What is assessment?

Measurements of what students are learning, it provides teachers data about student’s learning progress. There are three main types of assessment:

• Diagnostic assessment

• Summative assessment

• Formative assessment

Diagnostic assessment is the initial evaluation, which shows the student’s prior knowledge. It is crucial to set up students’ goal and the start point of students’ learning process.

Formative assessment is used to check student’s understanding and to plan instruction. It helps teachers and students to consider additional opportunities to ensure success for example asking comprehensive checking questions (CCQ) or skinny and fat questions, giving test, writing assessment or project performances. In formative assessment we assess the process of students’ learning progress. It is given throughout the learning process; it seeks to determine how students are progressing through a certain learning goal.

On the other hand, summative assessment or assessment of learning we evaluate the final results. We compare these final results with the standard. It is given at the end of the year or unit; summative assessments assess a student’s mastery of a topic after instruction.

Finally we need to distinguish between assessment and evaluation. In assessment we assess the student’s learning process and in evaluation the whole process: teachers, students, goals, resources, etc.