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6.3 Designing Student Assessments to Inform Planning. To inform my planning of a unit or lesson, I find it necessary to assess my students’ prior knowledge in regards to the topic that will be covered. When thinking about my students, I define prior knowledge as information or understandings they have about a topic based on their previous experience(s). William et al. (2004)’s results present evidence that “Improving formative assessment does produce tangible benefits in terms of externally mandated assessments.” At my current internship, I have come to understand the many advantages to utilizing the results of a pre-assessment to plan for future instruction for my students. In my lifetime

Figure 1

sports class, before each unit, students take a pre-assessment on the upcoming sport through WELNET Focused Fitness (physical education online program). I have designed the questions in order to gauge where student understanding was in present time in regards to the badminton content that will be taught over the course of the unit. For example, if I wanted to assess students’ prior knowledge of Badminton Serving, I would ask the following questions: “Question 7: You serve overhand in the game of badminton. True or False?” After data analysis of students’ pre-assessment, I have the ability to quickly and efficiently determine the percentage of students that answered each question correctly. For example, if only 25% of students answered Question #7 correctly, as shown in Figure 1, I would know that the majority of the class does not understand Badminton Serving. In turn, if 89% of students answer Question #8 correctly, as shown in Figure 1, I would know that the majority of the class does understand Badminton Hits. With this information, I can then go forward with planning for badminton understandings. I do so by taking the data I received on the pre-assessment (i.e. the majority percentage) and devote time to the areas where understanding was lacking. Thus, I have designed student pre-assessments in order to form my unit planning.

Reference

Wiliam*, D., Lee, C., Harrison, C., & Black, P. (2004). Teachers developing assessment for learning: Impact on student achievement. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 11(1), 49-65.