Fair Isn't Always Equal Chapter 4

In chapter 4 of our book Fair Isn't Always Equal, by Richard Wormeli, we are given three separate ideas that deal with assessing our students. The three types of assessments discussed in this chapter are portfolios, rubrics, and student self-assessment. Portfolios can help us to judge a student's work over time and allow us to reflect on their progress accurately. Also, a portfolio can help our students evaluate their progress because all of their work will be organized in one easy to access place. The most essential part of the portfolio, in our author's mind, is the flexibility to cater to all the multiple learning styles in our differentiated classrooms. A positive example of how portfolios can be flexible to the various learning styles can be found in a portfolio with multiple mediums. Instead of just holding papers and tests in a portfolio, why not include audio cassettes, recorded presentations. Another type of these assessment is a rubric. Rubrics may be a more complex assessment then portfolios, but they are certainly an intricate part of our classrooms. There are seven important steps to designing a rubric, most importantly, defining the content and the specific skills our students will need to know. Next we must determine if a student has mastered each of these skills. We asses how these rubrics are set up, that is, ill our rubric be analytical or holistic. Another important aspect for our rubrics are the various levels, an example being whether our students' performance was proficient, capable, adequate, limited or poor. Finally, these levels and their criteria must be explained in a few sentences by the educator. This will help our students understand what is expected of them and how they can meet our standards. Rubrics are a highly organized assessor which we can edit and rewrite over and over to meet the needs of our students of any time. The last example our author uses for assessing students is found in the form of student self-assessment. There are many ways that we as educators can allow our students to self-assess. We can have them compare their work using rubrics, fill out reflective questionnaires, or keep a learning log. Self-assessments can help our students to reflect on how their learning has grown over time. We should try and work self-assessments into our differentiated classrooms as they allow students to reflect on their work in a way that they can choose and will fit their learning styles. Essentially, the common thread holding these concepts together is flexibility. All three of these assessment types have room for flexibility which will in turn help us as teachers, tailor our methods to fit our students' learning styles.
We must understand as educators that there is not one specific way to assess our students. We must keep our minds open about innovative ways for assessments and keep flexibility in mind. All three of these assessments types are flexible and when used properly, can do a lot of good for out students. If we can utilize portfolios, rubrics, and self-assessments in our own way and incorporate the suggestions from our author, I feel that we can have some of the best assessments around. This chapter does well to steer us in the right direction for effective assessing, and there is plenty of wonderful information out their to keep our assessments fresh and innovative.