Conclusion

     

     Well, I have been sharing some forms of assessments for the past few weeks and I hope you gain something through what I wrote. Assessments happen in our everyday lives and it can be in so many different forms. Even though through all my posts, the assessment that I am talking about are all about education, but you need to understand that assessment happens in all sorts of situations. 

     

     Throughout this assignment, I know that there are two types of assessment, which is the Formative assessment and Summative assessment. These two types of assessments are used widely in the education system, where the teacher may not realize that they are actually having assessment in their classroom. Formative assessment is an ongoing assessment that provides information that will be used by the teachers to improve their teaching. And the summative assessment is the assessment that occurs at the end of a period of time or a unit of learning. These assessment information should be used to benefit the children through improved teaching and learning. 

     Through this assignment, I gained a lot of experiences. And the most significant experience to me is searching for information. It is not easy to search for topics related to assessment through the internet and then you have to relate it to your past experiences. Time management is also another thing that I learnt about throughout the assignment. We should be updating out blog weeks by weeks but I sometimes missed a week and did not update my blog. Managing my time is very important in order to complete all the work on time. This assignment has finally come to an end and thank you for all the help from my course mates and also our lecturer Miss Moon. 

     

Essay Writing

     

    Good morning everybody! :) Today's topic will be about essay, which is another form of assessment that teachers used in today's classroom. Essays can be long or short, depending on the questions and it is usually about the writer's own argument about the questions. Erm, in Malaysia's education system, there will always be essays questions during the examinations and this is unavoidable. No matter how much you hate to do essay questions, you still have to do it. The reason i chose this topic is because I have experienced this kind of assessment and the feedback i got from this kind of assessment is a wonderful one. 

    The purpose of essay as an assessment is to test the student's writing skills, their on-the-spot reaction when answering, their creativity and also their knowledge. Through essay writing, a teacher can spot if the students read extra information or not. An argumentative type essays requires the student to support their own stand and if the student read a lot materials, argumentative essays are easy to him because he is able to support his argument with relevant proofs and data. This type of assessment is easy, where the teachers need to read the students' works and give appropriate marks based on their works. There will be rubrics for the assessment and teachers may or may not follow the rubrics as different students will produce different essays and not all their essays fit the rubrics. As long as the teacher think their essays fits to what the question wants, then the students will gain appropriate marks.

     My opinion about this type of assessment is that teachers tend to be bias when it comes to marking the paper. If the teacher favors this student, the students work will gain slightly higher marks if compare to the other students' works. In order to overcome this issue, the teacher can ask the students to write down their ID number on their question paper. Like this, the teacher will not know whose paper is she marking and she will be able to mark the papers fairly. Also, do not allow the subject teacher to go into the classroom during the examination because some teachers tend to give hints or tell the students if they answer the questions right or wrong. 

     I think that is all from me for this post and the next post will be the conclusion about the assessment. Ciao! :)

Project-based Learning

    

     Good day everyone! :) How's life lately? Mine has been hectic since it is currently assignments' week. So, today's post will be about project-based learning, another type of assessment method that teachers implemented in the classroom. The reason I chose project-based learning is that it is a fun assessment method for me and I think that project-based learning is a good way to strengthen what the students have learn in the classroom. It allows the students to investigate a matter or a complex problem based on their knowledge. The students will be able to gain more knowledge and skills after they have done the project. 

     The purpose of project-based learning is to help the students to gain more knowledge and skills after they gain the basic knowledge their teacher teaches in the classroom. The students need to explore on a complex matter with the knowledge they have learnt. They need to investigate the problem and think of a solution to solve it. Through this process, they are able to expand the knowledge and learn different types of skills. And about how project-based learning assessment is conducted, it is very easy. The subject teacher will be assessing from the side and only interrupt when needed. The teacher will be assessing if the students cooperate well with each other, if they are able to solve the problem or if they are creative in their problem-solving processes. 

     

     Project-based learning requires the students to solve higher complex problems and to solve these higher complex problems, the students need to have fundamental skills (reading, writing, Mathematics) and also 21st century skills (teamwork, problem solving, research gathering, time management). Through this project-based learning, the students are encouraged to become independent workers, critical thinkers and also lifelong learners. Project-based learning can be independent work or group work, depending on the teachers. Through this approach, the students can learn how to be independent in solving the complex problems. They know that they have to explore the knowledge on their own if they want to solve the problems creatively when compare to others. 

