120 hr. TEFL Course Module 8-Lesson Planning (Pt.14 Assessment Practices)

Module 8: Lesson planning

8.5 Meaningful assessments

We discussed assessments in the previous module, so we will not discuss them ad nauseam here. To ensure that your assessments are authentic and meaningful, you need to make sure that they align with the standards you are trying to meet and the objectives you have set out for your students to help them reach those standards. To make an assessment truly meaningful, though, it needs to be reflective of something that students might see in whatever career they end up in, and your assessments should also give students many different ways to display their knowledge. Here is an example of the different types of assessments you can create:

Writing: Your writing assessments do not have to be traditional essays (although do not discount these classics). You can find many different ways to be creative with your writing assignments. You can have your students create such things as storybooks, poems, and journals.

Performance: Having your students create a presentation, a performance, or something that requires them to stand in front of the class and create something informative and entertaining is a great way to find out how much your students know. These types of activities are creative, entertaining, and really allow students to have fun with their learning.

Art: Students can also display their understanding of a concept by creating something artistic. Whether you ask your students to create an illustration, draw or build a diagram, or create a visual project, you should allow them to access their creativity to display their understanding of the material.

Teaching: Asking your students to teach material to a class is a great way to truly judge whether or not they know it. As you know or will soon find out, you cannot effectively teach something unless you understand it inside and out.