Blog Assignment Week 6:
Testing for Intelligence?
This week we are looking at children being assessed and or
measured. For me I think that assessing a child can be done with the “whole
child” in mind, but is not normally. Most assessments are focused on certain
areas and then they have another assessment for whatever else is being looked
at. Assessments can be a good thing for a child because we need to look at
everything to see where the developmental issues might be. When assessing a
child we look at many areas; social, cognitive, and physical and each of these
areas has other areas within to look at and measure. In order to get a full
picture of a child’s development and or abilities we need to assess them at
some point. This is not to say we test them so much that they are afraid of
testing or even failing, we need to make it more of a game for young children
if possible so they will get the most out of the experience. When we only look
at certain areas of a child-we are not getting the full picture so we will not
really know the child. Every child is different and develops at a different
pace, so we need to take this into account when doing any assessing.
The country I picked to look into is Japan-partly because I lived
there for three years and I would love to go back at some point (maybe as a DOD
employee). In Japan they have no real assessment criteria, until they are in
secondary education and this is so they have a better picture for the high
school years. Children are regularly assessed by their teachers in Japanese and
mathematics by teacher made assessment forms or professional ready-made tests (http://www.inca.org.uk/japan). In order
to continue into high school each child must be assessed or they cannot
proceed. Children are passed onto the next grade by the teacher’s assessment
and not by testing as we do in the United States.
susan,
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing about testing in Japan. Wow i did not know that they had to be assessed each year to go into High school. i think that would be hard on some children to have to past a test before going on to the next grade, Test scare some children.
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ReplyDeleteSince there has been so much emphasis placed on testing, children are now feeling pressured to do well. I feel that it is taking the fun out of school. In New Jersey, testing is state wide starting in 3rd grade and now they're piloting it in 2nd grade. Soon it will trickle down to Kindergarten. Years ago, when I taught 3rd grade, I had a student ask me if they failed the NJ ASK (standardized test for NJ), will they have to repeat 3rd grade. Before I could answer the question, the student was already in tears. Another teacher had told her students that if they fail the test, they would repeat 3rd grade. So when the children were all at recess, the rumor started to spread among each other. I assured all my students, that they would move on to 4th grade regardless of their test score. I told them that there only job on testing day was to get a good night's sleep the night before, eat breakfast that morning and try their best. It is my hope that we as teachers stop threatening students to do well on these standardized tests and start encouraging them. I can assure you, it leads to more confident students who put forth more effort to succeed.
DeleteSusan,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed the assessment information you shared about Japan. That's how Louisiana assess their 4th and 8th graders before they can advance to the next grade they have to past the LEAP exam. High schoolers have to past the graduate exit exam before they can graduate.