     This project-based learning gives every student a chance to demonstrate his or her capabilities during the process. Teachers might not realize the student's capabilities and project-based learning is a good way to let the teachers to learn more about their students, whether it is their skills, their attitudes or what they are capable in, 

     I personally favors project-based learning and I support that this approach is used frequently in the classroom, maybe twice in a month as it helps the students to become engaged in the everyday teaching and learning processes. As for the ways to improve this type of assessment, teachers can get involved in the students' discussion or brainstorming sessions more often. Maybe teachers wanted the students to think on their own and be independent during the whole process. But, if the teachers are involve in the discussion sessions, students are able to think out of the box and get lots of interesting ideas. Teachers do not need to spoon feed the answers to the students but instead asking the 5W1H questions and lead the students to think in a different direction. We want our students to be creative and innovative and why not join in their discussion and help them out a little bit? Also, teachers should avoid bias and favoritism during the assessment process as it will be really unfair to the rest of the students. 

     I guess that's all for today. Enjoy reading and have a good day! :) 

Read more : http://www.edutopia.org/project-based-learning-guide-importance

MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTIONS (MCQ)

     Hello everyone! Today, I will be taking about Multiple Choice Questions (MCQ) as MCQ is also a type of assessment that are being used in the school. I remembered when I was still young, I LOVE MCQ examination. This is because MCQ exam is very simple and it does not consume a lot of time. If you ask around, you will find out that your friends like MCQ exam for the same reason. They will tell you that they like MCQ exams because they can just "tembak" for the answers and they do not need to study much for the MCQ exams. 

     The purpose of MCQ exam is to measure the students' knowledge, skills, abilities, values and thinking skills. Even though most of us would agree that MCQ exams are easy and simple, but it can actually evaluate if the students ever do their revision or read through the books. MCQ is very easy to conduct, whereby the teacher will set the items and each items will contain three to four options for the students to choose. Each set of MCQ will have a time limit for the students to answer. For example, one and a half hour for the students to answer 40 MCQ. 

     MCQ consists of a stem and a set of options. The stem is the question or problem to be solved and the options are the possible answers that the students can choose from.The correct answer in the options is called the KEY and the incorrect answers are the DISTRACTORS. 

     The advantage of the MCQ is that it takes less time to complete. Each question in the MCQ set only required less than one minute to answer. If you do your revision, when you read the question, you can straight away locate the answers from the options. Because it takes less time to complete, more questions can be assessed. Teachers can set a lot of questions to assess the students because the students doesn't need a long time to answer the questions. Also, MCQ gives feedback in a short time, whereby the teacher only need to mark the correct answers based on the marking schemes. The teachers do not need to think if the students' answers is relevant or not because in MCQ there will only be a correct answer and the rest of the options are irrelevant. 

     My opinion about MCQ is that students tend to receive higher marks in comparison with the other types of assessments. MCQs are easy and students can score better because they can guess the answers even when they do not study. This can sometimes be very unfair to those who study the whole book and they do not score well than those who just guessed the answers. Besides, MCQ cannot test the students' oral and written skills. Most examinations are to test the students' skills, mostly on their oral and written skills but MCQ does not test those skills. It can only be used to test the students' knowledge, the theories that they have learnt. As for the ways to improve MCQ, I hope the teachers would check the items that they set for the MCQ examinations to ensure that the questions do not repeats. From my experience, there will always be repeated questions for the MCQ exams. Teachers need to check through the questions, from number one to the last question, to ensure there is no questions repeating. Also, the teachers need to be careful when preparing the items for the MCQ to make sure that there is only one key for each question as there will always be incidents like one question having two answers and the students will get bonus marks for that question.

     

EXAMINATION (OPEN BOOK TESTS)

     

     Hello everyone! I am back! :D So, today's post will be about OPEN BOOK TESTS. Well, I am sure everyone of you have experiences about open book tests during your school life and I can say that most of you would rather have open book test than normal quiz. The reason i chose this topic is because I personally favor open book tests too rather than pop quiz. Open book tests are easier and it can tests if the students are quick enough to catch on the content of the particular topic. 

