interviews Inventories/ checklists of skills (relevant to the topic in a learning area) KWL activities (what I know, what I want to know, what I learned) Open-ended questions Practice exercises
Lesson Proper	Identify one’s strengths and weaknesses Identify barriers to learning Identify factors that help him/her learn Know what s/he knows and does not know Monitor his / her own progress	Provide immediate feedback to learners Identify what hinders learning Identify what facilitates learning Identify learning gaps Track learner progress in comparison to formative assessment results prior to the lesson proper To make decisions on whether to proceed with the next lesson, reteach, or provide for corrective measures or reinforcements	Multimedia presentations Observations Other formative performance tasks (simple activities that can be drawn from a specific topic or lesson) Quizzes (recorded but not graded) Recitations Simulation activities
After Lesson	Tell and recognize whether s/he met learning objectives and success criteria Seek support through remediation, enrichment, or other strategies	Assess whether learning objectives have been met for a specified duration Remediate and/ or enrich with appropriate strategies as needed Evaluate whether learning intentions and success criteria have been met	Multimedia presentations Observations Other formative performance tasks (simple activities that can be drawn from a specific topic or lesson) Quizzes (recorded but not graded) Recitations Simulation activities exercises Short quizzes Written work

The information or feedback gathered from formative assessment will help teachers ensure that all learners are supported while they are developing understanding and competencies related to curriculum standards. These also prepare them for summative assessments. Teachers should keep a record of formative assessment results to study the patterns of learning demonstrated by students. However, this should not be used as bases for grading.

Summative Assessment

This form of assessment measures the different ways learners use and apply all relevant knowledge, understanding, and skills. It must be spaced properly over the quarter. It is usually conducted after a unit of work and/or at the end of an entire quarter to determine how well learners can demonstrate content knowledge and competencies articulated in the learning standards. Learners synthesize their knowledge, understanding, and skills during summative assessments. The results of these assessments are used as bases for computing grades.

Individual and Collaborative Summative Assessment

Learners may be assessed individually through unit tests and quarterly assessment. Collaboratively, learners may participate in group activities in which they cooperate to produce evidence of their learning. The process of creating a learning project is given more weight or importance than the product itself.

Components of Summative Assessment

Summative assessments are classified into three components, namely, Written Work (WW), Performance Tasks (PT), and Quarterly Assessment (QA). These three will be the bases for grading. The nature of the learning area defines the way these three components are assessed.

Written Work

The Written Work component ensures that students are able to express skills and concepts in written form. Written Work, which may include long quizzes, and unit or long tests, help strengthen test-taking skills among the learners. It is strongly recommended that items in long quizzes/tests be distributed across the Cognitive Process Dimensions so that all are adequately covered. Through these, learners are able to practice and prepare for quarterly assessment and other standardized assessments. Other written work may include essays, written reports, and other written output.

Performance Task

The Performance Task component allows learners to show what they know and are able to do in diverse ways. They may create or innovate products or do performance-based tasks. Performance-based tasks may include skills demonstration, group presentations, oral work, multimedia presentations, and research projects. It is important to note that written output may also be considered as performance tasks.

Quarterly Assessment

Quarterly Assessment measures student learning at the end of the quarter. These may be in the form of objective tests, performance-based assessment, or a combination thereof.

Table 3 shows the components of summative assessment, their purposes, and when they are given. The lists of sample summative assessment tools per learning area are found in Appendix A.

Table 3. Components of Summative Assessment

Components	Purpose	When Given
Written Work (WW)	Assess learners’ understanding of concepts and application of skills in written form Prepare learners for quarterly assessments	At end of the topic or unit
Performance Tasks (PT)	Involve students in the learning process individually or in collaboration with teammates over a period of time Give students opportunities to demonstrate and integrate their knowledge, understanding, and skills about topics or lessons learned in a specific real-life situation by performing and/or producing evidence of their learning Give students the freedom to express their learning in appropriate and diverse ways Encourage student inquiry, integration of knowledge, understanding, and skills in various contexts beyond the assessment period	At end of a lesson focusing on a topic/skill lesson Several times during the quarter
Quarterly Assessment (QA)	Synthesize all the learning skills, concepts, and values learned in an entire quarter	Once, at end of the quarter

There must be sufficient and appropriate instructional interventions to ensure that learners are ready before summative assessments are given. The evidence produced through summative assessment enables teachers to describe how well the students have learned the standards/competencies for a given quarter. These are then reflected in the class record. The grades of learners are presented in a report card to show the progress of learners to parents and other stakeholders.

Source: DepEd Order No. 8, series 2015
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