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Know What to Assess |
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A balanced assessment includes assessing skills, habits of mind, and content mastery. Content may be assessed through traditional tests or exams, essays, and other familiar tools. But skills and habits of mind require different tools. To assess skills, use performance-based rubrics that show students how well they perform on the task, along with specific criteria that shows them how to improve and master skills. Habits of mind usually require qualitative measures, such as journals or peer evaluation. |
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| "Unpack" |  Break
down content knowledge and skills into a series of specific statements.
These statements become the basis for the assessment
process and provide
guidance to students on what they should learn. |
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| Benchmarks
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Benchmarks for standards may serve the purpose of guiding students, but you may want to add key points under each benchmark, to give students an exact idea of what they should learn. | ||||
| Habits of Mind | Research
on thinking and behavior reveals some identifiable characteristics of effective
thinkers. It is not necessarily scientists, artists, mathematicians, or
the wealthy who demonstrate these behaviors. These Habits of Mind have
been found in mechanics, teachers, entrepreneurs, salespeople, and parents.
These qualities can be defined by specific statements or indicators that
can be measured through reflection, journaling, peers, or teacher observation. |
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| Assessing Student Performance on Authentic Tasks | In today's world, it is necessary that students master authentic skills that will be useful beyond school. Performance assessments, or rubrics, help students learn skills during the course of a project by helping them understand the steps twoard learning a new skill. At the end of a project, the rubric shows students whether they have mastered the skill and how they can improve. |
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| See How Teachers Use Performance Rubrics in Projects |  The Greater New Brunswick Gender Project |
 Aviation High School Physics Project |
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| Additional Resources | |||||
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| The Buck Institute for Education and Boise State University, Department of Educational Technology |
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