     

     Open book tests are simple and easy as it only need the teachers to prepare questions and the students to bring their own books for the tests. The students only need to open their books and search for their answers and copy the answers from the books. That is why students favor open book tests than quiz because they do not need to think for the answers as they can get the answers from the books. 

     Since 2013, our Malaysia's exam system has started to implement Paper 3 for the History paper. Students are allow to bring in any reference books that they want into the exam hall because this Paper 3 is an open book test. We have a type of thinking that we don't have to study for open book tests because we can get the answers from the books. But, if we ourselves are involved for this paper, we would realize that open book tests also required preparations.

     Here, I would like to share a few tips on the preparations for open book tests. The first tip is to prepare brief and concise notes on the ideas and concepts that will be tested. Since there will be lots of questions that you need to answers in an open book test, it is important to prepare brief and concise notes because it helps you to save a lot of time during the exam. The second tip is carefully select what you intend to bring with you to the exam. Some students think that it is a good idea to bring all their reference book into the exam hall. However, you need to understand that you do not have a lot of time to flip all the reference books that you brought into the examination hall. Hence, choose only those you need to use into the exam hall. The third tip is to list out the data and formulas that you learnt and available in the books. When you list out all the important data and formulas, you can save a lot of time during the exam as you do not need to flip every single pages to look for the formula you needed. 

     My opinion about this open book tests is that if there is open book tests, students will become too reliable on the books and they will not study much about the subject. The students know that the answers will be in the books and all they need to do is to open their books and look for the answers. They know that if they search through the books, they will eventually found the answers for the questions. The students will become lazy and will not study for their examinations. As for the ways to improve this type of assessment, teachers can set questions that requires the students to think creatively. If in Malaysian's education context, this type of question is called KBKK question. Through this type of questions, teachers are able to see if their students are able to answer questions that they cannot get the answers from the textbook. They can see if the students can think creatively and answer the questions that needed their own opinions. 

     

     Open book tests is a way to assess the students but the teachers need to know how exactly they want to evaluate the students. Students love open book tests so teachers can have open book tests once in a while to let the students enjoy the examination process. 

     I think that's all from me today. Have a good day everyone! :) 

Oral Speaking

     For my third topic related to assessment, I decided to talk about Oral Speaking. If you are a Malaysian student, you will be familiar with this term. Throughout the eleven years of schooling, from elementary school to secondary school, i believe that you had gone through oral speaking for the BM and BI subjects. And if you went to Form Six before, I am sure you had gone through the MUET examination too, where there is four paper for the MUET examination. The reason I chose this topic is because oral speaking is a common test in our country and I would like to share some tips on how to do well for oral speaking or oral presentation.

     The purpose of this assessment is to evaluate the students' language pronunciation and proficiency, their on the spot reaction and also their creativity in answering the teacher's questions during the Question and Answer (Q&A) session. When I was in the secondary school, our teacher always let us choose our own oral speaking's topics. She will give us two to three weeks to prepare for our oral speaking. During the actual day of presentation, she will be sitting at the back of the class and she will observe and assess our presentation. She will be evaluating our topic, whether it is interesting and caught people's attention, our language pronunciation and proficiency and after our presentation, she will ask a few questions regarding our presentation topic, to see whether we did our preparation fully and understand the topic that we presented.

     There are people who are good in speaking in front of the crowd and there are people who don't. There are actually a few tips on how you can do well for your oral speaking. The first tip is to pick a suitable topic. For oral speaking, there will always be a problem, that is not knowing which topic to pick and talk about. It is important for you to surf through the internet and look for topic that caught your eye. If you read through an article and you yourself find it interesting, bookmark the page or website first and look for another topic. Prepare a few topics and choose the best one out of it later.

     The second tip is to practice and time your presentation. After you prepare for the script of the topic that you wanted to present, always remember to practice and time yourself. I myself is the type where I don't practice for my presentation. I only read through the script for a few times and this actually cause me trouble. I tend to forgot what I wanted to present. That is why we have to practice so that we do not forget about what we wanted to say to the audience. For timing, while you are practicing your script, have a timer with you so that it is easy for you to time yourself. Timing yourself is important because you need to know how long you are going to present. A long presentation will make your audience bored whereas a short presentation makes people think that you didn't prepare well enough for your presentation. Always remember to time yourself so that your presentation isn't too long or too short.
 

