Rationale
behind the assessments:
Learning Objective 1 states the students
will be able to pronounce the letter name by sight of the letter. This learning
objective supports the Colorado Standard: Reading, writing, and communicating,
standard 2, content 3a, iv; Recognize and
name all upper- and lowercase letters of the alphabet (Colorado Department of Education, 2011).
The test I have created for learning
Objective 1is an auditory completion items test (Kubiszyn & Borich, 2010).
Since the objective states that the child is able to pronounce the letter name
by sight, this cannot be a strict pencil-and-paper test, but instead is an
auditory test. Using the completion of a sentence, gives a clear question to
answer for the students; they know what is expected from them for this
test (Kubiszyn & Borich,
2010). Since the prompt is a direct question, “It provides more structure” and
is “often more desirable than an incomplete statement” (Kubiszyn & Borich, 2010, pg 151). Additionally,
this is a “good item” according to the text, since there is only one clear
answer, the answer can be nothing other than the answer (Kubiszyn & Borich,
2010). Using all of these suggestions, I was able to create a proper completion
test item for the learning objective.
Learning Objective 2 states that the
students will be able to give the phonemes for the letter. This learning
objective supports the Colorado Standard: Reading, writing, and communicating,
standard 2, content 3d, i; Demonstrate
basic knowledge of letter-sound correspondences by producing the primary or
most frequent sound for each letter (Colorado Department of Education, 2011).
The test that I created for this learning objective is a multiple-choice test
(Kubiszyn & Borich, 2010). Since the objective states that a student will know the
phonemes for each letter, it is important that some of this test is auditory
for the phoneme portion. The students will hear the phoneme said aloud, and are
to pick the choice of the letter that matches the phoneme. The response options
are short, concise, and clear in order to help the students, since they do not
include additional unnecessary information (Kubiszyn & Borich, 2010). Also,
there can only be one and only one correct answer for each phoneme; a phoneme cannot
belong to two different letters (Kubiszyn & Borich, 2010). The multiple
choices, the additional answers, the wrong answers, the “distractors”, are all
plausible; making sure the students are not given the answer, but clearly make
sure they understand the information (Kubiszyn & Borich, 2010, pg 148). Lastly,
I picked “three to five options (two to four distractors plus one correct
answer) to optimize testing for knowledge rather than encouraging
guessing” (Kubiszyn & Borich,
2010, pg 148). With all of these suggestions, I was able to create
multiple-choice items, which will be used to evaluate this objective.
Learning Objective 3 states the students
will be able to write the letter, both uppercase and lowercase, appropriately. This
learning objective supports the Colorado Standard: Reading, writing, and
communicating, standard 3, content 2a, i; Print
many upper- and lowercase letters (Colorado Department of Education, 2011). The test that I created for this learning objective is an
essay item (Kubiszyn & Borich, 2010). The test will require the “student to
organize, integrate, and synthesize knowledge” in a higher level thinking skill
(Kubiszyn & Borich, 2010, pg 158). In creating this essay item, I wanted to
make sure that the level of thinking I am requiring is at an appropriate level
for the kindergarten students. The students are to be creative in writing an
essay response, however since they are in kindergarten I felt it was important
to provide them some key words. On each of the alphabet cards, there is a picture
and the word fully spelled out except a blank in place of the first letter aka
the letter they are given; since the objective is to see if the students can
write the letter, both upper and lowercase, it is important to give the
students cards which do not have the letter on them. These cards will give them
key words they may use, however, I did not want to restrict their story, that
is why I am only requiring them to use three of these cards in their story
(Kubiszyn & Borich, 2010). The benefits for having this an essay item,
allow the students to be creative, use their memory, and eliminate guessing
(Kubiszyn & Borich, 2010). The disadvantages for this essay is that since
the students are in kindergarten the story might not look like a story and they
are difficult to score (Kubiszyn & Borich, 2010). The reason I added the
second part of this test, is to try to elevate these disadvantages. The
students are going to read every single word or their story to a teacher who is
dictating it, in order to create this story better (Kubiszyn & Borich,
2010). The words that are used from the picture cards will be underlined,
allowing the teacher to clearly see the letters that are being fully evaluated
(Kubiszyn & Borich, 2010). Having these provisions in place, allow for the
scoring to be more equal for all students (Kubiszyn & Borich, 2010). In
addition to these requirements, it is important for a teacher to have a clear
rubric to grade each essay on; including the letters, the story, and the words
from the cards (Kubiszyn & Borich, 2010). This essay item allows for the
proper assessment of this objective, in a creative way.
Learning Objective 4 says that the
students will be able to use their phonemic awareness to organize objects based
on the starting letter. This learning objective supports the Colorado Standard:
Reading, writing, and communicating, standard 1, content 3c; Identify words orally according to shared beginning or ending
sounds (Colorado Department
of Education, 2011). The test that was created
for this learning objective is a matching test. The student must show the use
of phonemic awareness as well as to show how it was used. This learning
objective is based on the application level of Bloom’s Taxonomy (Kubiszyn &
Borich, 2010). The students are to apply their knowledge of phonemic awareness
and organize objects based off their phonemes. With either of the tests, the
strictly matching (one-to-one), or the matching in columns (multiple in each
column), the objective is to assess if a student can use their phoneme skills
from saying a word, and associate it with a letter. These tests follow the
suggestions of creating matching test items (Kubiszyn & Borich, 2010). The lists are homogenous, to
ensure that they are all plausible choices (animals and food items) (Kubiszyn & Borich, 2010). The
sounds are similar to each other, to make sure the students clearly understand
the differences when they are saying it; they are not easy answers (Kubiszyn
& Borich, 2010). Lastly, the directions are clear, and state how many times
each answer may be used (Kubiszyn
& Borich, 2010). This assessment is a great assessment for this learning
objective, since it makes the students use their knowledge in more real-life
situations.
With all of these assessments, test items, and essay items that
were created for these learning objectives, it is important to understand that
the grades, evaluations, and leveling should not be relied solely on this one
assessment. It is important to have a variety of assessment types for each objective,
to ensure that all the learning, and testing types are covered; allowing all
students to perform the best of their abilities (Kubiszyn & Borich, 2010). The “choice of item format is
sometimes determined by your instructional objectives. At other times the
advantages and disadvantages of the different formats should influence your
choice” (Kubiszyn & Borich,
2010, pg 155).
References
Colorado Department of Education. (2011, August 11). Unit of academic standards.
Retrieved February 26, 2012, from CDE:
improving academic achievement:
Kubiszyn, T., & Borich, G. (2010). Educational testing and measurement: classroom
application
and practice (Ninth
Edition ed.). Hoboken, New Jersey, US: John
Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Naz, B. A. (2009, July 23). Presentation on instructional objectives. Retrieved
February 26, 2012, from ERIC: http://www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS/ED505999.pdf
