IMAGES | Appendix C: Glossary of Assessment Terms

Appendix C: Glossary of Assessment Terms

Anecdotal notes: Short notes written during a lesson, as children work in groups or individually, or after a lesson.

Anecdotal notebook: A notebook where a teacher records observations of students.

Anecdotal note cards: An alternative system to an anecdotal notebook, in which the teacher records observations using one note card per child. One way to facilitate this process is to select five children per day for observation. The cards can be kept together on a ring.

Assessment: The gathering of evidence about a student's knowledge of, ability to use, and disposition towards a subject, and the making of inferences from this evidence. These inferences can also be a valuable tool for making instructional decisions. Assessment should always support and enhance students' learning.

Assessment standards: Criteria for judging the quality of assessment practices that embody a vision of assessment consistent with the curriculum and teaching standards derived from shared philosophies of mathematics, cognition, and learning.7

Criterion-referenced assessment: A test that measures student achievement against well-defined criteria; assigns levels of proficiency of performance; and/or assesses mastery of a specific domain or area of knowledge.

Formative assessment: Forms of assessment that help the teacher understand what the students know, do not know, and might need in terms of instruction. Ideally, these assessments are going on all the time, as the teacher uses the feedback to enable students to learn better.

Interviews: An interaction in which a teacher presents a child with a planned sequence of questions. These exchanges can be a rich source of information about how the child is constructing concepts or using procedures, and they also give the teacher direction for modifying instruction.

Journal writing: A series of writings in which a student reflects on his or her learning. As journals can include diagrams, graphs, labels, and symbols, journal writing can be a more inclusive form of communication than an oral response. In many cases it also deepens the cognitive process.

Labels/adhesive notes: These small papers free the teacher from carrying a notebook around the room. After an observation is complete, the labels and adhesive notes should be inserted into the teacher's filing system.

Norm-referenced assessment: A test that measures a student's quantitative scores (such as how many items the student answered correctly) against a normal distribution of scores by other students of the same age or grade. This kind of testing is often used to rank students, measure their relative standing, and assess their general knowledge across broad areas.8

Observation: A systematic plan for gathering useful pieces of information about students. This can include what a student does or does not know and/or can or cannot do. This information in turn makes it possible to plan ways to encourage students' strengths and work on weaknesses.

Observation tools: Instruments and techniques that help teachers to record useful data about students' learning in a systematic way.

Peer assessment: A group activity in which students listen to, discuss, and analyze each others' strategies for solving problems. The teacher can learn about the students by observing these discussions.

Performance task: A physical activity or production of some significance, which when carried out or brought to completion, displays a student's knowledge and judgement while engaged in the task.9

Portfolio: A collection of a student's work over a period of time (a term, a year) that can be used for assessment by the teacher and by the student. It can include special problem-solving tasks, writings, investigations, projects, and reports-not only on paper but also on audio- or videotapes and/or computer disks. By dating each of the entries in the portfolio, the student (and the teacher) can use it to see the growth of his or her work. Portfolios can be "learner-managed" (organized by the student), teacher-managed, or both.10

Probing questions: A teaching/assessment strategy that provides insight into the mental processes a student is using by engaging him or her in conversation about the subject or the understanding of the subject.

Prompting questions: A process by which a teacher supports a student by giving hints that point the student toward appropriate strategies to use to solve problems.

Questioning: A way of teaching that actively invites students to convey what they are thinking. Good questions, prepared before a lesson, will also help a teacher determine whether students use varied approaches to a problem and how well students can explain their own thinking. This process complements observation.Rubric: A hierarchy of performance standards and expectations used to evaluate student performance on a task. Either task-specific or general, the rubric makes it possible to determine a student's score based on overall performance, as opposed to simply the number of correct or incorrect items. A sample rubric could consist of a scale of three to six points that are used to rate performance. If they are shared with the students, rubrics can engage and empower students in the learning process.

Self-assessment: The process by which students evaluate their own work, given criteria established by the teacher.

Summative assessments: Graded work that measures the quality of students' performance or summarizes student learning at some point in a class.

Teacher-designed written tests: These are tests that are constructed by a classroom teacher or group of teachers. These not only help determine a student's grades, but also can inform and guide a teacher's instruction and be an efficient way to gather information. They do not provide a complete assessment of students' knowledge, but only one piece of the puzzle. Teacher-made tests should be thoughtful and well constructed, and should include a variety of different items, such as skills problems, selected-response problems, and constructed-response (or "open-ended") problems, which can be either brief or extended.

Think-alouds: A teaching/assessment strategy in which one verbalizes his or her thought process. A teacher should incorporate this into the daily practice of teaching, modeling it first, and then encouraging students to try it as well. Think-alouds can be especially helpful in revealing how a student arrived at a particular answer.

Work samples: These can include projects, written assignments, and other student products that the teacher collects and evaluates. Scoring, which involves judgement and analyzing the work, makes it possible to learn about the students.11

Writing prompts: Statements that provide students with a clear, well-defined purpose for a particular writing assignment.12 A teacher needs to communicate clearly to students exactly what he or she expects in a response, such as whether it should include certain components or be a particular length.

National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. Assessment Standards for School Mathematics (Reston, Va.: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, 1995), p. 87.
National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, Assessment Standards, p. 89.
National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, Assessment Standards, p. 90.
Alan Trussell-Cullen, Assessment in the Learner-Centered Classroom (Carlsbad, Ca.: Dominie Press, Inc., 1998), p. 100.
Robert Reys et al., Helping Children Learn Mathematics, 6th ed. (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2001), p. 78.
John A. Van de Walle, Elementary and Middle School Mathematics: Teaching Developmentally, 4th ed. (New York: Addison Wesley Longman, 2001), p. 74.