     The third tip is use visuals sparingly. I am sure all of you had gone through presentation process before and it is really boring when your friends keep on talking without showing you any pictures. Or, your friend put up too many photos and you do not know where to look at. It is important that we use images sparingly as images help to attract the audiences' attention and it can effectively help to deliver your messages.

     And the last tip is to TALK TO THE AUDIENCE. When we get nervous, we tend to look around when we talk and some people even choose to look at the wall behind the audiences. I have friends, where they took off their spectacles so that they don't feel nervous when they found out that the audiences are looking at them. It is important to make eye contact with the audiences. I am sure you want your audiences to listen and pay attention to you when you are talking in front of them. Hence, when your friends are presenting, make sure you pay attention to them because they also want us to pay attention to what they are trying to deliver.

     My opinion about oral speaking is that teacher must set time limits for every student's presentation and let the students voice out their opinion if they want to have oral presentation for the particular topic. Teachers need to know what topic is suitable for oral presentation and vice versa. Students will feel tired and loaded if their teachers always ask them to have oral presentation for every single topic.

     My suggestion for oral speaking is that teachers should apply oral speaking or oral presentation more frequently in the their daily classroom teaching and learning activities. As far as I remember, oral speaking was only done one or twice in a year when I was in the secondary school. It is a good idea to increase oral speaking activities in the classroom activities as it is important to train the students to speak in front of the crowd. Students nowadays need to be able to speak in order to compete with the others.

     Till the next post~ Have a good night! :)
 

    

OPINION

 

  So tonight, we will be talking about OPINION. Even though assessment are mostly related to education field, but I personally think that our own opinion is also a form of assessment. We have lots of opinions and evaluation towards the others and this happen everyday. It is quite unbelievable if you never have small voices in your head, telling you this and that about the person or the situations that happens in front of you. 

     

     The purpose of choosing OPINION as my topic is because it is closely related to our daily lives. We experienced assessment everyday without us realizing that it is a form of assessment. I find myself tend to assess people, or in other words have my own opinion towards a person. That is why I chose OPINION to talk about. I believe every one of us have things or person that we are envy of. We want to be like the other person, we make that person as our role model and motivator or we want the same situation to happen to us. For me, I envy those girls who are thin and fit and healthy. They have a good body figure and they look good in anything that they wear. I envy them and keep on questioning myself : Why can't I be like them? But i tend to forgot that they work very hard to keep their body in shape and I am LAZY.

     OKAY, back to the topic. The purpose of OPINION is that we each have our own thoughts regarding the person or situations that happen. Just like the clip-art at the top, different people have different opinion even though they are experiencing the same thing at the same time. Just look at the photo below and tell me your opinion.

I believe each one of us have different opinion regarding this body figure. Some may say she has a good body figure and wanted to be like her and some may say she is too thin. You see, the first though that came to you when you first see the photo is your own opinion. It shows what you think of the photo. The same thing happens in our daily lives. We judge things and people based on appearance. We have our own opinion even though ten or twenty people or even more are experiencing the same thing. 

     My opinion towards "OPINION" is that it is okay and normal to have your own opinion. Opinion can be positive or negative, depending on what situations are we in. So don't doubt yourself when you have negative opinion towards the situation. However, many people think that others opinion doesn't matter and think that one's opinion about him is rude. We have feelings and sometimes we really do not want to know about other's opinion about us and think that those comments are really rude. But I want to remind you and this include myself that everyone of us has the right to sound out our opinion. Always be open-minded and accept what they said. You can always improve yourself after hearing other people's opinion. It is a waste of time if you are angry with these opinion. People are evaluating you because you have weaknesses and somehow, they hope to be like you. 

     If you want other people to accept your opinion, you must first learn how to accept other's opinion towards you. When you learn to accept the opinion of others towards you, no matter good or harsh, it proves to others that you are open-minded and have good manners. It may not be easy to accept what others think of you at first, but slowly you will know that those opinions are to help you grow. It helps to improve and strengthen your weaknesses and it can be counted as a motivator to motivate you to be a better person. 

     I sincerely hope that you gain something after reading my post. Have a good night and happy weekend! :) ♥ ♥